Converting Prospects Into Customers

Help Your Customer Achieve Their Goals

Each time you make contact with a potential client, think of what you can do to help them achieve their goals. Hard selling tactics do nothing to build your prospect’s level of trust. With the Web, people have the ability to control what they view and which marketing messages they choose to engage.

To help prospects meet their goals, think of how you might alter your current core marketing message. Does it communicate how your products and services will make their lives better? Show them this is the case by sprinkling testimonials throughout your website and into your direct mail pieces.

Making sales is obviously critical to your business success, but understand that your chances of making a sale are low if you haven’t done enough preselling. Preselling warms up your prospects and places them in a buying frame of mind.

It’s Not the Features, It’s the Benefits

One big mistake is to talk about your product’s features as opposed to the benefits. When talking with prospects or creating your marketing brochures, make sure you bullet point the benefits of the product right at the very beginning. Show them how your product or service will solve their pressing problems.

Educate By Giving Things Away

The best way to attract new clients and to convert Suspects to Prospects is to give away quality content. This means not only free content on your website, but also the creation and giveaway of free downloadable guides, tip sheets, white papers and ebooks. This also includes forms for sending out free product samples or scheduling a free demo.

Some companies are afraid of giving away their expertise. But if you don’t educate your prospects by providing them with free relevant content, how can you expect them to really understand and invest in your products and services?

These days, it takes very little effort to put together a quality tip sheet or product guide using a word processing program, and then converting that document to a PDF file for download on your website. Don’t forget to add your complete contact information at the very end of your document.

I recommend you provide a small form on your website that collects the person’s name and email before allowing them to download the free report. In this way, you can build a list of interested prospects for future communications.

Develop a Compelling Guarantee

Creating a forceful guarantee can do a lot to help a prospect make that critical first purchase. Think of ways you can create an unusual guarantee that helps set you apart from your competitors.

How about offering a 2-year product guarantee instead of the 1-year guarantee your competition offers? How about double your money back if not satisfied? How about a lifetime guarantee? Even if you offer a commodity-type product, you can easily set yourself apart by creating a compelling product or service guarantee.

These 4 simple strategies have the power to greatly increase the conversion from prospect to paying customer. Start implementing them today.

Corte Swearingen has been a strategic marketer for 18 years and is the creator of the Integral Marketing System eBook. His website, Small Business Marketing Tips, provides strategy articles and product reviews to help business owners grow their profits.