While some sales organizations have a laser focus on their target audience, turning their leads into customers with ease, others may struggle to simply get a response after the first point of contact. In converting leads, sales managers not only need to concentrate on whether their products or services are effectively addressing the pain points of the consumer, but also whether their team is actively communicating these potential consumers. Rather than look at problems with lead conversion simply as issues with the customer, managers need to seek out where things go wrong with their sales team.
Here are signs that you have internal obstructions to lead conversion and what to do about this:
Customers don’t contact you back
While good salespeople will often try several times to contact a potential customer – and through a variety of channels – they might not always find success at the other end of the phone line or inbox. To ensure sales staff are able to connect with customers and begin to build relationships, managers should consider how they are approaching leads.
According to Inc. Magazine, salespeople who come off as too pushy with their sales message or overwhelm their leads with pitches may not be creating that perfect balance between cultivating a relationship and making sure to maintain contact. Salespeople could consider keeping track of when they have called or emailed leads and make sure that they avoid seeming too in-your-face about making the sale and make sure leads are open to what they are trying to sell them.
You’ve spending more on sales, but aren’t seeing results
Many managers do not think about the cost or consequence to their organization when they are spending more money than they need to. This is often the case with sales incentive compensation. Although these plans are designed to encourage employees to meet their sales goals, some workers may be rewarded with higher compensation rates than one that actually matches their contribution to the company. When companies do not see results in paying their workers huge compensation packages, the cost of losing leads seem even greater.
Closing deals is a struggle
Although sales teams can get far along the sales pipeline and are inching toward closing, they may lose customers if they do not put the same effort into sealing the deal as establishing initial contact. Employees who have trouble closing deals may need to look back on what went wrong.
Sometimes, sales staff are not paying attention to the needs of their target demographics and cast too wide a net to be effective in converting leads into customers. A one-size-fits all approach to sales will usually not get salespeople far, especially if customers crave a personal touch. Whatever the case for a salesperson’s struggle to close a deal, managers need to make sure staff are working hard to maintain a good relationship with their leads up to closing and even beyond in order to keep their business for life.
As managers determine how to improve their sales performance management of their workforce, they need to include the right compensation to make sure their workers are motivated to convert leads into customers and close deals the right way. Employers could invest in software to monitor sales effectiveness metrics to avoid paying more money than is required to optimize their profits. Through proper tracking of sales and productivity, companies will be able to not only stop any financial waste going into their sales team, but also keep a steady stream of profits coming in by continuously turning new leads into not only new customers but customers for life.
