Your marketing team probably spends a lot of time generating new leads for your company, for they know that these prospects will convert to customers.
But is that happening? Are your leads converting?
Website conversion rates are typically about 2%.
For 100 visitors to the website, you may get two customers. And, to be honest, that's not bad for the conversion rate.
Despite this, many websites have conversion rates of only 0.1 to 0.2 percent. One customer requires 1000 visits to be converted.
So how do we improve the conversion rate of your business? What kind of sales strategies can you implement? After all, we all want our leads to convert.
Before we dive deep, let's cover the basics.
In today’s post, we’ll discuss:
- What is the conversion rate?
- What is a sales strategy
- Types of sales strategy
- Why is sales strategy important?
- 10 best strategies to increase sales and conversions.
What is conversion rate?
The conversion rate measures the percentage of potential and existing buyers who migrated from one step of the sales funnel to the next.
The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visits. For instance, if an eCommerce site has 200 visitors per month and makes 40 sales, the conversion rate is 40 divided by 200, or 20%.
One of the most important indications of a sales process is the conversion rate. It helps establish financial estimates and track your pipeline and team's activity.
Conversion rate can also help you make critical decisions about strategy and employee rewards.
Recommended Read: The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Sales Process + free sales plan template.
What is a sales strategy?
A sales strategy is a specific plan for positioning and marketing your product or service to prospective customers in a way that distinguishes your offering from your competitors.
Sales strategies are intended to offer your organization defined objectives and direction.
Essential information such as growth objectives, KPIs, buyer profiles, sales procedures, team structure, competitive analysis, product positioning, and particular selling strategies are often included.
Sales strategies and tactics can help you communicate goals and keep your sales reps on the same page. Yet, most approaches to increasing sales fall short as they are overly focused on your company's internal operations.
Identifying a target market, conducting competitive research, assessing trends, and deciding on sales and marketing strategies are all part of learning how to design a strategy to increase sales. It is critical to understand how to create a sales strategy since it will be the foundation of your business.
Would you like to learn some sales strategies from the sales experts and influencers?
Types of sales strategies
There are different types of sales strategies and tactics.
First, we'll discuss the types of sales strategies based on how the leads originate.
The two types of sales strategies based on lead generation are Inbound sales and Outbound sales strategies.
1. Inbound sales strategies
Inbound sales originate when a potential customer contacts your business to enquire about a product or service.
An inbound sales strategy is based on tailoring the sales process to the customer's behaviors.
It prioritizes customers' interests, pain points, requirements, and goals.
The marketing department is in charge of creating inbound sales. They should strive to provide timely information, thought leadership, and visibility to their target audiences.
Inbound sales leads are sometimes referred to as "warm leads" since the prospect has actively shown an interest in the product or service. Sales professionals are more prepared for the inbound sales interaction because they have more knowledge and context regarding the customer's requirements.
2. Outbound sales strategy
Outbound sales is the culmination of a prospecting attempt to a potential customer who has not yet indicated an interest in the business's product or service.
Outbound sales strategies are centered on the activities of the seller. It uses strategies like cold calling and cold emailing to reach many individuals with information about a company's product or service.
Outbound sales prospecting is often the work of sales or marketing team and the individual sales representative. Demand creation tasks, such as generating target contact lists, are shared with the marketing and sales leadership team.
Outbound sales leads are sometimes more challenging to obtain, but you should not underestimate them. They assist sales professionals in expanding their network and market.
The qualification process is usually streamlined because the objective has been chosen internally.
When you use an outbound sample sales strategy, contact leads rather than have them come to you, which is the primary distinction between inbound and outbound sales.
Successful B2B organizations recognize that both inbound and outbound sales strategies have advantages and disadvantages. As a result, up to 84% of them employ a combination of both to achieve their business objectives.
Be it inbound leads or outbound leads, having leads alone isn't sufficient. You'll need to convert these leads to customers using effective sales strategies and tactics as a business.
3. Sales enablement strategies
A sales enablement strategy is the technique taken by your business to equip sales teams with the resources they need to sell effectively. A sales enablement strategy is customized to the demands of your individual sales team, allowing them to target their audience and close more deals.
4. Sales growth strategies
Companies can extend their operations by implementing sales growth strategies. Growth may be attained by strategies such as opening more sites, investing in customer acquisition, or broadening a product line. A corporation's industry and target market impact its sales growth strategies.
5. Sales operations strategies
Sales operations strategies, at their core, are concerned with assisting and allowing frontline sales representatives to sell more efficiently and effectively by providing strategic guidance and eliminating friction in the sales process. Sales operations strategies involve both strategic and tactical duties.
Why is a sales strategy important?
Every business relies primarily on its sales as income generation is based on the effectiveness of its sales strategy. You can only establish this approach by developing and implementing a sales management system.
Sales management is the art of efficiently meeting sales objectives via rigorous planning and budgeting. Sales management strategies aid in bringing out the best in employees and achieving the organization's sales goals most efficiently.
An effective sales management strategy may be a game-changer for any organization in the long term.
A well-defined sales strategy enables you to:
Address all your customers' demands.
Customers' needs vary based on where they are in the sales process. While new customers may require product education, established customers may require technical support and other help. Learning how to create sales strategy templates enables you to meet the demands of your customers at every level of the sales process.
Recommended Read: 8 Must-have Sales Strategies for 2022 + free sales strategy template
Increase your sales team's ROI
Drawing sales strategies and tactics pushes you to examine what you're already doing, allowing you to better understand which sales methods are working for you and which you should quit. As a result, you will be able to optimize the ROI of your sales team.
Best strategies to increase sales and conversions.
According to a study, the average conversion rate through websites is 2.35 %. So, regardless of the industry in which you work, the average conversion rate for every 100 visits is between 2 and 3. This is very typical and indicative of a regular, custom-designed website created by professionals.
However, there is no doubting that being adequate is not sufficient in terms of performance; we must be exceptional. So, let's go through some of the best strategies to increase sales and conversions.
1. Include compelling CTAs
A CTA (Call to Action) is your marketing team's next step for your website or social media visitors to take. It is predicated on a cause-and-effect connection. Adding a subscribe button to a blog, for example, is a sort of CTA. You want the reader to subscribe to your newsletters.
This bridges the gap between your audience and your products, encouraging them to sign up.
According to one study, 90% of your visitors who read your headline will also look at a copy of your CTA. So, unless there are flaws with your website design or other technological problems, CTA is a sales strategy that you can't ignore.
2. Incorporate social proof
Did you know that 89% of people read internet reviews before making a purchase?
According to the Canvas8 survey commissioned by Trustpilot, favorable evaluations are among the top three buying factors for 49% of prospects. Your reputation and internet presence, without a doubt, influence your conversion rate, which is why you should incorporate social proof on your website.
You could include a link to g2 or any other directory page where customers have written reviews.
You should also provide testimonials and reviews on your website so people don’t have to travel to a third-party site.
Clearly, your customers had a satisfactory experience utilizing your product or service.
3. Remove unnecessary form fields
According to studies, around 74% of businesses employ online forms to generate leads. In this survey, 49.7% said their online web form generates the best conversion rates. With this, we can verify that online forms are one of the best strategies and tactics, and when paired with compelling content, your marketing team can quickly enhance conversions.
Yet, have you ever intended to fill out an online form only to be put off by the sheer number of needed fields?
Been there, done that, right?
Having too many fields can reduce your conversion rate. So, remove all unnecessary form fields, leaving only those required to achieve your purpose.
4. Focus on sales enablement
Sales enablement is crucial for ensuring that sales representatives are adequately equipped to engage customers and prospects. Determined by the size and configuration of your sales organization, you may already have a strong sales enablement strategy in place, or you may be just getting started. As a result, what "investing" in sales enablement looks like for your company will likely differ from your competitors.
5. Make use of storytelling
Storytelling is an excellent strategy for sales success by explaining and selling your item to your target audience. Creating a story for your product or service will give it purpose and help it stand out from the crowd.
Leads and customers are drawn in by stories. They're an excellent sales strategy for capturing attention and eliciting an emotional response.
Using a story to deliver your sales presentation provides structure and makes it simpler to grasp and recall.
Recommended Read: Conversation Intelligence Accelerating Storytelling Skills–Because Stories Speak Louder Than Boring PowerPoint Presentation
6. Enhance trust
Users will not convert if they do not trust your brand or encounter difficulty during the process.
So, what can you do to build trust?
You may employ various sale strategies and tactics, such as money-back guarantees, regular on-site content updates, avoiding spammy links, and making the site simple.
You can also include team profiles so your audience understands who they're working with.
7. Conduct A/B testing
It isn't always clear what works and what doesn't. When this occurs, you should run A/B testing.
Determine which headlines, colors, content, style, and CTAs are best for your target demographic. Be as creative and innovative as possible and assess which sales strategies and tactics work for your business.
For example, you may experiment with a different style of CTA or change the structure of your copy entirely.
8. Follow up with prospects
Prospect follow-up is essential to any strong sales strategy. You should contact prospects as many times as possible to elicit a response.
If the prospect does not respond with a definitive "no," keep following up with them until they are closed. If you receive a "no," you should stop following up and focus on other opportunities.
9. Respond to leads quickly
It's essential to engage your inbound leads as quickly as possible, ideally within the first 24 hours. Because modern customers are well-informed, your leads are most likely comparing your solution to your competitors.
This implies you must close them as quickly as possible to avoid losing them to a competitor.
10. Employ a sales strategy software
With all these strategies in place you now need an application that can collect, track, and nurture prospective customers or leads. All this and more is possible with The Sales Strategy Software offered by Convin.
You'll be able to gather and store lead information with CRM software instantly.
- Records sales performance and reviews.
- Stores insights such as market intelligence, customer intelligence, competitor intelligence, deal intelligence, and people intelligence.
- Calls are reviewed and scored so that you may assess your performance.
- Every sales call is tracked, recorded, and even logged in the CRM for you, resulting in transparent sales processes.
Convin can assist in developing strategies for sales success by gaining more significant insights on sales calls and interactions. Would you like to know what Convin can do for you?
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