How You Can Convert Shoppers into Paying Customers
As a member of the direct sales community, you have to play many roles. You’re a salesperson and a marketer, too. First you must persuade your audience to learn more about the products you’re selling. Then you have to convince them why they need to buy them and close the deal.
We call this conversion marketing. It’s the solution to “How am I going to convince people to buy my products?”
It sounds simple. All you have to do is tell people why they should buy what you’re selling and they’ll buy it, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, in the direct sales world or in conventional retail.
Here are some sobering stats from growth agency Ironpaper, a firm specializing in sales and marketing:
- Seventy-nine percent of leads (these are people you’ve identified who have shown interest in buying your product) are never converted to sales.
- Only 5 percent of salespeople said leads they receive from marketing was very high quality.
- Sixty-five percent of customers are lost because of indifference, not because of mistakes.
When it comes to direct sales, how can you better convert your shoppers into paying customers? Here are a few tips:
Be a Good Storyteller
When it comes to selling any product, you must rely on the art of the story to help create empathy with your customers. A story can help drive home why a customer needs to buy your product. But storytelling is not easy to do. In fact, it takes a lot of practice to master. In a way, it’s a performance, much like how stand-up comedians need to practice their deliveries to make an impact on their audience. A good story is entertaining, educational, universal, organized, and memorable. For more on mastering the art of storytelling, read Hubspot’s Ultimate Guide to Storytelling.
