Sales are the engine of business and capturing leads and being in contact with potential customers is not always enough to increase sales, so today we will show you some strategies to convert leads into sales.
There is nothing more rewarding than seeing how a lead becomes a potential customer and finally a sale, however when this does not happen it can be one of the most frustrating experiences, for many to achieve this conversion depends exclusively on the skills of the seller, however today we are going to teach you that increasing sales in your company depends more on a constant and systematic work than the work of convincing a person.
1. Create a Customer Journey Map
The companies that achieve the most conversions are those that have decided to put the customer at the center of all their strategies. Remember that creating pleasant user experiences is the best guarantee for converting leads into sales. Of course, this implies making significant changes, but the most important thing to do is to start with an extensive and detailed research about your potential customers and their experience of buying your services. The best way to do this experience research is with a Customer Journey Map.
The Customer Journey Map is a map that will help you know and understand your customers’ needs and how they experience your buying process. Designing a Customer Journey Map is the best way to know how your customers experience shopping in your company, so you will know where you need to make changes to provide the best user experience.
2.- Implement a CRM system
Centralizing the information of all your leads and customers is a necessary action for your work teams, especially sales and customer service teams, to enhance their work. This will help you to have the information available at any time and in any place, and your collaborators will waste less time updating contact information. Thanks to a CRM system your sales team can optimize the response time to a potential customer.
Another advantage of implementing a CRM system for your company is that all your employees can obtain information on the status of sales, so they can propose new strategies or improve the ones that are working.
3.- Don’t make your potential customers wait for you.
As we have seen, the most important thing to make a sale is to keep customers at the center of the process; in other words, the best way to make a sale is if it satisfies the customer’s needs, so making your customers wait is the easiest way to lose a potential sale. So you must be available throughout the buying process.
A customer may lose interest if they can’t make a purchase quickly or even almost immediately, this can be a factor for them to finally switch to a competitor. Maintaining timely and effective communication with your customers is essential, but it can be a very complex task, that is why we recommend the use of a CRM, which will help you to properly manage communication with your customers.
Implementing a CRM system will help your team to access the customer more easily, so the customer does not have to wait for a specific salesperson to be free to make the purchase.
4.- Open new communication channels
Undoubtedly providing excellent customer service is the best way to convert into sales, an important part is communication.
If you already have a communication channel such as a WhatsApp Business account or a chatbot, it is a good way, but the ideal is to open more than one channel. The important thing is that communication between customer and company is always accessible and comfortable for the customer. Do not be afraid to implement conventional customer service channels, in fact according to the Zendesk survey 70% of customers expect a conventional service, i.e. where they can engage in a conversation in real time, so they do not have to wait to resolve their doubts, so you should prioritize the channels that feel more human, simple and friendly as a conventional phone line or chats.
Having several communication channels guarantees that the customer can establish contact with your company from the medium he/she likes the most and whenever he/she needs it.
5.- Classify your potential customers
Identifying your potential customers from the rest of your contacts does not mean that you will be able to convert them all into sure sales. As we have said, the important thing is to accompany each customer throughout the buying process, so it is important to know where they are in the buying process and give them the information they need to move to the next level.
That is why another of your tasks is to classify your customers, taking into account at what stage of the buying process they are at to motivate them to continue; you can make a very specific division, however it is often enough if you divide them into two groups: marketing leads and sales leads.
Marketing leads are the leads that are in the first steps of the sales process, you can identify them because they are the ones that arrived on your list thanks to marketing strategies. You can motivate these customers to continue in the buying process by giving them more technical or precise information about the product they are most interested in.
Sales leads are those who are located in the last stages of the sales process, you can locate them very easily because they have already bought on other occasions or show more interest than other prospects. With this type of customer it may be easier to make a purchase, however you can not neglect them. With this type of customer you can apply strategies such as direct conferences or even meetings with the sales department to agree on prices or purchase volumes, for example.
Having this division clear also helps you not to spend time and effort with a customer who may not be ready to make the purchase.
6.- Specialize your sales team
This strategy is closely related to the previous one, but here it is about creating sales teams that specialize in serving different types of customers and can give them the personalized attention that each one needs.
You can create a sales team that specializes in the attention of frequent customers, to create strategies whose objectives are to maintain the attention of these customers and promote new sales. This will also save a lot of time because they will have the contact information and preferences of these customers ready when a new campaign approaches.
Another department can be in charge of finding and nurturing new leads or new customers. This sub-department or department can specialize in creating strategies to attract new customers or to encourage leads that show interest in the brand to make a purchase.
7.- Don’t neglect your sales channels
A sales channel is a point of contact between the customer and a product or service. Choosing an efficient sales channel influences the sales success of a product, because in short, it is the means by which the customer will have contact with the product or service.
These channels can be a website, a web store, a physical store, catalogs or even social media profiles (which are also excellent channels for disclosure). Choosing the most efficient sales channel depends on the type of product or service and the type of customer you are targeting.
The advantage of these channels is that they provide you with valuable information about the sales process and potential customers. Some sales channels, such as online stores, sell on automatic, but this does not mean that you can neglect them completely. Constantly reviewing their statistics will help you monitor where your potential customers are, what their needs are, why they are buying from you or why they are not buying and above all what their opinions are about your brand.
Tradition dictates that converting a potential customer into a sale depends exclusively on the personality and charisma of the salesperson, although these qualities are a great help, today we have seen that they are not everything. You will have better results if you create a sales process where the customer and his needs are at the center. Tell us, do you think you need some other strategy to achieve more sales?