Experienced sales people know how important sales leads are in achieving a company’s targets. While many businesses can survive with the support of its loyal customers, it will be difficult to grow and thrive in today’s competitive market without having new sales leads.
To put it simply, sales leads help shape the future of the company. They are people or organizations who have the potential to become customers of your product or service. This is why businesses invest in sales and marketing efforts that would help them generate as many leads as possible, such as through advertising, events, social media strategies, networking, digital campaigns, and other related activities.
Having quality leads for your salespeople could mean a significant improvement in your revenues a few weeks or months down the line. Unfortunately, many companies are not able to take advantage of this and end up wasting the budget spent on lead generation.
If your team has been experiencing low conversion of sales leads, something needs to be done. Check out these 7 strategies that could help your company improve its lead conversion:
1. Define Your Target Market
Not all sales leads are the same. Lead generation is not merely a numbers game, where the one with the most names in their database will automatically gain an advantage. Rather, the success of converting sales leads has a lot more to do with their quality.
People will only pay for something that they truly need, thus your lead generation should start with properly identifying the profile of people who would benefit from your product or service. Note that benefit in this sense is not always tied down to a specific function, because people will also support products that give them emotional satisfaction, sometimes even more so.
For example, the functionality of a bag is to allow a person to carry multiple items in one hand. In this sense, all bags are the same. But some bags are priced a lot more than others, and people buy them nonetheless. Aside from having better material and workmanship, the reason why some people are willing to pay more for them is because of the experience that comes along with the ownership. Owning these bags make the buyers happy, plus it makes them feel that they belong to an exclusive community.
Objectively examine your product or service and list down all the benefits, both functional and emotional. Match these with the traits and characteristics of people who are most likely to appreciate them. This will refine your lead generation process, helping you acquire quality leads with a higher probability of conversion.
2. Create A Monitoring System
While having many quality leads is a good sign, it will get confusing if you don’t have a proper monitoring system in place. The reason for this is that each sales lead will progress at a different pace, thus a salesperson who is handling multiple leads will most likely have potential clients situated at different stages at any given time.
A quick way keep your salespeople organized is by setting up a sales pipeline, which is a simple diagram that depicts the quantity of leads that the salesperson is handling, including the stage that each lead is currently at. This can help you identify your average turnaround time for closing deals, highlight opportunities to improve your sales process, plus forecast your potential sales in the next few weeks and months.
Your sales pipeline can also help identify any weakness in the system or in your salespeople that, once fixed, could improve the conversion success rate of your sales team. For example, you can check at which stage your leads usually get stuck for a long time, or where they start to drop off. From here, you can conduct further investigations and come up with possible solutions.
3. Set Clear Goals And Rewards
When you hire highly-skilled, driven, and competitive salespeople, chances are they will have the desire to contribute as much as they can to the business. This is a positive sign, but sometimes, too many goals can make people get distracted and disorganized, then they end up losing sight of the more important objectives.
Keep your salespeople on track by setting Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. These should be clear, realistic, and measurable goals such as their win-loss ratio in terms of closed deals, or the turnaround time for your leads to pass through the stages of the sales pipeline.
Before setting your KPIs, first make sure that the stages of the sales pipeline and the corresponding requirements are properly understood by your salespeople. Be careful when setting your targets, as making them too difficult could dampen your team’s enthusiasm, while setting the bar too low could make them slack off.
As with anything in business, lead conversion is better achieved through teamwork and not just by individual efforts. Get everyone on board by setting up a similar structure with the support team. This will ensure that your salespeople receive the assistance they need as they work on converting their leads.
Match your KPIs with appropriate rewards to keep the people motivated. The type of rewards as well as the mechanics for awarding may be discussed with the team, or it can be dependent on the company’s budget and limitations.
4. Encourage Immediate Follow-Ups
Teach your salespeople to promptly follow-up on leads within the first hour as this increases their chances of closing the deal. According to studies, prolonging the waiting time between lead generation and qualifying the lead actually lowers the success rate of conversion by around 7 times if the follow-up was made after an hour, and as much as 60 times if it happens after 24 hours or more.
This can be possible when you make ample preparation beforehand. It could entail some internal changes, such as having a more direct coordination between your support teams, so your salespeople can immediately get hold of leads, as well as ensuring that everyone has the same understanding of what a lead is and are pursuing the same goals.
5. Provide Training And Resources
Sales is like a battlefield, and your salespeople are going out to compete with the representatives of other companies in trying to convert their leads. Similar to a real battle, whoever has the most preparation in terms of information, skills, and resources will be the one who gains an advantage over others.
Equip your salespeople with the materials they need when they go on field. Let them participate in training programs conducted by reputable and experienced sales coaches. Give them access to technology that can help increase their efficiency. Simple things like an email template or a conversation guide for their phone calls or meeting with their leads can give them the boost they need to improve their performance.
If possible, help your sales team sort through and pre-qualify all the leads at the initial stage. Eliminating the non-qualifying leads will let your salespeople make better use of their time, and they would be able to focus on the leads that show more potential.
6. Highlight The Importance Of Good Communication
A key trait that any successful salesperson should have is to be a good communicator. Only by being able to connect well with his target client would he be able to convince the client to accept the deal that he is offering. It is a simple concept, but the challenge lies in the execution.
The strength of a good communicator is not about how well he is able to relay his company’s advantages to the target client, nor on how convincing he is at explaining the benefits of the product or service that he is offering. Rather, it is about his ability to truly listen to his clients and empathize with their situation.
What many salespeople fail to grasp is that true listening skills are built on the foundation of wanting to understand the other person’s perspective. Instead, most of the time, they listen with the objective of answering a question or suggesting a solution.
A good salesperson understands the importance of placing empathy first, and solutions second. Try to place yourself in the shoes of the other person and see things from their perspective. When you know what makes them tick, what they need, and what makes them happy, you will be able to establish an emotional connection with your leads and get a better chance of closing the sale.
7. Maintain Honesty And Integrity
Above everything else, always maintain your honesty and integrity when trying to close deals. At first, giving your leads big promises such as all sorts of warranties and buyer protection may enable you to secure some deals. But this will not last because when you start being unable to deliver on those promises, you will lose your clients. Worse, they may even spread the news to other people, causing more damage to the company as a whole.
This is why it is better to be upfront with your clients if you are not able to provide what they actually need. Tell them your advantages as well as limitations, then let them make the final decision. You may end up losing on this current deal, but this would keep the doors open for future transactions.
Because people are used to hard sell, they would be pleasantly surprised when they encounter a sales person who is more invested in his clients’ own well-being and interests rather than his own sales targets. When this happens, they would remember you and will likely get in touch when they have a related requirement in the future. They may even refer you to other people in their social circle who may have a need for your product or service.
