How to improve sales conversion and turn more prospects into customers

Turn more prospects into customers: improve sales conversion rates with distinctive, relevant messages and structured information.

At Allround Creative we preach 'sell a relationship, not a product'. As with other relationships that we all form, a business relationship is founded on trust. To establish trust, we generally 'give' a bit of ourselves and try to demonstrate credibility, honesty, reliability and suitability. The most effective way to turn a prospect into a customer is to embed trust-earning steps in the sales journey. Conversion always takes time, but will conversion from prospect to customer take nine minutes or nine months?

Me and 'me too' are frequent causes of sales indifference in the market

It doesn't matter what you sell, the person you want to buy is usually more interested in him or herslf than in you.

Yet you will find many companies who talk about themselves first or, sometimes, continuously. Conduct a random sample to see how many companies start their brochure or web copy with "Established in 1996 (date) ...."

If you met someone socially who introduced themselves as "I am John Smith, born in 1980, lived in London, Brighton and Upper Elbow, worked at Smiths, Boots and John Lewis, holidayed in Bournemouth, Benidorm and the Canary Islands ...." you'd probably think of them as a bore, as self-interested or simply as inept at starting a relationship.

The company that talks about itself first has probably just not thought things through, or it may be feeling insecure and thinking too defensively. What the prospect wants to know is WIIFM, what's in it for me. So they want to know that you have something relevant to say to them.

Demonstrate you understand the prospect or customer's world

Prospects are waiting to know whether you understand their particular problem or can make something more fun or save them some money or deliver something faster. It is helpful to look through the prospect's eyes at your sales message to determine if it 'speaks' to them, has relevance, interest or charm. Is there enough about them in your opening line, for example, or if it's an advertisement, in the headline.

Having got the prospect's attention the next step is to provide the right sort of information in the right order to keep them interested at every step through to purchase.

The selling, or buying, process sometimes needs to include risk reversal elements to remove the prospect's fears or concerns about you, about making a mistake, about cost and other factors. It is no different from how we weigh up entering a relationship with prospective friends or colleagues: are they trustworthy, reliable, interesting and so forth.

Rational and emotional elements in buying decisions

The sales prospect's decision to buy will probably include an emotional component, because they want something that they have connected with, and a logical component as they justify the purchase to themselves or others.

It's worth keeping in mind the two impulses, emotional and logical (or rational), because they overlap with the debate about how much you should say or write to win a sale. Many people argue that the world is too busy or uninterested to read lengthy argument.

Yet the old adage 'tell more to sell more' can still be relevant. When people select their holiday destination they are likely to be very interested in reading or viewing as much as possible about potential locations.

Having earned the prospect's attention with an emotional appeal, in your extended material you can tick the right boxes in a logical order from the prospect's perspective and allay any concerns.

Prospects want to know what makes you different

And so to 'me too'. A company has to have competitive advantage or it can't compete. It also has an obligation to work out what is unique about itself and its products and to communicate the proposition clearly to the market. Otherwise, what are we asking the prospect to do? We are asking them to work too hard to make a choice.

Why should prospects be bothered to take an interest in you when you look like every other supplier, talk the same and offer the same.

Start with the basics and decide if you are cheaper, faster, louder, more varied, higher quality, more reliable or sexier than the competition - there are a huge number of qualities to select from.

Your brand is a promise to prospects and customers

Once you are confident that you have correctly identified what is different about your company, the message needs to be embedded in your brand and identity and all your sales messages.

Sounding relevant and looking different and right improves prospect attraction and sales conversion rates. You usually can't create a need so it is important to tap as effectively as possible into the latent need in the market and your well-profiled prospects.

The Allround Creative Agency runs programmes to identify prospect motivation and to help you express appropriate and distinctive sales messages to improve sales conversion rates.

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