8 Top Tips to Increase Sales Conversion

How can you increase your sales conversion? Lots of people spend time and money on lead generation, they get very excited when they see so many leads coming into their business, but they forget that it's conversion that drives the cash, drives the revenue. So it's prudent, certainly in my opinion, to be spending as much time, if not more time, on the conversion end of your commercial engine. So I'm going to give you eight tips today. The best eight tactics that I've used to increase sales conversion in my businesses. 

So the first one is, employ people who are absolutely passionate about the product and service that you sell.

Sounds simple, but a lot of people make this mistake, and I believe that you can teach people features and attributes, you can teach them even how to sell, or the process of selling, but you can't teach someone how they show up, how enthusiastic they are. So, always get people who really want to be there. And there's an old saying that I believe in, and it is how you do anything, is how you do everything, and in sales, that is very, very true. So that's number one. 

Number two is, predictability comes from practice. So, of course, you've got a sales script. You've got a set of techniques, tools, statements, qualifications, questions that your team uses because everyone's got that right? I'm joking!

Most people don't have a script, they wing it. They get on a call with a prospect and they try and engage in a conversation, but then without having a script or a way of sequencing the conversation, it can go anywhere. Now the best way to get something, if you haven't got something, is either yourself or get your best salesperson to record themselves giving a pitch.

And then what can happen is you can get that transcribed and you can iterate from there, but you've got to have a script and you've got to practice that script because that's the only way that you can control the flow of the conversation and help the prospect get to the conclusion, the natural conclusion that you want them to get to.

Number three is, get an upfront agreement. Now, this is sometimes called qualification, but what you want to do here is you want to make sure that the prospect really wants to continue. Lots of people are fearful of saying no and what they'll do is they'll hedge, they'll go, "yeah, maybe later, maybe tomorrow".

And they'll kind of kick the can down the road if you know that expression. And sometimes as a salesperson, you hold onto these opportunities, in the miraculous hope that someone's going to say "yes, yes I want your product or service". Now what tends to happen is that never happens. And you spend energy, time, sometimes money holding onto that opportunity.

It's much better to qualify out. So all this simply is, is get a clear decision, a yes or a no. And what I often do is a test that yes and say, "are you really sure? Come back in 24 hours and tell me that it's a HELL YES.” Now there’s a bit of a risk in that, because once you get someone to go away, they may never come back.

But what I find is, if someone does come back from that, then they become a better customer and someone who stays with you for a longer period of time afterwards, and that's certainly a process that I use. 

Number four is always calibrate and iterate your offer, your product offer. So you can test price, you can test the way you pitch it. You can test features and benefits. You can test the terms of how you're selling. It's quite often I've found that version one of something is not the one that ends up being the thing that really gets prospects excited. It ends up being version seven for me strangely, and none of its failure. It's all learning. It's all part of the process. But the more that you can continuously iterate, continuously improve, the higher those conversion rates are going to go up. 

Number five is, introduce scarcity and social proof. Now, if you haven't read the book Influence and Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, I suggest you go and get it.

It's the best book I've ever read on selling, and two of his main concepts are this idea of scarcity, which is the idea that there isn't much left. So it could be that there's only one product in the warehouse and you've got this competition for people getting it, or you certainly say that to the people, you say, listen we haven't got much left, there's 10 left, there's 5 left,  if you want it, I would take action quickly. The other thing is, you might only have capacity to work with a client if you're a service business for a certain number of weeks before the end of the year. So you might say, I can only take on 3 more clients between now and Christmas.

Now you've got to do this with authenticity. I would never ever say, lie about this. It's a very powerful technique, but if someone thinks they're going to miss out because there isn't much left, then they are much more inspired to take action. Similarly, with social proof, it's the concept of testimonials or case studies, proving to your prospect that what you do works. Now a lot of the time when people are making a decision, particularly if it's a high level of investment or high cost for them, there can be high risk, certainly psychologically, associated with that. So you want people to be able to get through that process quickly, if you can show that, a great example is a video or anything like that is the best way to do this. It helps again quicken up that sales process and increases conversion.

Number six similarly to the last two is about fear of loss. And this is more about how you again, drive action quickly. So one of the best ways is to offer a bonus, for example, that is only available for a certain amount of time or offer a pricing incentive. So if someone feels that they're going to miss out if they don't take action quickly, then that can also drive conversion rates up. I've done this with bonuses, with any of the training I've done beforehand. I've offered price incentives almost as a reward for people to take action quickly. And you'd be surprised how that gives you much more predictability in terms of how you can control that whole conversation and the conversion from that.

Number seven, get better sales training for your team. Now, this is an obvious one, but what I want to say here is practice, practice, practice. The best type of sales training is behavioural based sales coaching, where someone can practice in front of someone and get feedback on their technique.

And as Michael Jordan once said, you get paid in public, or you get rewarded in public, for the hours that you put in in practice. So it's a huge thing. Don't just leave it to chance. You're going to get people who are naturally good at this, and you get other people who find it challenging, but you've got to be able to invest in your people and improve them, make them better.

Particularly, as I said, at point one if they're passionate about you, your product, your service.

And the last one today is, remember a lot of selling happens before the sale actually happens. So get really good, really intentional with refining your pre-selling system. So this is your personal brand, your content marketing, how you use social media, it's getting someone, your prospect, to make the decision in their mind before they engage in a conversation with you. You'd be surprised with the content that I put out there sometimes from my podcast, Scale Up Your Business and all those sort of things, the number of times that people call me up and they've listened to me for hours, helping them, educating them on business,  on scale up or how they can build their empire, and then they reach out and they want some help. And once they reach out, in their mind, they've already made the decision. All they're doing is then validating that themselves. So a lot of the best conversion happens if you want to get to those really high conversion rates, from the stuff that happens, as I said before you even have that initial conversation.

So that's it today. My top tips on increasing sales conversion in your company. I hope they help you.

Nick Bradley

Scale Up Your Business: suybacademy.com

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