What are the most effective ways to turn potential customers into paying ones? How can you make each sales transaction more valuable without spending more on marketing?
In his book Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got, Jay Abraham reveals that building customer trust and increasing transaction value are essential for a growing business. Not only are these strategies critical for converting prospects into buyers, but they also keep customers coming back for more.
Continue reading to learn how to convert leads into sales, transforming hesitant prospects into loyal customers who spend more with your business.
Converting Leads Into Sales
After reaching potential customers, focus on converting them into paying customers and maximizing the value of each sale. Abraham contends that this is the most effective way to not only recoup your marketing costs but also maximize your profits.
Abraham explains how to convert leads into sales that make a difference for your bottom line: Build customer trust, and increase transaction value. Let’s take a look at each in detail.
Build Customer Trust
Make potential customers feel confident about doing business with you. Abraham explains that customers will buy only from businesses they trust—and building this trust requires addressing any doubts they might have about your products and services.
(Shortform note: Customers often have doubts or concerns about buying from a business they don’t know well due to a cognitive bias called loss aversion: the tendency to worry more about what they might lose than to feel hopeful about what they might gain. For example, potential customers might focus so much on the cost of subscribing to an educational app that they lose sight of the skills they stand to learn from it and how those skills could increase their earning potential. Marketing experts agree with Abraham, emphasizing that the only way to overcome this bias is to address customer doubts head-on.)
Abraham suggests you can eliminate doubts and convert potential customers into paying ones by first identifying what makes customers hesitate to buy, and then countering these hesitations with incentives such as free trials, introductory discounts, and guarantees. For example, if trial users worry that they won’t improve their skills through your app, offer them a discounted first month to try the full service, followed by a 30-day money-back guarantee that includes certificates for any completed courses.
(Shortform note: In addition to offering incentives, Kaufman (The Personal MBA) suggests using endorsements to eliminate customer doubts. When people see someone they like or respect advocating your offer, they subconsciously transfer their positive feelings about this person to your offer: “If so and so’s representing this, it must be good”—which automatically eliminates doubt.)
Additionally, Abraham emphasizes that providing excellent customer service builds trust because it shows customers they can rely on your business. Respond quickly to questions, follow through on promises, and regularly ask how you can serve your customers better.
(Shortform note: Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles (Raving Fans) agree that providing excellent customer service builds trust. They recommend a five-step plan for keeping customers happy: Define your ideal customer service experience, discover your customer’s ideal experience, integrate your vision with their needs, build an effective and consistent system, and always exceed customer expectations. As Abraham suggests, you can accomplish this final step (exceeding customer expectations) by responding quickly to questions, following through on promises, and asking how you can serve customers better. These actions demonstrate your commitment to making your customers happy.)
Increase Transaction Amounts
Once you’ve established trust, encourage customers to spend more at your business. Abraham explains that the key to increasing the amount customers spend is to provide them with more value through improved or additional offerings. This approach benefits both you and your customers—when they get more value from their purchases, they’re more likely to continue doing business with you.
(Shortform note: In addition to providing more value, Kaufman (The Personal MBA) suggests two other approaches you can use to encourage customers to spend more. First, expand your customer base by converting potential customers into paying customers, which will naturally lead to an increase in sales. Second, Sell more often to existing customers—for example, by encouraging your current app users to make regular, additional purchases beyond their initial download. To maximize your sales, you can use both approaches at the same time.)
Abraham suggests you can provide more value by diversifying both what you offer and how you price it. Ways to do this include offering complementary products and services, creating value packages that combine related offerings, and experimenting with premium pricing models or longer subscription terms. For example, alongside your standard monthly subscription, you might offer downloadable resources, create bundles that combine courses with expert mentoring sessions, or provide premium subscriptions with exclusive access to industry certifications.
(Shortform note: Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm) provides advice for diversifying your offer and pricing: Provide whole product options for your customers. He explains that core offers typically only provide part of the whole solution that customers need—for instance, when a business sells printers (the core offer) without the accessories or ink cartridges. To identify your whole product, Moore suggests that you consider everything that your offer depends on or has to interact with to solve your target customer’s problem. Then, provide these missing pieces, creating diverse offerings and pricing tiers around each component, from basic standalone options to premium integrated packages.)
