3 Actions To Take To Increase Your Sales Conversion Rate That Have Nothing To Do With Your Sales Call

Agency sales in 2023 has nothing to do with sales at all.

In fact, having sold over ￡10m worth of agency services and taken over 1000 sales calls, I can comfortably say that 'being a good salesperson' in the classical sense of the phrase is a disadvantage.

Selling agency services is a competitive game. In order to sell your services to a new client, who's only just met you, you need to convince them you're the best agency to deliver the result they're looking for.

And doing this is no longer down to how well you can sell, and it has nothing to do with that horrible world of 'closing'.

Around 75% of the sale happens outside of the sales call.

It happens in your positioning, your branding, your content, your marketing, your sales process, your offer and so on. If you get those areas spot on, in most cases, prospects who are ready to buy, will buy as long as you don't totally mess up the sales call!

This is good news... Because if you're not happy with your sales conversion rate, you don't have to binge-watch Grant Cardone's YouTube Channel, you can make small tweaks now that have a huge impact tomorrow.

So let's dive in... 3 things you can do today that will drastically improve your sales conversion rate that having nothing to do with the sales call...

#1 - Upgrade Your Sales Process

Every prospect has to go through 4 levels of awareness in order to buy from you.

They have to be problem aware, then solution aware, the you aware and then offer aware.

That's quite a few stages of awareness to jump through in just a 60 minute call - and this is exactly the mistake that most agencies make. They try to explain too much in the sales call itself.

A lot of those awareness layers can be tackled by sending content to your prospects before they jump on a call with you.

Take a look at our Sales Process diagram below.

Noting the two highlighted areas - Awareness Bridges. Awareness Bridges are your sales assistant. They're strategically placed content that we send to prospects before the call to help them progress through our 4 levels of awareness.

What do you send to your prospect after they book a meeting with you and before you jump on a meeting with them?

How are you using that time to help them become more aware of you, your solution or your results?

If there's nothing being sent, you're in luck. Add that in now and you're already massively upgrading your sales process.

#2 - Tweak Your Offer

It doesn't matter how good you are at selling, you can't sell a bad offer.

You could have the best track record, the biggest client list, the most comprehensive sales process and the best 'closer' and you still wouldn't sign clients on a bad offer.

Again, this is good news for you... If you've signed a new client in the last 3 months it means your offer is at least passable!

So how could you tweak your offer to make it even better?

Firstly, let's examine what makes up an offer. Broadly speaking, you can play with the following criteria:

1. Price
2. Results
3. Timeframe
4. Guarantee
5. Bonus

Price is fairly obvious, and we don't want to compete there anyway, so let's look at the other 4 criteria, and ask questions that could help make our offer slightly more irresistible.

Results - How results-focussed is your offer? Do you explain the results your client can expect? Could you discuss results more?

Timeframe - Clients want to know how long it might take to see those results. Have you given a timeline in your offer? Have you shown how long it will take to set-up and initiate and how long you would expect the partnership to take or last?

Guarantee - Have you got a guarantee? It doesn't have to be performance based, although those are great if you have one. You can offer guarantees based on client satisfaction too. Whatever it is, it's advisable to include a guarantee - to your client you're saying, 'let's split the risk' and that's a great way to start a client relationship.

Bonus - What can you offer than no other agency can? Maybe it's an extra service that you have, or a speciality in house? Or perhaps your client base is full of great networking opportunities for your prospect? Think carefully about extras that you can offer that no other agencies can. This could win you an extra 10% of deals.

Look over those 4 areas and commit to improving your offer slightly in each. That's a huge step forward to extra conversions.

#3 - Adjust Your Mindset

I've been out of the dating game for over 10 years, but from what I remember, sales is a little like dating.

Then more needy you are the less success you get.

Here's the mindset you need to market and sell well.

If it's not a perfect fit, don't push it.

It doesn't matter how narrow your niche is, there is an abundance of opportunity out there.

Every touch point your potential client has with you, your marketing and your agency should be authoritative, yet relaxed and un-pushy.

That means you should be regularly sharing the information on the type of companies you work with, the type of results you get, as well as the type of companies that you don't work with.

What happens when you open up and communicate this way is you encourage high quality inbound leads. The type of leads that know you, like your point of view and your approach and feel they are a good fit for you.

When you get these types of leads, your sales conversion rate will go through the roof. There's nothing quite as satisfying as speaking to a prospect and realising that your marketing has done all the selling for you.

So look at your brand, your messaging, your content and your marketing and assess, how open are you being about who you work with and who you don't.

Many agencies we've worked with were shocked when we went through this process as they realise how confusing their external messaging actually was.

Bringing it all together

Want better sales conversions?

Put down the sales book.

Look into the 3 areas above and make small tweaks that will have huge benefits.

Becoming An Authority Agency

For those of you that don't know me, I'm Oliver Duffy-Lee and I run a company called Authority Agency.

If this article inspired you to jump start your Agency's marketing, then there are a two ways we can help:

The Agency Advantage Podcast

Every day I share my thoughts and insights I have from working in the agency world for over 10 years - each episode is always less than 10 minutes.

You can check that out?here:?https://open.spotify.com/show/4n7hdfxdRYMz0XAWd06JPQ

Agency Growth Audit

If you want to move faster, you can book an Agency Growth Audit with one of our Scale Specialists. It's a super-quick, free call where we'll help outline what's slowing your growth and show you what's possible in the next 90 days.

If that's you, can you book?here:?https://content.authorityagency.co.uk/

I'm very happy to be here on your journey to building the agency of your dreams.

If you ever need any advice, send me a DM.

To your success,

ODL