Lead generation and building client relationships are critical to any sales team. Being unable to make a high number of sales from your calls can negatively affect your bottom line. As such, your team must have reasonable conversion rates. If your team has lower than desired rates, you need to take steps to get back on track.
Conversion Rates in Sales
Conversion rates are the number of calls, emails, or other communication measures one attempt that results in sales or new clients. Many businesses use this rate to determine how well they’re doing, if they need to make changes to their sales process, and even promote or give out bonuses.
You find your conversion rate by dividing the number of calls you make by the number that resulted in sales. For instance, if you make 200 calls and 50 results in sales, your conversion rate is 25 percent. The higher the percentage, the more positive returns you’re earning from your sales efforts. This can be completed per an individual sales agent or at the overall business level if there is no dedicated sales personnel.
Why They Matter
A low conversion rate may be a sign that you need to improve your lead generation, cold-calling, or other methodologies. Low ratings can sign that your team isn’t finding good leads or are using a sales method that isn’t working anymore.
Not only do low ratings mean you’re doing less business than you could be, but it can also negatively affect team morale. A team that feels stressed and under pressure to make sales after a series of rejections can lower overall performance. The best way to avoid this scenario is to understand why conversion rates are low and how to fix them.
Common Problems with Getting Good Rates
There can be many culprits behind low conversion ratings, and your team may be suffering from more than one of them. Some of the most common issues include:
- Data Decay – Data decay means that client and potential client information you had has become outdated. When this happens, you may lose contact with customers who could give you referrals or call a disconnected number on a cold call list.
- Poor Filtering – Before making a call or sending an email, make sure the prospective client actually needs the service or product you’re selling. You’ll need to do a quick search to filter out your cold call list. Investing in third-party data websites can help you with this process if you don’t have time to research yourself.
- Inadequate SEO – If your search engine optimization skills are out of date, you likely are missing out on modern lead generation opportunities. Teach your team how to use standard search engine terms and other SEO techniques to get better lead results.
- Reaching Out To an Overly-broad Audience – While there is nearly an infinite number of businesses you could call, that doesn’t mean you should. There’s no reason to try selling mass-produced t-shirts to a company with only three employees, for instance.
- Lack of Team Emphasis on Improving Rates – Explain to your team what conversion rates are and why they matter. Brainstorm ways to improve them and consider offering incentives to employees for increasing them.
Tips for Improving Your Rates
There are many techniques you can use to help you solve low conversion rate issues:
- Use a Phone Number Validator – Every disconnected phone number your team calls lowers your conversion rating. You can solve this by using an application programming interface to identify these issues before reaching your sales team.
Try placing a phone validator API for businesses in your site’s contact forms. Such an API will stop contact form submissions with inaccurate information, like disconnected phone numbers by actually pinging the number in real-time, behind the scenes. The user will need to refill their form before going any further. - Create a Lead Outreach Plan – A step-by-step plan can help your team learn about what conversion rates are and how to get better leads.
- Offer Additional Staff Training – Staff training can especially be useful if you have many new employees. Training can ensure your staff is on the same page about how to increase conversion rates.
- Create Tailored Pitches – Make sure your team is creating pitches specific to the companies they’re pitching to. Catch-all angles are less likely to be successful.
- Learn More About Your Audience – The more you know about your audience, the better you’ll be able to pitch to them.
- Make Selling an Experience – When crafting pitches, work with your team to make them feel less like spam calls or emails, and better represent your company’s values.
Get More Yeses
Low conversion rates can negatively affect your sales and team morale. Problem-solve to learn why your rates are low and what you can do to fix them. Include your team in the process to increase staff buy-in to improving conversion rates and to ensure everyone understands what techniques you’ll use to increase the number of yeses your team gets.
About The Author
Nicole Hinton
Nicole is a freelancer & passionate blogger. She has 4+ years of experience in digital marketing and specialize in content writing, content marketing and organic search engine optimization. She has worked with many brands from Canada as well as the USA. Currently, she manages content marketing team of freelancers and doing their business efficiently.
