TOP Tips for Turning Shoppers Into Buyers

How to transform “Thanks but I’m just looking” into “I’ll have that one please”.

Is there anything more painful for a business owner than seeing a shopper walk in the door and walk out empty-handed? The sale goes up in smoke as does the potential for turning that shopper into a repeat customer and maximising their lifetime value. In effect you’ve missed an open goal!

Every sale counts – or at least it should. You don’t have customers flooding your phone lines or swarming your showroom, so you have to make the most of those who do turn up. If you have 100 inquiries and close only 1 of those into a sale, your conversion rate and your bottom line will probably be poor (unless of course your selling very high value goods).

It’s not just from the lost sales alone. You invest time, energy and money into promoting your business with advertisement, flyers, direct mail, referral programmes, public relations etc. The fewer shoppers you convert into buyers, the higher your cost per customer acquisition.

The first step in increasing sales is to calculate your actual conversion rate. For a brick-and-mortar business, this is a relatively simple matter of comparing the number of callers or store visitors to the number of actual sales. For an internet-based business, web analytics software does the trick.

The optimal conversion rate will vary with the business. It will be higher if you’re selling shoes than if you’re selling cars, for example. But knowing the ratio is important because many businesses vastly overestimate the figure.

Seeing the actual numbers usually alerts the business to focus on improving sales techniques. It also helps you measure the success of any changes you make.

Once you’ve determined your conversion rate, you’re ready to tackle the challenge of improving it. These basic strategies can help you close more sales.

 
1. Communicate your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Figure out what makes you different from the competition and deliver that message loud and clear to all prospects. For example, a training business client had an amazingly successful ‘Job Search’ package which had a 93% success rate but they didn’t tell students until after they’d started training! Telling them before they’d committed improved conversion from 0.7% to 2.5%.

2. Identify bottlenecks in your sales process – Analyse the steps required to get customers to buy from you and determine your weak spots. If you’re a plumber for instance, to make a sale, you need to schedule an appointment, show photos of your work, take measurements, propose a design, price the job, provide references and so on. So, do you need new photos for your portfolio? Does your proposal package need a clean up? Are you failing to make follow-up phone calls? If you fix these types flaws sales will most likely follow.

3. Use the telephone for telephone inquiries correctly – Never let a caller get away with simply asking for price information. Train your staff to say, “Thank you for your call. So that I can be of the most help to you, can I ask you a couple of questions?” This opens the door to engaging the customer. This will allow you to add value to your business by giving customer advice and service as well as engaging with prospects and building trust.

4. Ban your staff saying “Can I help you?” – Why? Because generally the customer will answer “No thanks, I’m just looking” and end the conversation. Instead, instruct salespeople to ask, “Hi, have you been in our store before?” If they say no, the answer should be “It would be my pleasure to show you around”. If they say yes, the response should be, “Welcome back, let me show you a couple of new things we just got in.” That way, you don’t give them an opportunity to say they want to be left alone.

5. Rewrite your sales script. A lot of what goes wrong in selling can be traced to communicating the wrong message. Don’t be negative when talking to prospects or customers.

6. Adjust your sales pitch to the customer. It sounds basic, but most people don’t do it. It is vital to frequently train and monitor your staff so they are confident and competent to do this. Train your sales team to ask questions to flesh out the customer’s needs and to cater to different buying styles. Using role playing situations with real life examples helps everyone learn.

Remember, marketing can help make the phone ring or bring people in the door, but you can’t win the war unless you convert a high percentage of your prospects into paying customers.

Give all your front line staff the right tools, and you’ll have a lot fewer shoppers getting away and  a much more profitable business – fast!

All the best,

Tim & Chris