How To Improve Sales Conversion Rate For Your Small Business

Many small business owners seem to have given up on improving their sales conversion rate.

They have tried hiring superstar salespeople, they tried reducing their prices, and sometimes make promises they can’t keep just to close more sales.

But they have learnt that these tactics never help. If anything, they may sometimes hurt the business.

If you want to be able to convert a good number of leads to customers, and ultimately increase your sales and profit, then this article is for you.

Keep reading to learn the five (5) simple ways you can increase your sales conversion rate.

5 Ways To Improve Your Sales Conversion Rate

1. Build/Review Your Sales Funnel

Building a sales funnel is like building a foundation for your sales process to be more efficient.

A sales funnel helps your business avoid asking for a sale too early or too late.

It helps you build trust, prove your expertise and develop your relationship with your leads.

With your sales funnel, you’re able to convert leads to customers by taking them on a journey from discovery or awareness to purchasing with ease.

Many small businesses jump into trying to convert leads to customers without understanding their problems, where they are on the funnel and the kind of message they need to hear to help them take action.

All of which a sales funnel would help you do.

By building or reviewing your sales funnel, you would certainly improve your rate of conversion.

2. Generate Quality Leads

If a farmer gets good seeds, there are more chances that he or she will get good yields than if s/he has to plant from randomly selected seeds.

As it is for the farmer, so it is for your small business.

The better the quality of leads your business can generate, the more likely it is that a good number of them will convert.

Don’t focus on the number of leads you can generate, if they aren’t good, it will be a waste of time and energy.

Define your ideal customer, and target them in your marketing campaigns.

Again, to improve your sales conversion rate, you have to improve the number of good leads that you generate.

3. Create A Compelling Offer

Make it easy for your customers to buy your goods or services.

As compared to your competitors, your product must be perceived as the better option.

The best way to convince your customers you are better than the competition is to show them how your products perform better than theirs.

Highlight at least one area (that customers care about) that your product does better than the competition.

After all, customers tend to compare products constantly.

Another aspect of making your offer competitive is to remove or reduce the risk of buying your products or services.

Offering the ability for customers to return a product, or a warranty etc. would make the customers feel comfortable enough to take action.

Other ways you can make it easy for your leads to become customers is by creating incentives and offering social proof to nudge them towards buying.

Learn More: How To Create A Customer Acquisition Strategy For Your Business

4. Set-Up A Follow-Up Campaign

People are busy, and sometimes if you fail to follow up, they may forget about your products and jump on to something else.

This is why it is important to set up effective follow-up campaigns that serve as gentle reminders for your leads to move on to the next phase of your sales funnel.

Setting up email, call or SMS follow-up campaigns can increase your chances of converting more leads.

5. Train Your Sales People

Yes, you trained your salespeople when they first started working with your business but is that enough?

Continual training is the only way to ensure that your salespeople are better at converting leads into customers.

Provide them with the knowledge and support they need to deliver excellent results.

To be able to increase your conversion rate, you have to empower the people who execute your sales strategies to deliver.

3 Simple Ways To Optimise Your Sales Funnel To Convert Better

Since a well optimised sales funnel is a key to improving your sales conversion rate, we dive deeper to discuss 3 ways to optimise it to convert better.

The more optimised your sales funnel is, the better chance your business has of making more sales because of a higher percentage of prospects making their way through the funnel.

1. Know Your Customer

The first step anyone can take to optimize their sales funnel is to understand their target customers better. You can optimize your sales funnel by learning more about who your ideal customers are, why they buy, the type of content that appeals to them, etc.

The more you know about your ideal customers, the better you can optimize your sales funnel.

This is why you need to research your customers, ask them questions, analyse how they interact with your competition, who interacts with your competition, the content they engage with, the messaging they respond to, etc.

And optimize your sales funnel around that.

Creating content that attends to customers at different stages of the buying process is also a demonstration of that knowledge.

Learn More: 4 Tips For Making Successful Outbound Sales Calls

2. Make It Easier To Buy

The high rate at which many prospects drop out of the sales funnel because of unnecessary friction is alarming.

Frictions like website loading speed, long/complicated checkout process, extra fees, high shipping fees, poor customer service, poor return policy, and lack of a convenient payment system.

All of which can be avoided if you periodically review your sales funnel from the perspective of a customer.

To optimize your sales funnel to convert more prospects, you should make your product and service as easy to buy as possible for your customers.

By removing unnecessary steps, such as creating an account or filling out forms just because, we can streamline processes.

3. Incorporate Social Proof

Building trust with the prospect is key to the success of any sales funnel.

The sales funnel should be optimized to create an atmosphere of trust and relationship between your business and the prospect, which is necessary for them to make buying decisions.

But if the prospect doubts the credibility of your offer, they drop out of the funnel. This is why incorporating social proof such as reviews, testimonials and success stories is not just an add-on but critical.

When you find out that you are the only person who has purchased a product, you may be wary about making that purchase.

But you will be more inclined to take action if you see others who have previously purchased the product raving about it.

If you need help improving your small business sales conversion rate, contact us today.

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