Every company must sell. One way to increase your chances of winning these lucrative contracts is to have your team focus on converting leads into customers. Keeping track of conversion rates at each pipeline stage will reveal which efforts need to be prioritized to engage leads and increase pipeline conversion rates.
Here are 3 great tips to prepare your salespeople to convert your lead into a customer.
- Establish your ICP — Ideal Customer Profile
- Alignment of Sales and Marketing
- Boosting your follow-up strategy
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Establish your ICP — Ideal Customer Profile
Have you heard about Ideal Customer Profile? It is simply referring to all the qualifications a qualified lead should have. Most of these potential clients can boost your company’s ROI.
Simply look at your sales database and the best deals made so far to discover your company’s ideal customers. If you try to sell to everyone, you will waste time and money on leads that will likely never convert. Use data validation to focus on your ICP. This is essential because for every $92 spent on new customers, only $1 is spent on converting them.
With an accurate ICP, sales efforts can be directed more effectively, increasing lead to customer conversion rates.
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Alignment of Sales and Marketing
Your marketing and sales teams share a common goal of increasing revenue, so keeping them in sync is important. It is uncommon for organizations to manage both areas concurrently.
As a result, many conflicts arise. 25% of companies say their sales and marketing are “misaligned” or “rarely aligned”. Marketing usually complains that sales fail to convert generated leads, while sales defends that potential customers either don’t arrive or aren’t good prospects. This is not good for the company.
If this is you, there are ways to combine both processes to generate more qualified leads. These three points aim to improve team communication:
- Firstly, you can’t combine forces and maximize success if their KPIs (marketing qualified leads (MQL) and sales qualified leads (SQL) aren’t defined clearly and equally. So, you need to clearly define and establish the KPIs
- Second, both teams should meet weekly to discuss the results of their efforts and how to improve. We suggest two weekly meetings. One at the start of the week, where managers present their plans for the coming days. And one at the end of the week to review and discuss the results of these efforts.
- Finally, using the same tool helps establish global knowledge of the two areas’ activities. Customers and prospects can be followed up on using a variety of software. Companies frequently use a customer relationship management system (CRM) to keep all data current. The platform will store potential customers’ characteristics, allowing for easy and quick access. A CRM increases decision-making power and unity by storing relevant data.
Following this routine increases the likelihood of both areas being well-aligned in a short time, increasing the conversion of leads into customers.
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Boosting your follow-up strategy
Any negotiation needs a follow-up sales strategy. After all, the lead will form a relationship with your company through follow-up.
Because it is so vital to your sales process, you must give it special attention. However, 90% of sales reps give up after the third contact.
Only 2% of leads close after the first contact, according to studies. In fact, only 10% of salespeople complete the entire process of following up.
By giving up after a few unanswered attempts, your company may miss out on many good deals.
So a well-structured sales cadence can help you qualify more leads and reach more opportunities.
In Summary
Measuring conversion rates helps you determine the best time to approach potential hot leads. Your pipeline will show you where your leads are stuck and when to contact them. With the best resources available, the teams involved must focus their attention and commitment.