How to Identify and Fix Funnel Friction Points

I just saved Phil $5,000 he was about to waste on marketing His sales were low, and his solution seemed obvious: “I’m going to double my ad budget to double my sales” Wrong move Phil’s funnel is simple: He spends money on digital ads → generates leads → books estimates → sells jobs But the constraint wasn’t lead volume It was everything after the lead Phil’s current numbers: • 30 leads/month (from $5K in ads) • 15 estimates (50% lead-to-estimate) • 4 sales (26% close rate) • $10K average ticket • $40K/month in revenue The problem isn’t leads It’s conversion 1. First constraint: Lead response time Phil was wearing every hat: answering calls, selling jobs, managing projects Leads sat for hours (or days) before anyone followed up. Some were never called at all Solution: Hire a remote admin to instantly respond and follow up until the estimate is booked Now the funnel widens 2. Second constraint: Sales process Phil was closing 26% of estimates when he should be closer to 40% Solution: Train the sales process → Ask better questions → Build rapport Higher close rate = higher average ticket Here’s the math AFTER improving the ratios: • 30 leads per month (same $5k spend) • 24 turn into estimates (80% conversion) • 10 become customers (42% close rate) • Average ticket: $12,000 • $120k total revenue The same $5,000 marketing spend is now generating $120,000 instead of $40,000 He went from break-even to $20K/month profit No extra ad spend needed Lesson: Don’t throw money at the top of the funnel until you fix the middle and bottom Fix the engine before stepping on the gas — Want more business content? Join my free newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e9DEe9vu

Are you leaving money on the table? My bulletproof system to find out and fix it. I've spent the last 6+ years helping 100s of entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses grow faster. This is how I diagnose where they can quickly 2-3x profits. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗢𝗻𝗲: 𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 What are the steps someone takes to become a happy, paying customer? - How do they get to the website? - How do they become a lead? - How do they start a sales conversation? - How do they become a customer? - How do they experience value? - How do they refer a friend? - How do they churn? 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗧𝘄𝗼: 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀. Create a boring old spreadsheet with the conversion rates of each stage of the buyer's journey. 𝘋𝘰 𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘺. Then, track the numbers week over week for the last 6 months. You will instantly notice issues: - Bottlenecks - Huge drop-offs - Lack of progress Quantitative data helps spot patterns. Qualitative data tells you why they exist. 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲: 𝗗𝗶𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗪𝗛𝗬 - Talk to your team to get their thoughts - Ask recent customers about their journey - Review it all from your buyer's perspective 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿: 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲 Plan them in 3 categories: 1. Low-hanging fruit Simple changes you can make in a few hours. - Add a Contact Us form to the website - Automate sales meeting reminders - Edit your LinkedIn profile 2. Process tweaks Changes you can make to things you are ALREADY doing. - Bring in legal sooner in the sales process - Send a custom video to new prospects - Templatize your proposals 3. Long term projects These will have the biggest impact, but take the longest time. - Rewrite your sales onboarding process - Create a new marketing funnel - Develop a new offer/product 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽 𝗙𝗶𝘃𝗲: 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗲, 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 Start putting your plan into action! But keep tracking your metrics to see how they change over time. Are they improving? If not, why not? If so, how can we double down? Simple, but effective as hell. Give it a try, and let me know what you find. If you want help, DM me or book some time. ♻️ Repost if this helped or inspired 🔔 Follow me, Kasey Jones for more 👇 Become your industry's go-to expert

The top 3 things I look for when a B2B funnel isn’t converting: (Spoiler: It’s almost always 1 of these 3 that are the problem) 1. Find the leak Most funnels don’t need a complete rebuild. They just need to find where the money stops flowing. Map every step, then track where buyers fall off. → CTR under 1%? Targeting or messaging is off. → Opt-in rate under 20%? Weak offer. → Booking rate under 30%? Friction or hesitation. → Show-up rate under 70%? Low trust or clarity. → Close rate under 25%? Wrong audience or sales approach. Follow the numbers. Then fix what’s actually broken. 2. Target the right audience You can’t sell a $20K offer to beginner startups. You can’t sell to non-decision makers. Yet most funnels do exactly that. You need to hone in on the right: • Industry • Job Title • Company Size • Stage of awareness Then rebuild your targeting around that. Because the right message to the wrong person? Still converts at $0. 3. Reposition your messaging Pull up the landing page and pretend you’re a stranger. Can you instantly answer: • What is this? • Who is it for? • Why should I care? • What’s the next step? If not, you need to rewrite the copy. Aim for: → Clear over clever → Urgency over fluff → Proof over buzzwords Most funnel issues aren’t strategy problems. They are clarity problems. P.S. If your funnel’s broken, what’s the first thing you look at?

Typically, I see growth teams focusing on the biggest funnel drop, but this is usually not the biggest opportunity for growth, and unproductive. Let me explain by going deeper into a more holistic approach to managing growth funnels. Most of the analytics tools available today offer limited funnel metrics: funnel drops and completions. It’s therefore understandable that teams focus on the biggest drop. The truth is - most users won’t complete your funnel anyway. Your product probably wasn’t built for them, there’s no product-market fit, and changing their low intent is unlikely. Optimizing might keep them 1-2 more stages, but they’ll likely churn at the next. Move on! Your best opportunity lies with high-intent users who don’t complete the funnel. They have a good product-market fit and should complete. First identifying this group is crucial to understanding why some don’t succeed. How to identify High-Intent Users: Try changing up your analytics approach, put the dashboards, #correlation, and lengthy #abtesting aside for a minute. Here are a few ways to help you identify your high-intent users. Search for the signals of intent: Shorter time to complete steps, differences in onboarding questions and responses, permissions etc. Group users into segments, such as the marketing received, localizations, user properties, and behavioral groups. Calculate the likelihood of users in a sub-segment completing the funnel. Then, upon aggregating all the sub-segments together, you understand the quality and intent of the segment. Users with the most signals of intent are your high-intent users. Find high-intent users automatically. Consider leveraging a causal model. Loops, for example, automatically identifies high-intent users, by looking at the sub-segments and finding intent signals. It can otherwise be a very manual process when you are limited to funnel drop and completion metrics. How to Identify the Biggest Opportunities: Once you have identified your high-intent users, you need to size the opportunity before starting to form hypotheses. Opportunity size is based on the questions: Assuming this segment completed this step of the funnel, what would be the effect on the total funnel completion rate. Loops automatically presents you the biggest opportunities to improve your funnel. It calculates what would be the impact on the total funnel completion rate, if you improve a specific step of the funnel. Action the Insight: By identifying high-intent users and their pain points and motivations you can better shape the top of the funnel and increase completions. Armed with the confidence and impact insight of your biggest opportunity, you can turn your attention to the specific actions needed for funnel completion, as expected. Remember, most users will drop. Invest your time in identifying and understanding high-intent users. Causal inference models can help you find the answer, with less time, effort, and stress. #productledgrowth #causalml #growth

The number 1 mistake I’ve seen companies make with their marketing is this: Putting the cart before the horse. → They want a better looking website But their messaging is broken. → They want more traffic… but they have low conversions. → They want more conversions But their leads aren't qualified. A simple way to fix this? Identify the bottlenecks that are the closest to unlocking revenue FIRST. The goal of marketing is to make sales easier. So if your leads don't turn into clients, find out what’s blocking conversions: objections, frictions, etc (instead of running around looking for more traffic). Start with fixing the issues that are preventing sales from happening first. And then, only then, move up in the funnel.