Grow Your Business In 5 Days

- Video Training Course - Video #10

TUTORIAL #10: THE SALES CONVERSION SYSTEM

Have A System For Converting Enquiries Into Customers

Hello and welcome to ‘Grow Your Business In 5 Days’.

Tutorials 5-9 focused on how to generate a constant stream of enquiries from your marketing activities. Now that you know how to do that, you now need to convert as many of them as you can into paying customers. Actually it’s more than that – you want customers paying the right price or fee.

Now we know that most businesses convert a higher percentage of referrals into customers than they do non referral enquiries. Nevertheless both types of enquiry can see major increases in conversion rates, by simply applying a ‘Sales Conversion System’ to your business. This means that as soon as an enquiry comes in, regardless of whether you have an online or offline business, you have a system in place which converts as many enquiries as possible into good-quality customers.

Concentrating more on converting enquiries into customers, clients and patients will ensure two things...

1. You’ll rapidly transform the business
2. You’ll maximise the investment the business makes on ALL its marketing activities

The good news is that putting in place a system to convert more enquiries into customers costs very little (if anything at all) and the results are instant! Without doubt it is one of the biggest leverage points you have in your business right now.

So what is a Sales Conversion System?

In simple terms a sales conversion system is a process used to ensure the business generates more customers from the number of enquiries generated. It starts the moment the enquiry is received, right through to the point when that enquiry becomes a customer.

One of the HUGE hidden benefits of a successful system is that the process of converting enquiries is driven by the system, rather than the individual – which means if you conduct face-to-face meetings or telephone meetings, anyone (with the right experience in the business) can use the system to great effect.

Here’s a simple diagram explaining why you need a sales conversion system…

What this chart shows is that the prospect must reach a certain level of interest before they are prepared to say “Yes” and buy from you. Therefore, what you need to do is increase the prospects interest each time the business makes contact with them. A contact can be a meeting, a letter, a phone call, an e-mail, a fax – or any way in which you make contact with prospects. Research has shown that on average it takes 7 positive contacts – we call this ‘The Rule of 7’, before the prospect says, “Yes”.

A sales conversion system should therefore automatically cater for these contacts, which in turn will increase the chances of getting a positive result with the vast majority of prospects. Your sales conversion system should focus on each stage and as a result many more enquiries will turn into customers. … and there’s one more important piece of the jigsaw to consider. We call it the ‘Follow-Up Ladder’.

You see, Follow-Up is not practised by many businesses. Think about it, how many positive contacts do you have at the moment from the enquiry to the sale? This means those that follow up correctly will always gain more customers. To reinforce this point further, I think you’ll find these research results very interesting…

•             A recent study conducted by Performark (a research company in the USA) showed how few companies follow up properly or even at all.

They found that out of 10,000 advertising enquiries – 22% never received the information they requested, 45% received the information more than 65 days after their request, for 12% it took more than 120 days to receive their information, and 87% were never contacted by a sales representative.

•             A recent study by Thomas Publishing Company showed that most salespeople give up too early, regardless of the industry.

According to the study, 80% of sales to business are made on the fifth sales call, but only 10% of salespeople call more than three times.

•             And finally, another recent study this time conducted by Tom Rayfield, a UK direct marketing specialist, also showed that companies are very poor at follow-up. Taking 200 randomly selected advertisers, he replied to them all to measure follow-up responses. To his amazement, the average time taken for people to reply to him was eight days, and 17 companies (8.5%) didn’t even bother to reply!

What you need to do is make a positive impression on the prospect at each contact. By doing this, you speed up the sales cycle and keep more prospects in it – resulting in more sales. If one of your contacts has a less than positive impact on your prospect, their interest drops, making it harder for you to acquire them as a customer. This is a basic but very important tactic for you to apply and understand. This diagram shows how it all fits together…

Notice that after the third contact a massive 79.8% of people give up. And by the fifth contact almost 90% have stopped following up. Therefore it stands to reason that just by following up consistently and with 7 or more positive contacts you win on two fronts. Firstly, there is less competition and secondly people buy more often once you reach 7 or more contacts.

Okay, so let’s explore why a sales conversion system is so powerful, and why your business must have one...

Let’s just take this hypothetical situation…

Let’s say, at the moment, your business converts 20% of enquiries into customers. The average sale is $1,000, and 10 enquiries are generated each month. Look at the following table and see the effect a sales conversion system can have on the business in just 12 months:

Improving the sales conversion rate from 20% to 30% results in a growth of 50%. Doubling the sales conversion rate from 20% - 40% results in a 100% growth in new business. That’s why a sales conversion process is so powerful and so important. By the way, if you think it’s difficult to improve the conversion from 20% to 40%, or 30% to 60%, or more – it isn’t! And remember, improving the sales conversion rate is achieved with very little, if any extra cost. And that’s the beauty of it!

So putting in a sales conversion system gives you real leverage. You don’t need any fancy software or any complicated system. You just need to plan each contact so the prospect gets wowed each time. You see, because so few businesses really look at the detail of these points of contact, it’s easy to score big against them, especially when you’re in competition with them. The likelihood that they have also thought carefully about these contact points is remote – so you win and you win big. It’s these points of contact and how well you administer them that set apart the good from the great. More importantly, when you look to increase your prices, this makes a big difference to your conversion.

So a sales conversion system will give you the ability to convert more enquiries into customers and at the right price, all with zero or very little additional cost. Plus, there are a number of what we call ‘sales conversion strategies’ that really help to convert the prospect. For example, guarantees and social proof are excellent ‘sales converters’ that cost nothing to apply. Ultimately, you need to take a strategic view of your sales process from the moment the enquiry is generated to getting the sale.

The likelihood is you’re doing things now the way you’ve always done them with very little thought to ‘what would be best’. There will be much room for improvement.

The easiest way to create your sales conversion system is to take a large blank sheet of paper and draw a horizontal line from the far left to the far right of the paper. On the far left of the line write ‘Enquiry generated’ and on the far right of the line write ‘New Customer’. Now what you need to do is fill in the space in between these two points with at least 7 points of contact. It’s useful at this point to also review tutorial 4 on ‘Moments Of Truth’. You can apply the same approach to your points of contact in your sales conversion system as you should have done with the points of contact with your customers.

The more ‘wows’ you can include in your sales conversion system – the better.

One thing I recommend is that you include as part of your system a ‘Surprise Package’. Dan Kennedy the great US marketing strategist calls this a ‘Shock and Awe Package’. Ultimately, your package should include information that makes the prospect think, ‘wow I’d be an idiot not to use this company’. Include things like videos, testimonials, special reports, and your book if you have one, with a covering letter that reinforces the next part of the system. For example, if it’s a meeting, make sure the letter conveys how much you’re looking forward to meeting them and ask them to review the materials before you meet.

Make sure you challenge the status quo. Just because you’ve always done things this way, doesn’t mean you can’t get much better results when you think more strategically about your sales process. I guarantee you’ll get far better results with this approach. That’s the sort of leverage any business would love – and you can get it instantly once you join the BGS Vault. (Note, as a client you can free access to the vault by contacting the office). We take you through each step in precise step-by-step detail, so in no time you’ll have your own amazingly powerful sales conversion system in place. It really is that simple.

So let’s recap...

Here are the key learning points from this tutorial...

1.            First... to convert referral and non-referral enquiries at a high level and at the right price it is imperative you use a sales conversion system – a series of strategically planned steps created to make getting the sale more of a foregone conclusion.

2.            Second... to take advantage of the ‘Rule Of 7’ you should try and build in 7 or more positive contacts as part of your sales conversion system.

3.            And third... you can invest thousands creating and testing your own sales conversion system, or you can join the BGS Vault and get the proven sales conversion strategies that will transform your business. For more details, simply contact our office.

Now please DOWNLOAD the ‘One Page Action Plan’ that accompanies this tutorial and start putting in place your powerful sales conversion system. Thank you for watching.

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