How to Turn Your Business’ Leads Into Sales

Lead creation is fundamental to your business’ success, but you need to establish strategies to convert your leads into solid sales. Here are seven things that you can do for your sales team to help them turn more leads into sales.

Give Your Team Extensive Training About Your Business’ Products and Services

Your sales team needs to have training that goes above and beyond a cursory orientation that is limited to a brief review during someone’s first day on the job. People joining your team may have some general knowledge and experience with the types of products or services that your business offers, but thorough formal training will be necessary in virtually every type of setting. Your team’s training should give them a strong command of your business’ individual products or services and policies. They need to be able to answer customers’ questions thoroughly and accurately. If a customer asks a question about specific details and a team member doesn’t know the answer, he or she may very well lose the sale. Responses to a question need to project confidence. Otherwise, a customer can’t feel very confident about the transaction. Role playing can be a good way to verify individual team members’ knowledge. Give staff the opportunity to challenge one another while having some fun by role playing with tough questions.

Offer Ongoing Training to Help Your Team Develop Their Sales Skills

In addition to training your team about what is unique to your sales process, providing ongoing training programs geared towards building general sales skills can help individuals to reach their full potential in sales roles. Negotiations training can equip your team with strategies aimed at maintaining successful dialogs and steering customers’ decision making in the right direction. They’ll learn active listening skills that will enable them to probe customers’ needs and concerns to address them proactively, and they’ll be better able to effectively respond when customers express hesitation during closing. Training your team members to become better negotiators can build your team’s confidence and lead to more positive customer interactions.

Use a Good Customer Relationship Management Program to Keep Outreach Efforts Organized

A system that is optimized to manage leads is essential to generating a high-volume ratio of leads to sales. A good CRM system promotes efficient use of staff time, allows staff to apply their efforts uniformly to individual leads without unnecessary additional work, and facilitates easy contacts and follow-up. Investing in an advanced CRM platform can be somewhat expensive depending on your business’ needs, but the advantages will likely justify the investment if you use a system to the full measure of its capabilities. Don’t spring for extra services or features if your team isn’t really going to be using them. To evaluate a system’s actual worth, consider the utility of the features that your team truly does need and use. Try breaking down the cost by individual team members, and then break it down even further by closing volume.

Analyze Your Data to Identify What Works Best for You

Your CRM program may be one of the best ways to gauge what tactics working effectively for your sales teams and which ones are missing the mark. Data metrics on the number and overall value of sales derived from different outreach efforts can help you make informed decisions on how you can guide your sales process in a way that produces the greatest probability of success.

Leave Room for Deals in Deal-Making

Price points that never change have some measure of appeal. You can always be certain about the consistency of pricing, and you can boast about low pricing that doesn’t need any dressing down. In most sales fields, however, consumers want to believe that they’re getting a deal when they make a purchase. Even if a price is set particularly low in comparison to that of competitors, some deal seekers may simply be unwilling to pull the trigger if they feel like they’re paying full price. Explore the possibility of leaving room in your pricing formula to offer reductions. Additionally, you might consider offering promotional sales that have a short window of opportunity. Advertising a promotion is a good way to stay in touch with leads via email or other outreach efforts.

Create an Outstanding Website

Many prospective customers will start making up their minds about a sale before speaking with any of your team members. It’s essential for your website to be functional and informative. You need it to be easy to navigate, and individual pages absolutely have to load quickly. If people spend too long waiting for a page to load, they may lose interest and move on to a competitor’s site. Slow load times may also create the impression that your site or even your entire business isn’t well managed. People need to find their way around your site easily and find the information that they’re looking for. If you’re not happy with your current site or it’s been a while since you’ve worked on improving it, partner with a consultant who can help you take it to new heights.

Distinguish Yourself From Your Competitors

Slamming your competitors won’t really make a positive impression on your customers, but you need to find a way to set your business apart. Describe the advantages of working with your company. Use a compelling narrative strategy to share your company’s origin story and inspire your workforce to talk passionately about your business’ mission. Making your business stand out from the rest can go a long way towards getting people to want to work with you.

Ultimately, giving your staff the tools that they need to do their best possible work will take some time and investment. However, the results that you can draw from your efforts will be well worth it. Advanced training for your sales team, using key technological tools, and maintaining a focus on shaping positive customer experiences will turn more of your business’ leads into sales.