GoHighLevel brings a lot of different features that help you build a sales funnel. With email and text message follow up automation, reporting tools, and pipelines, all integrated, it becomes a powerful sales and marketing software.
Being powerful does not necessarily mean it helps you achieve a high conversion rate. With experience building funnels and integrating them with automation and CRMs for clients on the GoHighLevel platform I have come to know the biggest reason for failure is not with the software. It is with how the funnel is structured.
Why GoHighLevel Funnels Usually Do Not Work
Usually GoHighLevel funnels do not work because the developers focus on how the tools offered by the software integrate and work together instead of how the customer makes a decision.
A sale is not made by simply integrating a form to a page and setting up a workflow. The sequence is customer decision journey and offer, integrations, sales. You must get this in the correct order.
To learn more about our GoHighLevel funnel services, I want to add this, funnels are always systems and integration of several tools. Conversion issues are usually because of misalignment of the systems and how it works together.
Have a system and integration of tools built for a specific business goal and still not having a desired impact? Book a free consultation to know the exact reason for failure from a GoHighLevel expert.
Understanding GoHighLevel Sales Function
GoHighLevel allows users to customize sales funnels by adding various components and automations. The sales funnel shows a potential customer’s full journey with the business and includes touch points from when the customer first interacts with the business, to when they make a purchase, and beyond.
How GoHighLevel Sales Funnels Work
Sales funnels are made up of components that represent different stages and may include automations to trigger next steps along the journey. In a well designed sales funnel, a business may have potential customers that:
- Visit a landing page
- Complete a lead form
- Book an appointment
- Become customers
- And make repeat purchases
The sales funnel may include other components to represent the journey beyond the first purchase, such as prospect tagging or pipeline automation.
Why a GoHighLevel Funnel May Not Generate Expected Results
Sometimes a sales funnel may appear complex and automations may be active, but the funnel may not generate the expected outcomes for the business.
I often see examples of sales funnels that include numerous components, touches, and automations. After reviewing a business’s sales funnel, I find that potential customers:
- Complete a lead form but don’t request a sales call
- Request a sales call but don’t purchase the business’s product or service
- Purchase the business’s product or service but don’t tell employees what they are interested in
- Leads are generated, but what happens next is often a mystery. Employees are often unable to explain why a customer made a purchase or what the customer is interested in.
This happens because the individual components were created based on the functionalities of the software, instead of based on the customer's journey. If lead capture is the weak point, a dedicated lead generation funnel service can help structure that part of the journey.
The Real Problem: Features Take Precedence Over Customers
This is usually where the problem occurs when I review a GoHighLevel funnel for the first time.
A typical first question
- When creating a funnel, what landing page to create?
- What form to use?
- What workflow to build?
- How many texts to send?
These questions are normal, but sometimes people ask the wrong questions and give the wrong answers. The real question is what does the customer need to know and do in order to become a ready, willing and able buyer?
After this question is answered, the offer is usually redefined, landing page copy is rewritten, questions on the lead forms are rephrased, and the number and content of the follow ups are restructured.
For example, a customer who has downloaded a lead magnet and a customer who has visited the pricing page and scheduled a demo call, are usually not managed the same way.
Design the Funnel Around the Customer Journey
A funnel should usually be designed based on the customer journey, not based on how GoHighLevel features are to be integrated. This is also the approach we use in our funnel design service.
Plan Your Sales Process Before Touching the Page Builder
Think about your sales process and what your sales people should know before making a sales call and then only after that, determine how the page should be built.
What Should a Salesperson Know About a Lead?
You might be surprised by how critical this question is. It helps you figure out what to include on a landing page, determines the questions you will ask on a lead-capture form or survey, and describes the information you need to pre-populate in GoHighLevel to make the most impact with a lead.
You need to understand what happens in a sales person's conversation with a lead to help craft the automation that will support that conversation.
Get It Automated in the Right Progression
The order in which you implement parts of your automation is critical. If you create an automation for a process before you define the details of that process, you are automating bad process flow.
The Correct Order of GoHighLevel Automation
The correct order of automation elements is as follows. If you want a ready starting point, you can also browse GoHighLevel funnel templates:
- Offer
- Landing Page
- Lead Capture
- Qualification
- Next Steps
- Follow-up
- Action
- Data Collection
When you implement your automation in this order, you are better able to optimize and automate the process.
Don’t Waste Time in the Page Builder
- You can easily get lost in GoHighLevel's page builder. It is fairly simple to edit pages, but sometimes teams can get lost in the details while the bigger problem is in the process that happens after a lead is captured.
- When a business has a process that produces the desired result, it is often difficult to identify inefficiencies in the process. One such inefficiency may be an inadequate number of qualified leads.
- A business process should be designed to identify inefficiencies. Sometimes the best way to enhance a business process is to implement a different business process. This may be the case for your business.
- It is the goal of business process automation to simplify and enhance a business process. Automation should not increase the complexity of a business process. In most cases, there should be justification to explain the existence of a business process.
- Workflows should be created to fulfill a specific function. It is not necessary to create a new workflow for each occurrence in the sales process.
Habits That Keep GoHighLevel Workflows Manageable
A few habits keep this from becoming unwieldy:
- Name workflows to facilitate review by team members.
- Use a discrete workflow for each job.
- Document workflow functions.
- Test workflows to understand behavior when a contact qualifies for multiple workflows.
Examples of GoHighLevel Workflows
Some examples of workflows to consider distilling from larger workflows:
- New Lead Follow-up
- Appointment Reminder
- Sales Follow-up
- No-show Follow-up
- Lead Reactivation
A tractable automation beats an intricate, but difficult to manage, workflow to automate business processes. The same principle applies when choosing a GoHighLevel funnel template: start with a clear journey, then customize the automation around it. Almost always, a simplified workflow is preferred.
To illustrate, consider the case of a new lead. How automated follow-up is implemented is less important than the fact that it is implemented.
You have tools at your disposal to achieve automation. Think of your existing CRM data and how it can be applied to better contextualize communication to your leads.
Build a Meaningful GoHighLevel Sales Pipeline
Beyond considering which leads to follow-up on, consider how a pipeline needs to be defined in a meaningful way. For your teams to gain meaningful insight from a pipeline, stages need to be defined in a way that makes sense.
Basic GoHighLevel Pipeline Stages
- New Lead
- Contacted
- Qualified
- Booked
- Showed Up
- Proposal Sent
Every company will have a slight variation of this example, and that’s ok. The important part is that the steps in the pipeline are clear and brief.
This allows anybody to look at the pipeline and understand the status of a lead, as well as the next steps in the process. The truth of the matter is that your reporting is only as good as your pipeline.
Don’t Neglect Cold Leads and No Shows
Leads that don’t turn into clients are still leads and deserve follow up. There are many reasons a lead doesn’t turn into a client, and in order to increase close rate, a follow up sequence to cover these reasons is essential.
- Follow up sequences should include:
- Reasons for leaving a booking flow
- Leads that don’t show up for a scheduled meeting
- Prospects that don’t take the desired action after a call
- Leads that don’t turn into clients after a sequence
Inactive Leads
Leads that haven’t been active for a long period of time.The goal of these sequences should not be to harp on leads to take action, but to give leads a way to take action and engage in a conversation again.
For businesses focused on lead capture and nurturing, our lead generation funnel service covers this part of the journey.
GoHighLevel Funnel Optimization Checklist
Prior to sending additional traffic to your funnel, review the following. You can also use our sales funnel service if you need help reviewing the complete conversion path.
Offer and Landing Page
- Is your offer clear?
- Is your landing page aligned to your traffic source?
- Is the contact form relevant andanda shorten?
Lead Follow Up
- Are leads followed up with in a timely manner?
- Does follow up communication align with interest level?
Appointment and Sales Process
- Are appointment reminders sent?
- Is a process in place for no shows?
- Is your sales pipeline aligned to the status of your deals?
- Can you identify and attribute your leads to sales?
These questions will help you pinpoint your issues faster.
Numbers That Affect the Bottom Line
Quantity doesn’t always indicate quality. Some funnels generate a ton of leads but struggle to get clients. If you want to accurately analyze a funnel, you need to look deeper.
GoHighLevel Funnel Metrics to Analyze
Some aspects you should analyze are. If you are comparing different funnel structures, you can also review the sales funnel template collection for examples:
- The percentage of website visitors who become leads.
- The percentage of leads who schedule a call with you.
- The percentage of scheduled calls you attend.
- The percentage of attended calls who become clients.
- Which of your advertising platforms do clients come from?
- How quickly do you contact leads?
The recovery rate for leads who don’t show up for appointments.The best thing about analyzing these numbers is that you can get actionable insight into how to adjust your GoHighLevel funnel.
Tweaking your funnel to include these aspects can provide a massive boost to your sales and client retention. For a deeper review, our funnel analysis and optimization resources can help you identify where visitors are dropping off.
Last Thing Before You Go
You should be able to create a funnel that takes clients through your entire sales process and integrates all of your sales related tools. This process should be fully customizable based on your specific sales goals.
The best way to determine what your clients need to know to proceed to the next step in your sales process is to work backwards and determine what your clients need to know to get there.
Once you have a base funnel, you can utilize GoHighLevel’s features to fill in the remaining gaps, but keep in mind that this is where the technology stops and your strategy and business expertise must take over.
If you have a funnel that brings in leads, but not clients or sales, look at the big picture to pinpoint what’s going wrong. Book a call with a funnel expert to get actionable advice for free. You can also explore our done-for-you funnel services if the funnel needs a larger rebuild.
