The internal funnel directly impacts your business revenue.
What plan do you have to optimize yours?
Did you know there are two funnels in business that directly affect your revenue?
The first is one most businesses are very familiar with — the marketing & sales funnel. The second is one that some organizations don’t even know exists – the internal funnel.
You may be asking yourself, an internal funnel? What is that? Well, the internal funnel manages the process companies take in regards to their employee base. To describe this in the simplest terms, take what you know of the marketing funnel (like the prospecting, research, nurturing, acquisition, retention, and advocacy stages), and now apply that to your employee operations. The health of this internal funnel directly impacts your company revenue because the quality and longevity of your employees directly relate to their experience with your brand from before they even send through an application.
The benefits of the early internal funnel stages
Revenue optimization starts from the first point of contact.
Investing in these early stages of the funnel can help your recruitment teams in their early discussions with prospective employees and also provide a positive sentiment for potential employees about your organization from the first point of contact. Additionally, when done correctly and in an optimized way, can help decrease your baseline costs related to a poor hire, including the cost of rehiring for a role after hiring the wrong candidate.
Awareness Stage (Employer Brand)
Your prospective employees can either learn about you when you post a job, or can be aware of your corporate culture via what you share online and your overall community involvement. This is similar to the marketing awareness stage where strategies like Public Relations and social media marketing are undertaken to ensure your target audience knows you exist.
Research Stage (Employer Brand)
Once they know you exist, the best prospective employees will research your company to consider if they want to work with you - this is particularly true for the younger demographics as Gen Z’s will not apply to companies that they feel do not match their own values. In the marketing funnel, this stage is often related to content marketing (including blogs, videos and social proof points) and having a built out section on the website dedicated to their target audience. The same can and should be done from an internal perspective.
Nurturing & Acquisition (Employer Brand)
Like the marketing & sales funnel, the internal funnel has a lifecycle stage of lead nurturing (talent pipeline) and acquisition (recruiting and onboarding). It’s critically important in these stages to ensure that the pipeline is healthy and there are limited barriers to hiring and onboarding the successful candidate. These stages set your employee up for success and help to put your company on a path of revenue growth.
Mid-Late internal funnel stages are critical to success
Revenue is directly related to employee satisfaction.
These middle to late stages of the internal funnel will help you retain your employees longer term, as you effectively engage with them throughout the employee lifecycle. Additionally these sections will help your company manage your brand reputation on employer review sites like Glassdoor (which will directly affect the quality of candidates you receive for open roles).
Retention (Internal Communications)
Retaining your current employee base is critical for long term business operations. Similar to this stage in the marketing customer funnel, retaining is less expensive than acquiring. It is in fact, very expensive to rehire roles due to an exit, and if you have optimzed the beginning part of the internal funnel your employee base will be highly qualified and competent that you want to retain. A transparent internal communications program that not only informs employees of corporate messaging, but engages them through a variety of methods (yes internal communications is more than just memo’s from HR!), are vital to a company’s chances of holding on to their valuable employees. Strong internal communications strategies can also be lifesavers to companies experiencing change management or a crisis that needs to be communicated to employees.
Advocacy (Internal Communications)
Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of the internal funnel is what happens to employees who no longer work for the company. Similar to the brand advocate stage you see in the marketing & sales funnel, this stage is all about building social proof and trust. Employee advocates can happen during current employment but also following it. Meaning that there is a strong opportunity for organizations to connect and nurture those relationships even after the employee/employer relationship comes to a close. Often the best referrals come from those who have interacted with you in the past - and when done correctly, the word of mouth coverage you will receive through this last stage of the employee lifecycle could just be the hidden gem you’ve been looking for.
Ignoring your internal funnel will impact your revenue.
Ready to optimize your internal funnel? Let's talk about a plan for your organization.
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