5 ways to improve your sales conversion rates
What every small business owner needs to know to close more deals
Leads are great, but what we really need are customers. Understanding your sales conversion rate will help you turn more leads into sales. By focussing on sales conversion rates, you’ll start directing time and money to the marketing efforts that lead to a better return on investment (ROI).
Why are conversion rates important?
Sales conversion rates tell you how effectively your sales team and marketing efforts are turning leads into sales. You need to know if where you’re investing your time is working.
Whether you’re selling a product or service, thinking strategically about sales opportunities not only helps you win more business but will also reduce inefficiencies in your workflow. The phrase ‘work smarter, not harder’ applies to your sales and marketing efforts too. So let’s look at what you need to know to improve your sales conversion rates.
How to improve your sales conversion rate
1. Measure conversions holistically
Instead of using a traditional cost per sale or marketing to sales conversion rate, a better way is to look at each conversion holistically. You’ll learn more by measuring the entire customer acquisition rather than a small segment of the process.
For example, an average conversion from a standard landing page to a lead is 2.35%. But this is just the beginning of the customer acquisition. If you take these leads and add a valuable conversation (7 minutes or more) with half of them, you’ll likely convert half of those you talk to. If you’re selling in a professional services environment, after a minimum of three months, a more holistic conversion rate emerges – a 15% win rate is good, and 25% is great.
Using a holistic approach means looking at converting a customer from start to finish.
Marketing to the first contact
First contact to appointment (virtual, phone or in-person)
Appointment to proposal
Proposal to sale
Sale to one-year trading (don’t forget to look at lifetime revenue)
2. Ensure you’re targeting the right audience
If your sales conversion rates are low, you might be talking to the wrong people. It’s important to specifically target potential customers who need your services. But how do you know if you’re targeting the right people?
Gathering real and honest feedback through your sales team will give you insight into what customers you should focus on. We recently worked with a business that had hundreds of leads, and the owners struggled to keep up. Their conversion rate was low because of the slow follow-up times and because the leads didn’t match their ideal client criteria.
Multiple channels
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3. Use a variety of communication channels
As in all marketing, it’s important to understand how your customers want to engage with you. There’s no shortage of ways to communicate, but each person has a preferred method of communication. Younger generations favour text and messenger apps. A busy tradesperson who is away from a computer all day may prefer voicemail and text messaging.
Don’t forget about the telephone. Although digital marketing is what most businesses use these days, the phone is still a viable sales tool. So much can get lost in translation if you rely heavily on texts and emails or marketing data alone. Plus, there’s a powerful human connection when communicating one-on-one using our voice.
When in doubt, ask leads what form of communication they prefer, or test different channels and compare.
4. Ask qualifying questions
Don’t make assumptions. Every lead you get through your website, may or may not be, a marketing qualified lead (MQL). Not every lead will match your ideal customer profile. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Before you discount any leads who don’t fall into your ideal customer criteria, talk to them anyway. They may think they need one thing, but really, they need another.
Remember every call doesn’t need to be a scheduled 30-minute zoom meeting. Sometimes it can take just a few minutes to establish where someone is truly at in the buying cycle.
For example, marketing professionals often get requests that don’t match their list of services. A lead may be asking for a website but what they really need is a strategic plan. If you’re a strategic marketer, this is your ideal client. You never know what a potential customer really needs until you talk to them.
If people are coming to you, they’re coming for a reason. But if you continue to attract leads that don’t match, look at adjusting your marketing strategy or ask more specific qualifying questions earlier.
5. Think long term
A common approach to sales is assuming a campaign this week will lead to sales next week. Depending on your industry and the cost of your services, the sales cycle might be longer than you expect. Some industries need a month to convert a customer, while others need 18 months, especially those in the service industry.
Peel back layers…
Let’s look at the layers of sales conversion. Most small businesses only get to the first two layers and are content with that, but the third layer is where the magic happens. The third layer shifts from a reactive sales approach to applying proactive sales techniques.
According to HubSpot sales statistics, 60% of customers say no four times before they say yes. A staggering 48% of salespeople never follow up (not even once).
First layer: Leads from referrals and word of mouth
Second layer: Inbound leads from
Contact us page
Paid ads
Other marketing
Third layer: Outbound sales
Using existing database
Revisiting cold or old leads
Nurturing inbound leads
Sourcing ideal client lists
Leveraging business partners
Ready to convert more sales?
Turning your marketing efforts into a lead and then into a customer takes time. Marketing and sales are one and the same. They’re both guiding potential customers on a purchasing journey. Be patient with the process and be ready to take on outbound activities to fully engage with potential customers. If you need help, outsourcing lead management is an option.
If you’d like to listen to a podcast or have questions about converting leads into sales, contact us.
About the author
Kirsten Karbowiak is the founder of BDM by the hour. BDM by the hour, partners with small business owners who need sales support but aren’t ready to take on a full sales staff. Interested in reading more here about outsourcing sales?