How to Build a Sales Funnel From Scratch in 2025

A sales funnel outlines the journey that a prospect goes through to become a customer. For a business sales funnel is a method to drive maximum conversion. From the first visit to the e-commerce store to making a purchase and becoming a customer, a sales funnel covers that journey of conversion. The question now is how to build a sales funnel.

Sales funnel, as per its name, is not a real funnel through which you attract customers. Rather sales funnel refers to a visual representation of potential clients entering the funnel (maybe your website) and ending up as customers (making a purchase). It is thus a process by which lead is captured, processed, and nurtured to gain conversion.

To know how to build a sales funnel it is important to understand how it works. Knowing the functionality of a sales funnel would clarify how things work at different levels. This is in turn, would help to create a sales funnel from scratch. 

Sales Funnel:  How it works 

Around 50% of the marketers globally use the sales funnel and aim to improve the efficiency of their funnel. This fact clearly states that the sales funnel is the tried and tested technique opted for globally. It provides for a standard way of converting prospects into clients.

Source:  https://www.salesforce.com/in/blog/sales-funnel/ 

Generally, a sales funnel has 4-5 stages, and each stage is related to a specific purpose that eventually leads to conversion in the final stage. The various stages of a sales funnel are:

• Awareness: The first stage of the sales funnel is creating awareness about the business. In this stage, awareness is created about the business’s products and services. The target customer base is made aware of the brand so that they start to explore more.

• Interest: This is the 2nd stage of the funnel and a very crucial stage of the process. After becoming aware of your brand, the potential customer shows interest in knowing more. Here is the chance where you can present your business and win a customer. The key here is how quickly you respond after the person shows interest. As per the observation and research, it is found that reaching out to the user within 5 minutes of them showing interest, replying to the e-mail, or filling out a form is best to get a conversion.

• Evaluation: In the evaluation stage, as the potential customer enquires about your product and services, you try to assess his/her needs. Based on the interaction, you evaluate the suitability of the lead for your business. For example if you sell LED TVs, and by seeing the keyword LED a user has come to buy LED bulb then you can evaluate this lead as not useful. 

• Engagement: Once you find out that the prospect is a good lead through evaluation, it’s time to engage them. Here, the idea is to put your brand and product in front of them to drive the action of purchase. Sending an email, push notification on app, WhatsApp message, etc saying they were interested in the product and its best time to buy with discounts. Engaging via some lucky draw, spin the wheel, answer to win, kind of stuff is also a good way.

• Action: It is the make-or-break stage of the funnel. Here, all the efforts that you put in would either show results or fizzle out. At this stage, the prospect is ready to take action. This action can be what you want, like purchase, subscribe, donate, etc or aborting the process. Even if they abort, they are now part of your funnel, and you can keep engaging them to drive action in the future. 

There is another 6th stage that many sales funnels have. It is called the retention stage, where you try to retain the customers you have won. It also calls for assessing the things that were bought in the sales. Further, it involves assessing the funnel and fine-tuning it to drive more and more conversions. 

Creating a Sales Funnel from Scratch

Having understood the sales funnel and its mechanism it’s time to understand how to build a sales funnel from scratch.

• Data collection and research: The first step to building your funnel is to know your potential customer. 

• Research about what age group is the best fit for your product or service

• Understanding the preference of the target group

• Communicate with them via an online survey, call-based feedback, etc, to know about what they are looking for 

• Create a landing page: A landing page is a point of contact for those who are interested in your brand. It acts as a place where you can interact and showcase your brand to the user.

• A landing page can boost conversions up to 24%

• It allows you to engage the user via chatbots, FAQs, and help them explore your brand 

• Creates an image of genuineness of the brand in the mind of the user

• Attention Grabbing: Once you have sorted out with who your target audience is, now is time to get their attention.

• Run email campaigns to reach out to potential customers

• Performance and influencer marketing are other good ways to grab attention

• Use SEO to rank higher in search engine rankings 

• Google Ads can be used to drive attention towards the brand

• Discounts and offers: To make people take the first move, discounts and offers are the best way. You have seen many times that new brands offer their products for Rs 1 or 2 to attract the customer. Through sales, offers, and giveaways, you make the customer try your product with minimum investment on their end. Once they get to see the quality of your product and services, there are chances they would come back and buy it.

• Keep communicating: The most important part of the sales funnel is to keep it active. And to do that, you have to keep communicating with your target audience regularly. You can’t just run an email campaign and sit. Reach out to them on a festive occasion, their birthday, anniversary, etc, to give a feel of being connected.

• Optimize the funnel: Over time, to drive the best results, you have to optimize your funnel. This would include research of the customer base and market, setting measurable goals, and monitoring progress over time. 

Conclusion 

A good sales funnel is an integral part of a business’s sales strategy. To maximize the result, proper execution of each stage of the funnel is crucial. If you are looking to build a sales funnel from scratch, then the methods we discussed here would surely come in handy. Provis Technologies offers tailored solutions to help businesses streamline and optimize their sales funnels for better conversions and growth.