Anand SrinivasanWe all love it when we get an inbound lead that’s raring to go and ready to pay money upfront.
However, that’s not always the case. In fact, it’s almost never the case!
To keep on converting prospects into customers, we have to make sure that we keep on top of things and remain consistent to successfully win more work or make more sales.
In this article, we’re giving you 9 killer tips to convert prospects into customers and boost your conversion rate.
Ready? let’s get started!
1. Understand The Client’s Pain Points
Nobody is interested in knowing how good your product/service is. They care about how your product can solve their problem.
If you keep on throwing your product’s features in the prospect’s face, there’s almost a 100% chance that they won’t convert.
Instead, start the conversation off by asking the prospect:
- What issues they’re currently facing
- What motivated them to look for a product like yours in the first place
- What their long-term objectives are
Every pitch starts with understanding your client’s pain points. This approach is so widely used that it works no matter the industry you’re in.
Whether you’re trying to sell a new piece of furniture (“this is the best mattress money can buy!“), or a brand new SEO strategy, you’re going to need to establish those pain points.
Once you understand those, you can then tailor your pitch and help them understand how your product can take care of their pain points and help them lead a better life.
2. Work On Referrals
This is one of the most underrated hacks to convert more prospects into paying customers.
Most freelancers will use the following methods to gain clients:
- Social media
- Paid ads
- Cold outreach
All of these techniques are part of getting prospective customers. However, the reason why it’s difficult to convert these leads into clients is because they haven’t been introduced to you previously. Therefore, there’s no established sense of trust or assurance in dealing with you.
Referrals work wonders as the person who is referring you to a prospect already knows them (and the prospect knows the person who is referring you).
This creates a trust triangle and your chances of converting the prospect significantly increases.
Business Network International (BNI) is a brilliant platform that actually deals exclusively with referral generation. The core philosophy of BNI is “Giver’s Gain”.
3. Build A Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
The reason why building an MVP makes sense in a major project is because it gives you the initial feedback as to whether a certain product shall work or not (or if people are willing to pay for it).
Let’s say you’re into application development and you get a major project which would take a huge amount of effort to build:
Here, creating an MVP would make a lot of sense because it would only take a fraction of the time it would take to make the full application.
Therefore, a lot of time and energy is saved and, at the same time, you get real-time feedback on your idea.
You would then be able to keep this feedback in mind when building the product to ensure a successful launch.
4. Collaborate With People From Similar Industries
Let’s say you’re a freelance digital marketer.
You might consider collaborating with website developers, graphic designers, app developers, etc.
Whenever a business sets up a website, there is a very strong chance that it would require services like content creation, social media, paid advertisements, etc.
This is where collaboration comes in.
If you already have a referral arrangement set up with a web developer, they can directly push your digital marketing services. This increases the chances of the prospect converting and saves you time on marketing your own services.
5. Perform A Thorough Competitive Analysis
One of the best ways to stay ahead of the competition is to know them better than they know themselves!
Executing a thorough competitive analysis involves understanding the following:
- Who your competitors are
- Why people like them
- Why people dislike them
- What their top products/services are
- What their position is in the market
- How they’re marketing themselves
This analysis will give you a roadmap of the specific things you need to do in order to gain a competitive edge. The more narrowed-down you become on your plan, the better your chances are for getting ahead of them.
A simple example would be that of a freelance content writer offering to write an article for 10 cents a word. At such a cheap rate, you’ll likely know that the said writer is only providing generic content and that the articles aren’t well-optimized for SEO.
What you can do is offer your writing services and offer to make the article SEO-friendly, explaining how it would hep them generate leads. This way, the client would be willing to work with you and pay you even more for your services!
6. Be Data-Driven
We all know that it boils to numbers in business.
When it comes down to pitching your product or service, you can make your case even stronger by backing your points up with numbers.
It’s well-worth using a tool such as MS Excel to be data-driven. If used correctly, you can actually use it to create charts that pinpoint successful product launches, quarterly trends, revenue sources and performance compared to your competitors.
Being data-driven works wonders for freelancers too!
Let’s say you’re a Facebook Ads specialist and have a prospect that you’re chasing:
You understand that they are using Facebook Ads for their business. However, you know they’re using it for an awareness campaign (getting more impressions to their page/website).
The way you can pitch your services to them is by giving them a comparison of the results that one can get from boosting a post vs. creating a conversion-optimized ad campaign.
You can showcase the tentative increase in conversions, subscribers, visits to the clients’ website, and a few other metrics depending upon the prospect’s business objectives.
There’s a very good chance that the prospect would be impressed by your insights and feel comfortable working with you.
7. Don’t Let Them Forget You
Many times, a prospective customer will tell you that they need time to think things over before making a purchase from you.
This is completely fair; everyone has to have a chance to weigh their options and do some research of their own, which is something you don’t necessarily have control over.
However, what you do have control over is in maintaining your recall value.
Let’s say the prospect mentions that they need two weeks to think over it before they take you up on an offer. This is a very long time-frame, during which they might come across dozens of other freelancers who might be offering the same services as you.
In this time period, you have to make sure that you don’t let them forget about you and you can do so by signing them up to an email list. From here you can send them:
- Client’s testimonials,
- Projects that you’re working on,
- News and trends about their industry
- Greeting messages on their birthday or around the holidays
These are simple things that leave a lasting impression and generate a great recall rate.
8. Provide A Detailed Statement Of Work
Giving a detailed statement of work means delivering the details of a project’s work requirement.
It can include the specific activities that are going to be conducted, the timelines by which the set of activities shall be completed, the milestones that shall be achieved and the assets needed from the client.
You can also supplement the statement of work document by including a risk-assessment matrix, which can help the prospect understand the risks associated with a certain aspect of their business activities.
9. Upskill Yourself
It has now become more important than ever to constantly upgrade your skillset in the pandemic world.
Be it your technical skills or soft skills, staying on your toes is the ultimate hack to convert prospects into clients.
Some of the skills that have become more popular than ever include:
- Digital Marketing
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
- Data Science
- Graphic Design
Wrapping Up
If you haven’t noticed, there’s one common thread that we’ve showcased in all of the above points to get more customers.
Tailoring your services according to the individual client’s requirement!
Make your value proposition so compelling that the prospect feels that you’ve made your product or service specifically for them.
Focus on what they need and not what you can deliver.
Arun Kumar
Gorilla Accounting
Patrick Gribben
