Marketing Blueprint - Part5

5) Increase Sales Conversions

Increasing inquiry-to-sales conversion will increase a company’s income without increasing costs. This is an instant profit increase without taking on a single penny of expense.

There are several steps a business can take to improve it’s sales conversion rate. Some of these steps are to target and market to only the highest probability prospects.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, applies here.

80% of sales staff focus the majority of their time chasing the 80% of prospects who will never buy. That’s dumb and is a huge waste of time. I’ve held sales jobs were employees would get fired if they kicked a person to the curb instead of let the person leave on their own without buying.

The idea was, as long as you were speaking to them, there’s still an opportunity to sell to them. That is so wrong.

Many unqualified ‘buyers’ will waste a salesperson’s time for no reason other than for pride. More than a decade ago I sold cars. We had a nickname for these types of people.

“Lot lizards”.

Every few weeks the Lot Lizards would wander into dealership after dealership and waste the time of a sales person – with absolutely no desire, interest, or ability to buy. This was just time for them to get out of the house and find something to do other than walk around the local mall.

Experienced sales employees would find an excuse not to be available when these time wasters showed up. But the inexperienced employees got stuck with them.

13 years after leaving that industry I still see some of these same Lot Lizards driving those same beat up cars as before. Still claiming to buy ‘someday’.

Here’s the thing. This same situation exists in nearly every industry.

80% of sales reps waste time trying to ‘convert’ non-buyers into buyers. As if persistence alone will work some kind of magic spell. It won’t. Instead, put ‘systems’ in place for quickly sorting, attracting, and weeding out the right types of buyers from time wasters. This will increase your sales because your time energy and efforts are spent selling to high probability clients instead of to time wasters.

Another way to increase sales conversions is to provide formal sales training to sales staff.

Though many companies have seen huge 300% increases in sales as a result of sales training, typically, adding a sales training program has proven to immediately increase sales by 15%. That’s immediate, the same month the training is initiated.

Sales training is clearly worth the reward. Unfortunately though, few small to medium sized companies have a systematic or scheduled training system.

Perhaps a fear of unknown costs holds companies back. Or perhaps the fear of upsetting the pride of existing sales staff. Or maybe it’s a fear of taking on more work or needless expense.

The thing is, sales training doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive.

A company can simply record the top sales reps during actual selling situations. Determine what top sales reps are saying or doing that other employees are not saying and doing. Then train all sales staff to implement those same sales processes.

A side benefit to recording top sales reps is you’ll learn words and phrases and questions that you can adapt to print ads and sales letters too. After all, if it works in person or by phone, it definitely will work “selling in print” too.

Of course you’d want to take into consideration the legalities of recording live sales situations before doing so.

If you prefer a formal sales training system, the SPIN Selling model is one of the most effective overall selling models I’ve ever found for selling to existing clients. It’s not the most effective I’ve found for cold call prospecting or for selling to low cost items (under $100). There are many more selling systems to choose from, depending on what you are selling and to whom.

These are just a couple of the more than 50 ways I’ve found for boosting sales conversion rate. Some of the methods apply to direct selling. Others apply to ‘selling in print’.