117- Building funnels for an Entrepreneurship

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In this episode of The Struggling Biz.com, we discuss a theme promoted by John Jantsch of the Duct Tape Marketing program that details The 5 funnels every consultant should build.

Now, I have known John Jantsch since 2006, and I have personally met him in 2010 when he was on a book tour promoting his book at that time, The Referral Engine. He is also the author of contemplative and daily “marketing proverbs” and meditations in his book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

Since 2006, he has been a podcaster and led a program called The Duct Tape Marketing Consulting program that trains entrepreneurs to be Duct Tape Marketing Program consultants.

In this article from earlier this year, John advances the notion that consultants need to have “funnels” to make their programs successful in dealing with suspects, prospects, leads and clients.

Now, ordinarily, sales leaders and marketers emphasize the need for a “sales funnel” in which to center the area of marketing and selling to your clients. However, in this case, there are 4 other funnels that John promotes as important to the consultant:

The Prospect Nurture funnel (and he describes the Prospect Nurture email series);
The Speaking funnel (and he describes The Speaking Nurture email series);
The Partnering and Network funnel (and he describes the Networking email series);
The Sales Follow-up funnel — which is usually the only funnel for most sales-oriented entrepreneurs and consultants (and he describes the Sales Follow-up email series); and
The Referral funnel (and he describes the Referral follow-up email series).

Now, in addition to giving an explanation of each funnel and how it relates to the marketing and sales consultancy of an entrepreneur, he provides links to case studies and examples that you may find relevant in your niche.

I would suggest that you subscribe to his podcast (you can find the link or button on the page of the article for you to engage and get free episodes of the items that he promotes in the world of entrepreneurship and marketing for the small business.

Now, for this entrepreneur, I am very well versed and knowledgeable about the sales funnel that most marketing and sales teams need to nurture in order to promote a strong and healthy pipeline for the business. However, it was interesting for me to include the other 4 in the category of a FUNNEL that can help the entrepreneur on the road to build the pipeline, nurture it, and then follow-up on it — especially with the referral series (remember, he promotes in detail the importance of creating a “referral engine” in his book by the same name).

We hope that you can use the information that John provides not only in this article, but in his podcast for Duct Tape Marketing. I know that there are many hidden gems in his literature and content, and we sincerely hope that you can find success for your small business by learning and implementing these programs as a consultant.

Thank you for your attention.