I made a big mistake when I first launched my business. It wasn’t business-ending but it did take a me quite awhile to make up for lost time. And that mistake was NOT setting up a sales funnel sooner.
Maybe you can relate? Maybe you’ve been putting off creating your funnel. Maybe you’ve kinda sorta created one but are NOT happy with it?
Well, if that’s you—you’re in the right place! In this post, I’m going to walk you through how to set up your first sales funnel in a weekend.
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It’s easy to overcomplicate funnels. And what I find is that those overcomplicated funnels are often the ones that break and end up not working as well as the ones that keep it simple.
At then end of the day, funnels are simply a way of getting the right offer in front of the right people at the right time. So we want to keep that idea front and centre when it comes to setting up your first funnel.
- What freebie can I use to attract the right people?
- What offer will be irresistible to these right people?
- And when do I present that right offer to the those right people for the biggest impact?
Those questions are what we’re going keep front and centre as we create your funnel in a weekend plan.
Necessary Mindset Shift: Embrace the Concept of a Placeholder Funnel
Back to those complicated funnels for just a moment though…
There’s this prevalent myth out there that fancy beats simple. That if you’re going to get those big results from your funnel, it’s gonna require some advanced strategies and wizardry—not the case.
My personal approach is to start simple and layer on different strategies. So the funnel we’re building this weekend is layer 1. That’s not to say that you’re not going add some bells and whistles later but for now, it’s good to start with the basics, optimize them so they work and then add in other elements, strategies and additional layers.
One of my favourite examples of this is from Denise Duffield-Thomas in her book Chill and Prosper (or Chillpreneur) where she talks about her “Placeholder” funnel. She talks about how she set up this temporary imperfect funnel that she meant to replace at a later time but was super embarrassed by it and almost deleted it but that in 2 years, that placeholder funnel had made $200,000 and helped over 20,000 people. She uses this as an argument for imperfect action and not waiting until you can create the PERFECT thing to get started and get it out there.
I’m 100% onboard for that.
The Sales Funnel in a Weekend Agenda
Before we dive into the specifics, let’s talk about the overarching plan for your sales funnel in a weekend (the breakdown I recommend).
We have 4 main projects for setting up your funnel. And I encourage you to look to existing pieces of content that you can modify as much as possible.
The four projects are:
- Your Funnel Map
- Your Hand-Raiser Freebie
- Your Follow-Up Emails
- The Funnel Build and Launch
If this were my funnel weekend, I would tackle 2 projects per day.
On day 1, I’d spend 90 minutes creating my funnel map and auditing existing pieces of content I can pull in. And then the rest of the day, creating and designing my simple hand-raiser freebie.
On day 2, I’d spend a few hours writing my emails and then the rest of the time building and setting up my funnel.
Your Funnel Map:
The first mini project is to map out your funnel. We want to get really clear on the offer itself, the special limited-time offer you’ll use in the funnel to encourage people to take action NOW instead of waiting, the freebie you’ll use to build up your lead list and the journey from freebie to offer through your email sequence.
If you want my help mapping your funnel (and access to my funnel mapping template), sign up for this on-demand workshop here:
But you could also just pull out a piece of paper or decorate your wall with post-its.
The best part of mapping out your freebie this way – in layers – the freebie system, the offer system and email sequence is that it makes it really easy to switch out pieces if you want to in the future à la placeholder funnel mode.
My biggest tip for this section is to constantly ask yourself if you already have a piece of content you could use here whether it’s the freebie, blog posts or the emails.
Your Hand-Raiser Freebie:
The next project in this sales funnel in a weekend sprint sprint is your hand-raiser freebie.
There are a ton of different things you could use to get leads for your offer – from quizzes to masterclasses, from planners to private podcasts. And while I definitely think there’s a time and place for these freebies that deliver an unbelievable amount of value – I think for the sake of speed, cheaper cost-per-leads and interest gauging—a hand-raiser freebie is the way to go for this weekend funnel.
A hand-raiser freebie is usually a simple PDF that solves a very specific problem related to your offer. You want to be able to say with a high degree of confidence that the people who sign up for this “hand-raiser freebie” are going to be great fits for your offer. That’s why the connection between the offer and freebie topic is the most important piece of this freebie.
So start by brainstoming ALL of the problems related to the problem your offer solves or result it delivers. Think about pre-problems (things they have to solve FIRST before getting the most out of your offer), think of concurrent problems (things that people who want what your offer delivers usually struggle with too), think of scapegoat problems (what they THINK is the problem even though you know it’s something else). Come up with as many problems as you can and then use a decision matrix on all those ideas to come up with the best one.
Here’s what I do – I take the problems, give them each a score based on level of pain, connection to offer and ease to create. Than I tally up the scores and rank them to find my winners.
After you’ve chosen your topic, create a PDF with 5-10 specific steps to solve that problem. In terms of title, keep it simple: Struggling with (X)? Here’s how we’re going to solve it…
The freebie part of this can take anywhere from 2-4 hours usually if you follow this process.
Your Follow-Up Emails:
Half way there. The next project for your weekend funnel is your follow-up sequence. These are the emails that you send after someone has signed up for your hand-raiser freebie that lead them to the offer.
Here are 5 questions to ask when coming up with emails that support your target customer’s journey from freebie to offer:
- What is the connection between the hand-raiser freebie and the offer? How is the offer the next step for them?
- What would make this person feel more ready for your offer?
- What does this person need to believe in order to feel ready for your offer? What are mindset shifts that would help this person feel ready for this offer?
- What is holding them back from feeling ready for this offer?
- What evidence that your “works” and get their desired results would make them feel assured about saying yes to your offer?
Each of your answers to these questions can be an email in this sequence.
In terms of how many emails you want, I typically do 2 for delivering the freebie on day 1 (a delivery email and check-in email), 1 per day for each day of the “special offer” and then 2 on the final day.
Decide on how many emails you need, topics for each and then draft your emails with these 4 sections:
- The Statement or Hook
- What I Mean By That
- Connection to Offer
- Pitch or Invitation
The Funnel Build and Launch:
Alllmost there. The final piece of your weekend funnel is to set everything up.
Here’s the order we use my funnel agency:
- Build opt-in page
- Build thank-you page
- Set up sign up system and hook everything up – your tags, your forms, adding form to opt-in page, making sure form redirects to thank you page
- Set up salespage
- Set up purchase system – thank you page, checkout page, tag
- Build follow-up automation
- Review everything and turn it on
- Sign up for your funnel and test that everything is working
I sent this plan to 3 business owners last week and the average completion time was 8.33 hours (1 person took 6.5 hours, another took 9 and the 3rd took 9.5 hours of focused work blocks). So divvy that up over a weekend and get that funnel launched.
Want an easier way to create your sales funnel in a weekend? Sign up for my Funnel Mapping Workshop Here:
