Blog Articles

 

Sales Masters Guild Mentor, Mike Ainsworth looks at increasing sales by converting more leads.

 

A lot of business owners spend considerable time in working out new ways to generate leads but they ignore the fact that arguably a quicker route to increase sales is to convert more leads.

 

It’s simple maths…

Sales = Leads x conversion x margin x frequency

 

Concentrating on any of the four factors to the exclusion of the other three will hold back the growth of your business, whilst converting more leads has the added bonus of reducing your average cost per lead.

So how can you improve your skills to enable to convert more leads?

Here are some tips:

1. Don’t allow your warm leads to cool

Your chances of converting a warm lead compared to converting a cool lead are considerably higher. For example, research has shown that contacting an online lead within five minutes can increase your chances of conversion by a factor of eight or nine times.

In my business sales company we receive leads via a lead capture form on a partner business site and if the leads aren’t contacted within a very short period of time the lead often doesn’t remember (or claims not to remember) completing the online form.

Whilst you could argue that someone who doesn’t remember completing an online form just a few hours later is never going to be converted but why take the chance in allowing the lead to go cold in the first place?

2. Qualify the lead

All leads aren’t equal…

For example you might get an enquiry from someone who is at a very early stage in the buying cycle and that lead should clearly be treated differently from someone who is ready to buy.

Both types of leads might eventually result in a conversion but too much pressure on the one who is at an early stage in the buying cycle could drive them away. So it’s important to ask the right questions and listen to the answers in order to qualify the lead properly in the first place.

3. Structure your sales conversation

The thing that a lot of unsuccessful salesmen do wrong is to start to pitch their prospect from the moment they meet, often without pausing for breath…

 

A successful sales conversation should be just that, a conversation with a two way dialogue that ends with your prospect giving you the sale.

Of course it’s not quite as simple as that and it can take years of trial and error to develop a professional sales pitch that works nearly every time.

 

Alternatively you can learn and follow a tried and trusted system. In the Sales Master Guild we are advocates of a proven system that combines the art, science, and psychology of selling.

 

The fundamentals of the system are:

1. Establish rapport
2. Ask quality questions
3. Find a want and a need
4. Link the desire to your products or services
5. Trial close – dealing with objections

 

We teach our mentees how to follow this process, reading body language and developing sensory acuity so that it becomes second nature. Did you know that in some interactions words can be a little as 7% of the ‘conversation’?

 

Develop you own style of conversation that suits your own personality and you will find that not only do you convert more leads but you’ll also be more in command of the relationship and may even begin to enjoy selling.

4. Learn to watch and listen to the customer

Strictly speaking this was a part of the last section but in my view it’s important enough to warrant a section of its own. Few people are naturally good listeners and it’s a skill that’s critical for a good salesman.

 

Particularly in the early parts of the sales conversation you should be doing no more than 10-20% of the talking. And most of your talking after the initial rapport exchanges should be limited to asking high quality questions. The rest of the time you should be listening and watching in order to find a want and a need that you can link to a desire for your product or service.

 

All the time you should be looking for buying signals and remember that these can be verbal or physical. Asking about the price or payment terms are good examples of verbal buying signals but physical buying signals such as a nodding of the head or even cupping their chin can be just as telling.

5. Always follow up

If the prospect doesn’t buy at the sales meeting or asks for more time always follow-up with a letter or telephone call. A simple telephone conversation asking if the prospect has any additional questions will often get them back into sales mode.

6. Be persistent

Persist, persist and then persist some more. Most people give up too easily when a prospect asks for more time to consider for fear of being accused of being too pushy. There’s clearly a line to be drawn but contacting your prospect and asking a question, even just “have you had a chance to go over the material / proposal that I sent you?” can sometimes swing the sale. People’s circumstances change so it’s always worth keeping in touch to see if they are ready to buy.

7. Use automated email to follow up enquiries

If the enquiry is from someone who is still at an early stage in the cycle then your initial response as I said earlier will be different than if the enquiry is from someone ready to buy. This is one situation where having automated emails to follow up the enquiry can work for you. The emails can be information based or just regular newsletters. The purpose is to keep you in the mind of the prospect until they’re ready to make a buying decision and the ROI on the investment in email automation can be phenomenal if you email the right prospects.

8. Don’t forget to ask for the sale

It sounds obvious but asking for the sale and the consequent fear of rejection can be the most nerve-wracking part of the sales conversation and some salesmen therefore skip it all together. Needless to say they’re not usually the successful salesmen.

 

Never ask for the sale until you’re sure that you’ve got the benefits of your product or service linked to the buyer’s primary desire. When you’ve done that you’re ready to move to the trial close, which is a single or preferably a series of open questions that gauge the buyer’s willingness to move to the next step.

 

Once you’ve got two or three confirmations from the trial close you are ready to move to the close.

Closing questions should always assume the sale and should be followed by silence…

Hopefully at that stage – and assuming you’ve got the signals right and the buyer is ready to buy – then the sale is yours. If not then you may need to move to the objection handling stage that you should have rehearsed in your head before the meeting.

In summary

Selling really can be quite simple, once you get over your hang-ups and realise that it’s just a conversation with you asking high quality questions in the right order and then listening and watching to the response. Try it yourself on your next sales pitch.

 

Mike’s Sales & Negotiation Training courses are open to anyone wanting to make an impact on their sales.

 

You can contact Mike directly if you’d like to discuss the training in more detail before booking through his Mentors profile page.

 

25 way to get more customers