How to Convert Leads into Sales Effectively

Businesses complain about leads not converting into sales. No one complains about not getting leads because anyone can get leads with a bit of a marketing effort.

Business owners think that the reason why the leads don't convert into sales is that the leads are not of high quality. Sometimes it is true, but in most cases, the leads don't convert into sales because the leads are not warmed up and nurtured properly and the conversion process is weak.

There can be only 3 reasons for it:

• The leads are not of high-quality and well-targeted
• The leads have not been nurtured enough
• Weak sales and conversion process that doesn't convert the leads

Let's look at each of these reasons in-depth.

1. Lead Generation & Community

Most businesses fail because they do not understand their target audience very clearly. This happens because business owners assume that there is a market and market need and they build products for it. The products do not sell by themselves because there is no clear demand for them.

We have to build targeted customer avatars to understand what people want. And a good understanding of your customer avatar can be built only through a community.

Even before I sold my first product, I built a community. It was a simple group on Facebook and it started with a few hundred members who came from my email list. I interacted with people, spoke to them, and even met them in person.

Before I created and launched my first course, I asked people what they wanted (the most). Most people said that they wanted to learn Google AdWords (now Google ads) and I created a course on Google Ads. I launched the course and brought in the sales even before I made the course. It was an MVP.

I built the product confidently because I knew that that's what people wanted. I knew that there was a clear demand for it.

If you want to build something, build a community of people even before you build the product. The community is an asset. Through the community, you can understand the needs of the market.

You can build a community by creating a lead magnet, creating a lead capture page, and driving some traffic to the lead capture page. Once you have an email list of, say, 500 people, you can start adding value to them through content and community. This community is very important for building your customer avatars and a clear understanding of who your target customer is, and their needs.

2. Warming Up & Nurturing The Leads

When you start generating leads, your leads do not know you well enough, and they do not know you long enough. You cannot get them to trust you unless you start adding value to them first.

Most businesses generate leads and they try to sell something to them directly. But even if the target market is right and the product is a good fit, the sales will not happen because the leads do not trust you enough to make the transaction right away.

The best way to add value to your leads is through content, interaction, and community. Create a follow-up email sequence for the leads. Give valuable content in every email. Create a blog and add relevant content for them (like this blog). Create a podcast. Create a YouTube channel.

Drive traffic to all these content properties using your email list. You will start seeing some traction. Remember, you have to get people's attention before you can gain their trust. And you have to gain their trust before they can pay you money.

With time, you will build reputation and the process will become faster, but every relationship, whether business or personal has to go through all these stages.

3. Pitch and Conversion

The final stage, the toughest part and the most exciting stage is the conversion. Once you have a set of leads that are part of your email list, community and are well nurtured, you are ready to sell.

If the price point is less than $500, you can sell it via a sales page (ideally with a VSL - video sales letter). Just drive traffic to the page and you will start seeing conversions.

An alternative to this is to convert the leads into sales in a sales webinar. In a sales webinar, you can have price points of up to $1000. You are doing the sales pitch live, interacting with the audience and answering their questions. The downside with a live sales webinar is that it has to be scheduled and done manually.

However, a webinar sales pitch can have hundreds, if not thousands of attendees. When you have thousands of attendees, the cost to do it live is less and the returns are more. Because your sales pitch is scalable.

If the price of the product is $1,000 or more, it is best converted through a 1on1 sales call. Some people prefer to call the leads directly without an appointment but I wouldn't recommend that. The prospect might not be having the attention, time or patience to listen to the sales pitch.

1on1 sales calls are best done with an appointment. And the best way to book appointments is to use a tool like calendly. Open up your calendar for slots and let the prospects book a sales call with you. In such a call, people are expecting to be sold to and there is lesser resistance for a sales pitch.

How to construct your pitch, present it to the prospect and convert them into a paying customer is an art and science in itself, which I will cover in the future blog posts.

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju