How to get more leads to turn into customers [5 tips for increasing your conversion rate]

The growth of any B2B business depends on how many leads they can generate. The pandemic of 2020 shook up the way in which most businesses generated leads, including the shift from physical interaction to a more digital outreach. In this article, we will look at 5 ways you can increase your conversion rate.

1. Map out your current sales funnel

The first thing you need to do is step back and analyze what your current sales funnel looks like. While many business owners think they don’t have a sales funnel, in reality they do. Here are some of the questions you need to ask:

• What do I do when a prospect reaches out to me?
• How am I approaching new leads?
• Is there a strategy in place for follow-ups?
• Do I have a sales team with an outbound strategy? What do they pitch?
• Is there an inbound strategy to nurture leads from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel?

You probably don’t have all the answers. Your current sales funnel might just be addressing the future prospects and not repeat customers. You might not have a good plan in place to nurture customers through their journey. What you need to do is sit down with your sales and marketing teams and map out the journey your customers take. Think of the following three customer personas when mapping the sales funnel:

Prospects

These are individuals just entering the top of the funnel, who might not yet be ready to make a decision but are interested in the services or products you offer. Most of the visitors coming to your website will be in this category. They are looking around and looking for the best firm to hire.

New customers

New customers have made the decision to go ahead with your service and are looking to hire you. For them, it is important that the conversion process is swift and easy. The easier the process, the higher the chances of converting them.??

Existing/Repeat Customers

Existing or repeat customers are coming back because they are happy with your service. It is essential to reward them for their loyalty as they can also serve as your brand ambassadors. There is no better impact in business than positive word of mouth from a happy customer.

2. Evaluate your current lead generation efforts

Once you’ve got an idea of your sales funnel, the next thing you need to do is look at how you’re targeting these different customer segments. A common mistake businesses make is they market themselves in the same way to everyone. This “one size fits all” strategy means many businesses end up selling the wrong product to the wrong customers at the wrong time.?

So, how do you counter this? For an effective lead generation strategy, it is essential that you define clear buyer personas and categorize leads based on their activities. You need to work closely with your sales and marketing teams. Try to identify the relevance of your sales pitch to what the customers are looking for. Understanding your customer and the stage in their journey is essential to your business growth.

Qualify your leads

There are generally two types of leads - a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). An MQL, as the name suggests, is a more top-funnel conversion, where someone takes an action that might lead to further interest. This can be something like downloading a whitepaper, registering for a webinar, or subscribing to a mailing list. An SQL on the other hand, is more on the intent and decision-making stage. These leads take actions like requesting free consultation or signing up for a trial period. They both represent different stages in the buying cycle. A potential MQL will not be ready to convert to an SQL right away.

Marketing and Sales Alignment

A good alignment in your marketing and sales teams is paramount. Marketing without a sales element can leave your communication directionless. On the other hand, a Sales strategy without effective marketing will mean your pitch will end up being too direct and sometimes even make you sound desperate. You need to look at how you can nurture your leads while also providing them the right conversion points to move to the next stage of their journey. More on this in the next tip.

3. Create a lead nurturing strategy

It is great to be getting inbound leads. However, you will need to have a plan in place to actually convert them into customers. This is where your focus needs to be on building a strong, almost personal relationship with the prospects at every stage of the buying funnel, to the point that they are ready to convert. In fact, nurturing continues post-purchase, in the form of “delighting” the customer with added value and exceptional customer care.?

Successful lead nurturing includes elements like timely follow-ups, as well as personalized communication. The more personalization you can add to your communication, the better. Most prospects will not be ready to convert right away. They will need time to process all the information you’re throwing at them and you will need to create a bond of trust.

You can find out more about Lead Nurturing in this fantastic article by Marketo.

4. Sales enablement

The focus of any sales team is conversion. They are not marketing experts. However, customers like to interact with you through your marketing. Therefore, you need sales enablement , which means providing your sales team with the resources they need to convert better and close more deals.

What this means is that your marketing department will provide the sales team with marketing resources like product guides, videos, and other material to help them sell more effectively. At the end of the day, it’s all about who better sells their story. Both of these areas of your business need to work very closely in understanding what works.

5. Use a well-structured CRM system

All of the above seems a little too much to implement? Not to worry! With a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system in place, you can streamline all of these processes and become much more efficient. A CRM system will help you with all of the points discussed above.?

It will help you map out your sales funnel, understand the customer personas, create lead magnets for your lead generation campaigns, do A/B testing to see what format of communication works, have email marketing strategies to nurture your leads and bring them further down the funnel and finally get them over the line.?

And it doesn’t stop there. With reporting and analytics within your CRM system, you’re able to identify the exact steps a customer is taking to convert as well as the areas that are seeing the most drop-offs. The beauty of digital is that you can connect all the dots and track results in real-time, with real data and not assumptions.?

Some of the leading CRM systems include:

• Hubspot
• Pipedrive
• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Zoho CRM
• Zendesk Sell
• Freshworks

Conclusion

Making sales is not magic - it’s science. And the answer lies in the details available to you through analytics. With a strong CRM system in place, you can merge your sales efforts with your sales pitches for an effective strategy to target customers from the top to the bottom funnels.

At LeadHQ, we specialize in helping B2B clients analyze, optimize, and streamline their sales process using Hubspot CRM. Hubspot offers all the tools you need to greatly enhance the effectiveness of your sales process.

Interested to learn more about how you can optimize your sales process to grow your business' profitability? Just send me a message or visit https://leadhq.io/ .