“I’m stuck on conversion from prospects into sales thus doing badly on my targets.” I was asked this question in a webinar I was hosted on and want to address it here today. Why you struggle to convert prospects into customers. Depending on the context, there are, of course, many reasons why you are struggling with conversion. I’ll address three common mistakes that may be killing your conversion rates.
Are your prospects actually suspects?
Yes, that’s the starting point. You are likely operating on a wrong premise. A prospect is a potential customer. More accurately it is one who is ready, willing and able to buy (or decide). If you have not qualified your prospect, they are still a suspect. At the extreme a suspect is any random person or name you pick from the air. If you’ve sold long enough, you know that sales reports are (unfortunately) full of suspects, not prospects.
If I am selling motor vehicle insurance, log book loans or membership for car owners then drivers are suspects, as they are not necessarily car owners. A cold call to them asking if they own a vehicle qualifies (or disqualifies) them as a prospect. For insurance, if you only cover cars 8 years and ‘younger’; then car owners with 8+ year old cars are suspects and need to be disqualified.
If I am selling a salary account, then non-salaried people are suspects. So, too, salaried persons whose gross salary is not the 80,000 shillings per month it takes to qualify for the account. If you have not qualified your prospects then you will struggle with conversion. Qualifying lets you identify prospects and convert them to sales more easily.
You’re talking to the wrong decision maker
You will also struggle to convert if you are not talking to a decision maker in the case of a B2B sale, whose success is significantly higher with a high entry level. A business owner in the IT space once shared this of one of his salespersons: “The challenge with Aisha is that she has refused to grow beyond a few hundreds of thousands to millions, even after I have shown and encouraged her. Her entry level to any organization is low and remans there. In the last sale to Central Bank, I discovered too late that she had sent the proposal to, and was following up with, the receptionist. That was her prospect.“
If you are not speaking to the right decision-maker, your conversion rate will suffer.
You are flying blind as you convert prospects into customers
“Huku ni kubaya, boss” a friend in a senior sales leadership position shared. His job was on the line. With the shrinking economy and coming from the backdrop of the ‘Corona-economy’, their multinational had closed their operations in several countries, folding them into other hubs. For instance, South Africa, hitherto an independent hub was shrunk to a staff member without a physical office and now reporting into the East Africa hub. With such pressure on and in an institution, Sales tends to come under closer scrutiny. My friend was now under the microscope, and hence his concern, which directly translated is, “Things are thick.” He continued to explain. “HQ is questioning our conversion rate. That it’s too low. That, we only convert 30% of our leads and that, that is unacceptable. Do you have comparable industry figures I can use to back myself up?” I didn’t.
Are you measuring it for perspective?
But I pointed out something crucial: looked at as 30%, the figure seemed low. However, reframed as a ratio it’s pretty impressive and gives it perspective. 30% translates to 1 in every 3 prospects converting to customers. A bulb went off in his head and he ran with that. That was a year ago and he still has a job. Two lessons apply here that help address: “I’m stuck on conversion from prospects into sales thus doing badly on my targets.” What data informs this? If you are converting 1 in 6 and yet your industry is 1 in 10, then you’re outperforming the industry. You don’t have a low, but record-beating conversion ratio and you are just being unnecessarily hard on yourself.
You make a beeline for a kiss without building chemistry
If the prospect is a referral, and you went straight to closing, you will struggle with conversion. This is because that is like a man, introduced to a lady, and going straight for a kiss. “Creep”, I picture her telling her girlfriend about the cringy experience. A referral is a prospect—nothing more. A referral does not exempt you from moving prospects through the steps preceding closing, in the sales cycle. In fact, this is what converting prospects means.
To increase your chances of conversion, you will still need to engage the referral (prospect) via interviewing, demonstrating, validating and negotiating. In essence ‘create chemistry before the kiss’. If you assumed they’ll buy because, after all, the person referring you was emphatic when he said, “Please make sure you call Zainab – she really wants to buy. Tell her I referred you.” And he even followed up thirty minutes later, urgency in his voice, with, “Have you called?” Surely, you thought, I just need to show Zainab where to sign. And when you did, Zainab responded with the professional equivalent of “Creep!” and you kissed the conversion, bye-bye.
How do you convert prospects to customers? Are you guilty of these mistakes?
Struggling with conversions often comes down to four key mistakes: engaging suspects instead of qualified prospects, talking to the wrong decision-makers, misjudging performance due to lack of data, and rushing referrals without following the sales process. By correcting these, you can improve your conversion rates and consistently hit your targets.
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