The Long Sales Funnel

Even today, very few business owners and marketers think in terms of their sales funnel.

More advanced companies track two funnels. The first runs from a website visit to an enquiry and is usually the marketer’s responsibility. The second runs from lead to sale and belongs to the sales manager, and increasingly to the marketer as well. In most companies these are still separate funnels, with no connection between them.

Only a small number of companies combine web analytics, call tracking, CRM and other marketing tools into one system. This creates far more scope to analyse performance, identify bottlenecks and find ways to improve marketing ROI.

First, let’s look at these two funnels, then explore what connecting them can make possible.

This funnel is measured with web analytics, such as Yandex Metrica, which records where a visitor came from before taking a valuable action, such as calling or submitting an enquiry.

This funnel helps businesses make their advertising more effective. If we know where leads come from and what they cost, we can invest the budget more efficiently.

More advanced analytics systems, such as CallTouch, can provide even more detail about enquiry sources, down to the search terms, and collect other useful data.

This funnel is measured in a CRM (customer relationship management) system, such as Bitrix24 or AmoCRM. It tracks how leads convert into sales, breaks the process into stages (for example, “new”, “contacted”, “proposal in progress” and “decision pending”) and shows where conversion is low. It also helps assess each salesperson’s performance.

Why connect the two funnels? Together, they make it easier to assess which sources generate sales and identify where prospective customers are lost. Let’s call this combined view the “long funnel”. It works by passing the original acquisition source into the CRM with every enquiry.
So what can the long funnel tell us?

Finding a source that generates many enquiries does not necessarily mean it performs well. Those enquiries may not turn into sales. For example, an ad on Avito might bring many callers looking to bargain, but none of them may buy. Even if the enquiries are inexpensive (which many businesses focus on), that does not make the channel worthwhile if it generates no sales.

With a long funnel, you can calculate the net profit generated by each channel.

You can go further and identify which source, or combination of sources, brings in your most profitable customers over their lifetime (LTV).

You can see the journey a customer took before buying: which channels they encountered, how many times they visited the website and what they did there.

This makes it possible to test different sequences of marketing communications and find the approach that generates the most sales.

Both funnels are useful for marketing and sales, but they become much more valuable when connected. That is where a persistent challenge arises: integration is difficult. Despite the rapid development of web analytics, supporting tools and CRM systems, there is still no simple, convenient solution that works for every company.

Every system has strengths and weaknesses, and it can be difficult to choose one tool or the right combination for a particular goal. New features, tools and interfaces appear all the time, and the number of options keeps growing. As marketers work out how to build a clear, convenient analytics setup, systems integration is becoming a new responsibility and area of expertise.

We actively test new systems and tools to connect them into a simple, unified long-funnel setup tailored to each client’s needs.

We believe that effective marketing and sales management depend on having this kind of system, as well as up-to-date knowledge of analytics tools and how to connect them.