6-Figure Sales Funnel for Solopreneurs: A Step-by-Step Guide
Do you want to build a 6-figure sales funnel as a solopreneur and scale your business to it’s next level? Well, you’ve landed in the right place. By the end of this post, you’ll have the exact steps to launch your 6-figure sales funnel for your solopreneur business.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is an automated customer journey that nurtures your ideal leads from first-touchpoint through to the final action you want them to take. This final action could be purchasing your digital product or scheduling a coaching call with you, for example. It’s a way to scale your business by systematizing the sales process, allowing you to have more time back to focus on other areas of your business.
A sales funnel is critical for solo business growth. Since you are a one-person business, in order to scale you need to free up your time and find ways to automate your business. Setting up a successful, 6-figure sales funnel is the perfect way to do this.
In this post, I’ll walk you through my step-by-step guide to crafting a 6-figure sales funnel for solopreneurs.
Why Solopreneurs Need a 6-Figure Sales Funnel
Solopreneurs are one-person business owners, such as consultants, coaches, freelancers, creators and online business owners. The challenges that one-person businesses often have includes:
Limited time (you are only one person)
Limited resources (no team to delegate tasks to)
Limited budget for expensive tools
Struggling to balance your time between working in the business and growing your solo business
Overwhelm and burn-out from doing all the things
To overcome all of these struggles, you need a well-designed sales funnel that automates lead capture, nurtures your leads effectively and takes them along the final path to convert.
This allows you to free up your time and resources, while your business continues to grow without you having to spend more hours every day growing it yourself.
Think of it this way - how would your life change if you were suddenly making 4 and 5-figures on auto-pilot because you have a high-income sales funnel that does all the legwork to nurture and convert your audience?
This is how you go from burnt-out solo business owner, to an empowered solopreneur with more time and freedom to spend on doing what you love.
Now, let’s dive into the good stuff. This is the ultimate sales funnel strategy for solopreneurs.
Building Your 6-Figure Sales Funnel: Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Build Your Ideal Client Profile (ICP):
The first step to building a 6-figure sales funnel is deeply understanding your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
This involves understanding their pain points, struggles, goals, desires and dream outcomes.
Here are questions you should ask yourself when building out your Ideal Customer Profile:
Who is my ideal client? Give them a fake name you can associate with their avatar.
What is their age range?
What is their current role or business?
How much do they earn?
What are their pain points?
What are their struggles and obstacles?
What are their primary goals?
What is their dream outcome?
This process will help you pain a picture of WHO your ideal client is, which will help you tailor an irresistible offer for them.
Step 2: Craft an Irresistible Offer:
Now that you know who your ideal client is, including their goals, dreams, desired outcomes, pain points and struggles - you can create an irresistible offer that speaks directly to them.
Let’s say you’re an online service provider who offers brand strategy and design services for e-commerce shops.
Often times, new e-commerce brands are focused on selling their product and less focused on how their brand is presented online, even if they know they need it. This creates an opportunity for you, as a brand strategist, to close the gap.
A new e-commerce brand owner likely struggles with:
Not having enough time to focus on branding
They are too focused on sales to worry about branding
They don’t have a massive budget for branding
They want to be the next Stanley Cup or Liquid Death, but they don’t know where to start or who can help them
This allows you, as a brand strategist, to close the gap between their pain points (not having enough time) and desired dream outcome (wanting to be the next Stanley brand).
Here is a winning offer framework that you can use to appeal to your ideal customer:
XX (specific outcome) in YY (time period) without (biggest pain point or fear)
Let’s look at a few examples based on the brand strategist and e-commerce owner:
I’ll build your brand to be the next Stanley mug in 8 weeks or less, without the overwhelm of DIY-ing your branding.
I’ll build you a brand strategy to help you standout in the DTC world in 6 weeks or less, without paying an overpriced agency to do it for you.
These examples help close the gap between your ideal client’s pain points and their desired outcome.
Step 3: Design Your Winning Funnel:
Every 6-figure sales funnel has to accomplish the same goal - moving a lead through the customer journey to the final action you want them to take.
The way to describe this funnel in the easiest way possible is through breaking down the essential stages of a sales funnel, often known as: AIDA
What is AIDA? Let’s break it down:
A - Awareness
I - Interest
D - Desire
A - Action
Awareness Stage
The Awareness Stage in the sales funnel is self-explanatory - all you are trying to do here is bring awareness to your product/offer. This is the first step in the funnel. You are not trying to hard sell anything at this stage. You are trying to get eyeballs and spark curiosity in a prospective customer or client.
Bringing awareness to your product or offer can be done in many ways in the online space. Creating social media content that have the ability to reach a wide variety of your target audience, such as Instagram Reels, TikToks, YouTube videos, etc is a great way to garner awareness and attention. You want to hook people with your content - so eye-catching visuals and scroll-stopping hooks are key.
You can also focus on writing blogs that are SEO-optimized, guest-posting on blogs with a shared audience, being a guest on a podcast, getting featured in an article, speaking at events and so on.
Your only goal here is awareness.
Get your product, offer or just YOU in front of your target audience. That’s it.
Interest Stage
Now that you have attention, you need to focus on keeping it - this is the Interest Stage of the sales funnel.
This is the most critical part of the sales funnel and often the most challenging.
The Interest Stage is the bridge between attention & captivation. It’s the next phase in the customer journey where you need to nurture your customer and help them recognize their own pain points and how YOU solve this for them.
In this stage, you should focus on:
Focus on creating problem-aware content
Paint a vivid picture of the transformation you offer to your ideal customer/client
Address objections
Provide social proof
Offer free, valuable content like a free lead magnet
The important aspects to really nail in this stage of the funnel are:
Offer a lead magnet that helps your client solve ONE key problem they face. This can be in the form of a downloadable ebook, template, checklist, cheat sheet, mini-course, webinar, toolkit, etc.
Landing pages
Messaging: Your messaging and deeply understanding where your ideal customer is at this point in their journey
Offering free consultations
Your email sequences after someone takes the first action to enter your funnel
Desire Stage
The third phase in the customer journey is the desire stage - you want to really hone in bridging the gap between your ideal customer knowing what you offer and really enticing them to say “I NEED this!”
You also need to make it known why YOU are the best solution in helping them overcome their pain points.
So, what’s important at this stage in the funnel?
Messaging that taps into their deepest desires, fears, hopes and dreams.
Showing them what is possible by painting a picture of the transformation and end result. What their life “could be like” after they work with you or buy your product.
Social proof that shows the transformations you’ve gotten for other clients (testimonials, before/afters, case studies, etc).
Highlight exclusivity and urgency. This can be done by VIP access offers, limited access group coaching, limited time discounts, etc.
In the desire stage, you want to them to move them from “ok I know what you offer and why I need it” to “I HAVE to work with YOU!”
Action Stage
This is the final stage in the AIDA funnel. The Action stage is the final action where the prospect becomes a customer or client. This stage is all about creating a clear and obvious path to purchase. This is where you should have prospective customers saying “take my money”.
The most critical areas to focus on here are:
Having compelling CTA’s (calls-to-action)
Remove as much friction as possible in the purchase process
Any objections or frequently asked questions should all be alleviated at this stage
Offer multiple payment options (if you have a high-ticket product or service)
Create a sense of urgency (countdown timers, ‘door closes tomorrow’, limited time discount offer if they purchase now)
Email reminders for people who abandoned the landing page or cart as they were in the purchase process
In this stage, we want to reward users for taking the final action. All of their questions and objections should be handled and alleviated so they are more than comfortable giving you their money.
In short, the Action stage should make the path to purchase easy, frictionless and a no-brainer decision.
Step 4: Build Your Lead Magnet & Offer Suite
Your lead magnet suite is the series of bite-sized products that you can offer your prospects for free in exchange for their name and email address.
These are going to be the products that kick-off the Interest + Desire + Action stages of the funnel.
So you need to create a Lead Magnet Suite that makes sense for your ideal customer profile.
Here’s a list of 14 common lead magnet types that you can offer:
Digital templates
Ebooks
Checklists
Cheat sheets
Short guides
Case studies
Special reports
Mind maps
Calculators
Mini-courses
Email series courses
Curated lists
Webinars
Workshops or Challenges
Discuss effective lead capture strategies and website optimization for maximum conversions.
Your lead magnet suite should be a collection of the above ideas that achieve the following:
They are valuable enough to entice a prospect to give you their contact information exchange for it
They achieve a specific outcome for your prospective customer, taking them from Point A to Point B in their journey.
They provide so much value for free that the next time you put a paid product in front of your prospective customer, they’ll want to buy it because the freebie was SO good, this HAS to be even better.
In addition to all of this, your lead magnets should take your prospective customer on a journey.
Here’s an example:
Your prospective customer struggles with time management as a new entrepreneur.
They come across your lead magnet which is a Notion planner template that helps them organize their business tasks, calendar and everything for their business.
They give you their contact information for this free planner.
Their business is now running on a whole new operational efficiency level because of YOUR freebie - that’s a HUGE win for your customer
Then, this same customer comes across your next free lead magnet via your first email flow - this next lead magnet is a mini-course that shows them how to create systems for their business to maximize their efficiency.
This brings the NEXT LEVEL of operational efficiency to your prospects business.
So they sign up for the free mini-course.
Now you have a lead who was taken from Point A to Point B.
All because of your free lead magnets.
They are feeling so grateful that they found YOU.
They would give you their contact information 100 more times because of the value you’ve provided them in your lead magnet suite.
At this point, they’ll give you more than just their contact information.
They’ll open their wallet for whatever you offer, even paid products.
Now, we kick in the OFFER SUITE.
Your offer suite is the collection of mid to high-ticket products and services that you offer in exchange for money.
Similar to the lead magnet suite, your offer suite is structured in a value ladder framework.
What is a value ladder offer suite?
Essentially, like a ladder, it takes your prospect from low-ticket -> to mid-ticket -> to high-ticket offers.
Each of the prior steps qualifies your buyer so you can get them what they most desire NEXT.
What’s an example of this? Let’s stick with the above example:
Your prospective customer struggles with time management as a new entrepreneur.
Lead Magnet 1: Notion planner template that helps them organize their business tasks
Lead Magnet 2: Mini-course that teaches them how to create systems in their business to maximize efficiency
Low-Ticket Offer: $11 business template bundle that helps your prospect onboard new clients with ease
Mid-Ticket Offer: $47 online course that teaches your prospective customer how to find high-paying clients and onboard them to create a winning client experience
High-Ticket Offer: $297 90-day group coaching program where you help take your clients from 4-figure to 5-figure months with processes, efficiencies and finding higher-paying clients
Premium Offer: $1997 6-month mastermind where you work with clients individually to help them systematize & maximize profits in their business with one-on-one coaching, mentorship & guidance.
Every ladder offer is designed to move your prospect upward and continuously pre-qualify them based on their prior actions taken in your offer suite.
This is the beauty of a funnel.
And this is how you create a 6-figure online business.
Step 5: Generate Traffic and Acquisition
So you have an irresistible lead magnet suite and offer suite.
What’s next?
Well, you need to get your lead magnets and offers in front of your ideal customers.
This is called traffic and acquisition…or what gets people into your funnel in the first place.
How can you generate traffic and acquire new customers?
Here are the top 5 ways:
Social Media: Leverage social media channels like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest to create content that attracts your ideal audience. Focus your content on the awareness journey by creating content types for each stage: unaware, problem-aware, solution-aware, product-aware, most-aware.
Content Marketing: Blog posts are still a great way to generate traffic via clicks to your website. Create SEO-focused content based on content pillars that would appeal to your ideal customer.
Communities: Join communities such as Facebook Groups, Slack Communities, Discord Groups, Paid Community Groups, etc. to get in front of your target audience.
Paid Traffic: You can run ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc in a low-cost way to get your lead magnets & offers in front of targeted customers.
Public Relations & Interviews: Get featured in articles or be a guest on podcasts. Get your name out there using the platforms of others with shared audiences and the traffic will follow.
Once you have your funnel set up, traffic and acquisition will be the bulk of the legwork in getting a constant stream of new customers into your funnel.
Step 6: Automate Your Funnel
This is my favorite part of the entire funnel process - automation.
Why?
Because once it’s setup and optimized, it runs on auto-pilot.
Meaning - you make sales in your sleep.
Automating your funnel is typically done using marketing automation platforms.
What do these look like for solopreneurs? Some of my favorites are:
And if you want an all-in-one-system for mini-website + funnels + sales tool + email marketing, my all time favorite tool is StanStore.
StanStore is the best if you will primarily be driving traffic to your funnel via social media and want to test the waters in your business. It’s a link-in-bio store that allows you to sell digital products, build your email list, host courses and so many other tools.
It’s very beginner friendly and perfect for new entrepreneurs. I would only advise you against if if you primarily will be driving traffic through other means like blogs, paid ads or PR/Podcast appearances because you should really be driving people to your website for those.
Automating your funnel will look different for every business. In general, you want to create email sequences that take your customer’s along the buyers journey - from initial opt-in to your lead magnet to final purchase of one of your offers.
Then, each sequence should continuously nurture up the ladder to your mid, high and premium level offers.
What does an email nurture funnel look like? Here’s an example:
Welcome Sequence: This sequence triggers for any new leads. It’s an opportunity to introduce yourself and your business and build the like, know, trust factors with your new leads.
Lead Nurture Sequence: A download of your lead magnet triggers a 3-4 email nurture sequence that provides value that builds upon the lead magnet, establishes trust, builds authority, handles objections, addrsses pain points and offers other freebies that are related.
Lead Magnet to Product Sequence: If you have engaged subscribers who are continuously opening your emails and downloading your freebies, it’s time to move them into your product & offer suites. This can be a 4-7 email sequence funnel that talks about how you built your business & soft-sells the products you offer that helped you get there.
Abandon Cart Sequence: This is for users who reached your landing pages, and got to checkout, but didn’t buy. These are hot leads that you need to continue to nurture with an abandon cart sequence. Offer a discount or limited time offer to these people to get them to buy right now.
Purchase Confirmation Sequence: This sequence triggers after a customers makes a purchase. It provides essential information to set them up for success and any additional resources needed. It also follows up with the request for testimonials or video reviews after they’ve had the chance to use your product/service.
Engagement Sequence: This sequence is less about selling and more about building authority, trust and providing value. You can share personal stories, actionable tips and educational content that helps your prospect transform their business but also get to know you. This is designed to keep your leads engaged and hungry for more content from you.
Automating your funnel is going to save you hours of time per week and years of time growing and scaling your business.
It’s absolutely critical to have a full-functioning sales system that runs on auto-pilot in order to take your business to the 6-figure mark and beyond.
Putting it All Together:
There you have it! This is the ultimate 6-figure sales funnel for solopreneurs that will take you from burnt-out business owner to thriving solopreneur.
The best part is - as you go through each of these steps and get them setup, you only need to do the bulk of this work ONE time in order to reap the benefits.
Of course, you’ll have to make optimizations and changes along the way as you grow. But this system will set you up for next level success once you get it up and running.
To recap the 6-figure solopreneur sales funnel system:
Step 1: Build Your Ideal Client Profile (ICP)
Step 2: Craft an Irresistible Offer
Step 3: Design Your Winning Funnel
Step 4: Build Your Lead Magnet & Offer Suite
Step 5: Generate Traffic and Acquisition
Step 6: Automate Your Funnel
And you’ll be on your way to becoming a 6-figure entrepreneur.
Interested in more of this?
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