14 easy simple steps to turn prospects into customers

Lead Generation

This week I’ll be focusing on how you can turn your prospects into customers and then ensure you also retain them for future marketing.
While your marketing will be doing its job as it always has been, you need to ensure you’re also working on turning any prospects you may have into customers. You may have hundreds of leads who are interested in what you sell but just haven’t bought from you yet and you haven’t really been selling to them all that much.

Turn Prospects into Customers

These could be people who sign up to a monthly newsletter, people who follow you on social media or friends of friends. There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal. You need to be:

  • Inviting – draw customers in so they want to buy from you and not your competitors, you need to have a good USP
  • Informative – provide information on the benefits of your products or services so prospects can see what you can do for them
  • Enjoyable – always give the best customer service possible so your new or potential customer will keep coming back to you

Buyer’s Remorse

The biggest fear most new customers have is the dreaded buyer’s remorse. You want to ensure you avoid this at all costs. This should be mitigated if you have provided a quality product or service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made.
However, there will always be some buyers who just aren’t certain they’ve bought or chosen the correct product or service.

Buyers remorse

There are two ways to deal with this:

  • Offer to refund money with no questions asked
  • Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product

These above offers will mitigate a buyer’s remorse as this customer will trust you more, they know they can request their money back if need be or they may even get something for free.

Take, for example, a customer who would like to purchase a new computer from a computer shop. A computer is a quite a big purchase and one not to be taken lightly. It can be a big decision on which one to buy and when, however, if there is a 30 day money back guarantee if the customer isn’t happy, they may be more inclined to buy sooner. This customer would be able to trial the computer for those 30 days before actually making the definite decision on whether to keep it. The majority of buyers would end up keeping the computer once they’ve gotten used to using it and by doing this it just confirms you have faith in the products you sell.

What if you also offered the prospect a free mouse mat when purchasing the computer and they didn’t need to return it if they weren’t happy with the computer? They’d have more trust in the service you were providing and the products you were selling. It could also be a way of marketing your business if you have it branded with your company logo and contact details.
This kind of service also ensures these prospects turn into repeat customers and their volume of transactions are likely to increase due to the service you provide.

Prospects into Clients

There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:

1. Offer a special price as an opportunity for you to test the market.
2. Offer a lower priced product rather than the more expensive option.
3. Offer a referral incentive where they get something for a lower price or free on a certain volume of referrals.
4. Offer a smaller, more inexpensive product first to build trust.
5. Offer package deals for them to have a group of products for a special price.
6. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer.
7. Offer extra incentives-longer warranties, free bonuses if ordered by a set date.
8. Offer financing options, if applicable.
9. Offer a bonus if they pay in full.
10. Offer special packaging or delivery.
11. Offer ‘name your own price’ incentives.
12. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools.
13. Offer a trade-up or upgrade to something they already have.
14. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.

If someone is interested in what you sell or offer, they are likely to become a buyer at some point, they just may not be a NOW buyer. A NOW buyer only counts for 1% of the customers who will ever buy from you. The other 99% will buy from you at some point but not right now. You need to ensure you keep in touch with these customers so that when the time comes for them to buy they think of you and not one of your competitors.
The way you can do this is by offering them something they can’t refuse. The offers above give you some ideas of what you could do to entice a prospective customer to buy from you.
How can you be memorable to these customers? Are you unique? Do you have a USP? It may be time to think of one now so your prospects remember you and choose you as their chosen, number one ‘computer shop’.

Offer a USP

Customers don’t always buy for price, they will buy for value, if you can offer something that’s valuable to them then you’re on to a winner.
The options really are as limitless as you make it. You can use these or other ideas to find what works the best for your business, products/service and target market, what works for one type of business may not be the best thing for another one.

Dominate the Competition

Remember this…
“By making it inviting, easy, informative, non-threatening, educational, inspiring and fun to do business with you, you’ll loft your company above the competition.” Jay Abraham

Do you need help with figuring out the best strategy for converting prospects into customers? Contact sarah@pzazzinnovation.com
For tips on lead generation please visit www.pzazzacademy.com where you can have a set of free videos emailed to you.