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How do you increase a sales conversion rate?
I am an inside sales person for a large software company, and part of my job is to pre-qualify leads that come in from our lead generation channels. I'm curious to know what I can do to increase the conversion of those leads to sales. I've been struggling for a few months and have tried switching up my pitch. A promotion depends on my ability to increase my sales conversion rate. Any insight? Thanks.
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4 Answers
Ben:
The issue with trying to pre-qualify any lead that comes in from a lead generation program is that most of the people you speak to are just not ready to be pre-qualified. In a study that was done by MarketingSherpa they found that 70% of all first responder leads are not in what they called "buy" mode. However there is still a wide spread practice that has leads come in and then immediately given a call to determine if they should be sent to sales. In fact less than 15% will be ready to speak to sales.
I would recommend developing a lead management process that includes nurturing and as part of that lead nurturing, include some human interaction via the telephone. The statistics on leads that have been nurtured are pretty staggering (2x the response rate, 47% higher order value) over non-nurtured leads because the prospect has had time to develop a relationship with your company.
While taking some sales training and brushing up on your pitch may provide a slight improvement and are always good for your sales career, this is really about what is best for the buyer and what will get them to buy from your company.
Carlos Hidalgo
The Annuitas Group
www.annuitasgroup.com
Ben,
Are you taking the time to fully understand who your prospect is, where they stand in the market place, who their competition is, what their biggest challenges are, and how your product/service can help them overcome those challenges?
By doing a bit more "up front" research on the customer and tailoring your pitch to suit their unique circumstance, you become more of a consultant and less of salesperson, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will want to continue to the next stage of the sales cycle with you.
I recommend the Miller-Heimann series of books/training courses on Consultative Selling and Large Account Management to learn more about his technique.
Hope that helps,
Sandy Gans
Sales & Marketing Consultant
sandygans@gmail.com
Ben, rarely is the contact who takes the action to create the lead the person with whom you wish to launch the qualification/sales process. Rather than prequalify a low level contact, view the lead as a door to the account.
You know what your Ideal Customer Profile looks like and you know the buyer personas that you should be targeting. View the lead as the door through which you can walk to begin the process of collecting information that will allow you to have a meaningful conversation with the right buyer. Too many organizations view the "contact" as the lead as opposed to the "company".
Open the door, get proactive and work towards having a meaningful conversation with the right person at what appears to be the right time. Those who sit and wait are those who are still waiting.... Hope this helps.
I like the idea of lead scoring over lead qualifying. With lead qualifying, there is typically a simple "yes" or "no" whether the lead is qualified. Non-qualified leads are bulked together or dropped completely while qualified leads are assigned to the sales team. With lead scoring, you prioritize your leads and assign them to different processes accordingly. Now, you can give your sales team the top scoring leads and apply various processes (allowing for A/B testing, segmentation, etc.) to the lesser scores.
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