Building a product funnel is a fundamental item for your speaking and writing business. Yet few efforts are more misunderstood in the information business—from Internet Marketers to Professional Speakers—creating the means to effectively sell products online or offline is largely a mystery.

Getting this right can be the difference between having a luncheon featuring beef bourguignon by the green at the Pig & Whistle or packing bologna on white bread in a brown paper bag.

So just what is a product funnel, and how do you use it? Is it some mechanical gadget that baristas use to whip up a mocha Frappuccino? Is it the end piece of a conveyor belt found in a state-of-the-art Amazon warehouse? Hardly. Let’s start with a few basics.

A product funnel is the sequence of exposures or “touches” that your prospective customer goes through before deciding to buy from you. It begins with the initial touch and manages your prospect’s buying relationship with you all the way through product up-sells and special offers.

Whether you’re using advertising, email marketing, social networks, live events or a combination of media, your customers learn your “music” through repetition—like a song on the radio. Typically, you find a set of marketing vehicles that works for you and repeat their use until your prospects absorb enough information to make buying decisions.

The magic number here is seven—that’s how many exposures it takes to cross what I call Made for Success Publishing and the host of Conversion Marketing, a marketing book on converting website visitors into buyers. Bryan’s Fortune 500 experience includes Microsoft, Eastman Kodak and Xerox.

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