Small Business Blog

How to Convert More Sales Conversations into Paying Customers: Increasing sales conversion in your small business is one of the fastest and lowest cost ways you can boost your business profits. Think about it; we are talking about taking the inquiries and leads you already get, and just improving your ability to convert to customers. How many sales conversations are you (and your staff) having every month? What percentage of those conversations become paying customers? For a start, it all depends where you take this measurement from – initial phone call or website inquiry or only sit down sales meetings? They are likely vastly different numbers. Either way, you want to increase your sales conversion rate, right? Here are 4 ways in which you can do just that…

Why should you reinvent the wheel? I’ll just tell you what I’ve found to work, so you can create a strong call to action button that actually helps you to turn website visitors into leads and enquiries for your business.

Most healthy businesses need new customers, one of the best ways to get new customers in today’s world is by generating a lead or enquiry in the first instance. Over time the person becomes a customer (it could be almost immediately or for some it could be months or years after the initial interest). A very effective way to generate a lead or enquiry is to use your website to convert visitors to leads by having compelling Lead Generation Offers. But not just any Lead Generation Offers, you need Lead Gen Offers that actually work!

Having a website is one thing, having a website that works is a completely different matter. Your business’s website has a purpose, it’s not just there to look pretty and stroke your ego. In small business it is especially important that your website achieves its purpose, either; a) Convert Visitors to Leads and Enquiries, or b) Convert Visitors to Paying Customers (eCommerce websites). Here we shall examine 4 ways you can achieve a higher conversion ratio of visitors to leads for your website.

When building your suspect list, prospect targeting is everything. Go for quality over quantity, in this case smaller is better. Consider the following example:

You won’t find a magic template that will make or break your sales success here, you see creating a winning sales proposal is not about the sales proposal itself, it’s more about the entire sale process and conversations that you’ve had along the way…. The sales proposal is nothing more than a summary of what you have talked about. Now, having said that… if you have a poor presentation of that summary information (i.e. you don’t reconfirm what you talked about in visual form), then you will significantly reduce your chances of success and your chances of closing the deal.

Stop Quoting and Start Proposing Solutions or  Portraying Experiences    

Everyone in business loses plenty of sales, even if it is unconsciously. I mean, let's think about an enquiry that just turned out to be ‘a tyre kicker', you know... come on we've all said it, and often it's true. However, just as often they are not. Perhaps when you've asked for the sale these perceived ‘tyre kickers' raise an objection like; "I can't afford that", or "It's just too much", or "Let me think about it", or "yes, but not now, call me back in 3 weeks", or "no time for that", or "not interested sorry".

This may seem obvious, and you're right... it is, but in practice the execution of this methodology is rarely used to its potential. In fact, often the common notion that "Oh, I just don't have time to identify and target prospects, I'm too busy for that" can in itself be the cause of all the busyness.

Yes, the words "make me an offer I can't refuse" maybe cliché, but there is a very good reason to take this hard wired human mentality to "get a deal", and flip it around for your benefit. What's the flip? You're a business owner with a product or service or solution and you want to sell more, right? You need to come up with an offer that will satisfy the challenge laid down by those words "make me an offer I can't refuse" to even the most cynical of your prospects.