Nowadays, convincing people to buy in on an idea has become much more challenging. Potential customers have grown accustomed to several comforts that not every business can afford to offer. At the same time, the market is more competitive than ever before.

In the ever-changing world filled with breathtaking inventions, how companies market their services and products is often the difference between a resounding success and utter failure. One of the ways businesses can ensure stable growth is by becoming more effective in converting their leads into sales. However, it is not as simple as it may sound.

Although many firms engage in this practice, not everyone manages to make the winds of fortune blow right. For example, while the latest direct mail statistics suggest that direct marketing is still going strong, many marketers abandon these methods as they find them ineffective and obsolete.

So, what to do to stop wasting your resources and start converting leads into customers?

Here is a list of valuable tips that will help you jump-start the process and secure more sales:

Build a Communication Strategy

Whether internal or external, communication in business is everything. It encompasses all operations happening within the organization and every interaction with your company.

Consequently, creating a sound communication strategy is vital. It will help you deliver pleasant user experiences that develop more loyalty toward your business and are easily replicated.

The first step is to establish a team of communication experts who will take care of segmenting your leads and creating personalized content that resonates with your audience. Consider assembling a team of customer service managers and marketers who have experience working with large chunks of data.

You also might want to invest in some helpful tools to nurture your existing leads and discover new ones. Gathering more data about your prospects will give you an upper hand when trying to convince them to do business with you.

You can choose from numerous lead generation tools to take your customer communication strategy to the next level. These tools range from highly specialized ones, offering A/B testing or generation forms, to more advanced, all-in-one solutions. Your choice will ultimately depend on your budget and specific needs.

But that is not all.

To make your communication efforts truly effective, you need to make your email marketing stand out. Do not be afraid to break the mold with some funny anecdotes from your company life or experiences with previous customers and leads.

The more personal you make your strategy, the better. People want to know they interact with other people, not emotionless robots or money-oriented company representatives.

Remember to Follow Up

Once you have built your communication strategy and reached out to prospective leads, now comes the time to ask them what they think about your offer.

Following up on your call or email is beneficial, as it gives you a better chance of turning that lead into a sale. Sometimes, a quick follow-up message is all the person needs to get back into purchase mode.

According to research by the Harvard Business Review, the average first response time of B2B companies to their leads is 42 hours. It begs the question: why do so many businesses leave their potential customers hanging for so long?

More importantly, according to the same survey, 23% of the companies do not respond to their leads at all. It is a significant oversight that potentially costs tens of thousands of dollars.

All this information leads to a straightforward conclusion. If you actually respond to your leads and do so in a timely manner, you will win over more customers and overcome the competition.

You can begin by streamlining communications to lower your response time. Search for ways to organize your work so that you can follow up with a lead at most a few days later.

On the other hand, if you receive a response from someone interested in your offer, send a reply the same day. It will show that you are interested in helping them in any way possible.

Perhaps they could use a helping hand with registering on your site. Or maybe they simply require more details regarding the discount you offer to new customers.

Either way, quickly responding to your leads and sending them follow-up messages can help ensure that they take you for the reliable business partner you are. Nowadays, outsourcing B2B lead generation is a promising service. For example, ZoomInfo is a pioneer SaaS company in this area. You can find the average cost of ZoomInfo if you are interested in getting help through extensive research.

Track Your Results

So, you have a strategy in place and maintain contact with your leads by sending them follow-ups and responding to their queries. It is a sound foundation to grow your customer base and improve your bottom line.

Still, there is much left to do to close more sales. It is not enough to put everything in motion; you also must monitor the progress, measure the results, and respond to changing circumstances.

Some of the key sales metrics you should track include the following:

• Sales by lead source — This metric allows you to determine which lead sources provide the most and the least value to your company. Thanks to it, you can further optimize your lead generation and avoid spending money on ineffective solutions.
• New vs. returning customer sales — Turning your leads into customers is worthwhile only if they buy your products and services repeatedly. Monitoring this metric can help you measure what percentage of your sales come from new customers versus returning customers.
• Sales per prior activity — Figuring out what event has occurred right before the sale is a piece of valuable information. It can guide you toward the best way to close more deals. As a result, tracking this metric should be at the top of your priority list.
• Revenue per sale — Finally, you should track revenue per sale and search for ways to increase it. This metric lets you quickly identify how much money you earn with each sale, giving you a solid background for calculating your return on investment (ROI).

At the end of the day, sales is a numbers game. If you look into the right benchmarks and make the necessary adjustments, you should have no problem fixing the issues that plague your business and seeing the number of your sales improve.

The Bottom Line

Many salespeople struggle with transforming the leads they acquire into faithful customers and, by extension, into higher sales numbers. Nonetheless, once we look at the whole process from a distance, it is easy to see that securing more sales can become more manageable with proper communication and data-driven methods.

Building a sound communication strategy and keeping your leads warm can lay the foundation you need to really click with potential customers. Simultaneously, tracking the right metrics will give you valuable insights into their thoughts and needs, giving your company an edge over others.

Overall, following the above guidelines can help you create an effective conversion funnel that helps your business reach its full potential and take the market by storm. Good luck!