18 Tips & Tools for Improving Your Sales Closing Ratio

This is laundry list of strategies to help improve your sales close ratio – i.e., help you and your team close more sales. Some of these strategies help you improve the quality of your leads too. Improving the quality of your leads and increasing the percentage of good leads that turn into business helps improve the efficiency of your marketing dollars spent.

Take a look at how many of these you are actively engaged in. In some cases we can point you to tools and resources to help –

1. Track it – Do you count all leads and record their conclusion? You can’t improve something unless you know where you are! We can point you to lead tracking systems used by other customers successfully

2. Assign causes of lost business if known – Rank the root causes of sales loss so you can work on the most frequent problems.

3. Track your lead quality – are you getting the right people from the right geography, focusing on the marketing channels generating the best leads, etc? You can improve conversions by spending more time on better prospects.

4. Work on reducing the time it takes to respond to an inquiry – data shows your ability to reach a person who has called or submitted an email form goes down exponentially over time (measured in minutes!). Even Better, take steps to get prospective customers to all you and close the deal on the first call!

5. Related to #4 – make sure you have optimized your phone system and call messaging systems (including after-hours call handling).

6. Listen in to your sales people interact with prospects on the phone – there is gold in seeing how they:

a. Build rapport
b. Listen to the prospect
c. Identify their needs
d. Propose customer solutions

i. Do they know your products and services well enough?
ii. Do they properly connect benefits with customer needs?

e. Explain benefits
f. Identify and overcome objections
g. Ask for the sale!!! Closing technique skill building is essential.

Ask about our article on how call tracking and recording can help with the above

7. Sales training based on what you find in #6

8. Train your salespeople to “always be helping” prospects – today’s customers more than ever do not want to feel like they are being pressured.

9. Script your typical sales interactions and routinely monitor to make sure that scripts are:

a. Being used
b. Still relevant
c. Need to be added to and/or improved

10. Make sure each sales rep has an organized system for lead follow-up – Many leads are lost because a rep forgets or follows up too late.

11. Make sure that your sales aids (brochures, web page content, videos, etc.) are current, easily available and target the things your customers are interested in. Make sure your sales reps know how and when to introduce these sales aids.

12. Optimize your sales offer – Are you competitive? Are you identifying ways to communicate and deliver in ways other than price (payment options, guarantees, other services, loyalty programs, etc.)?

13. Run limited time specials – create deadlines for “fear of loss” to spur buying decisions.

We can help with specials using our landing pages

14. Provide “social proof” of the quality of your service – social media posts, reviews, testimonials, videos, etc. Purchasing decisions are influenced positively when people feel their risk is lowered because others have bought from you successfully.

15. Market consistently to your customer base!!! Past customers convert at much higher rates than new prospects.

16. Use Pay Per Click to increase leads exclusive to your business. Assure that your landing pages are consistent with your ad copy and are designed specifically to convert (prominent call to action, easy forms, easy access click to call phone #, etc.).

17. Don’t forget traditional public relations and brand advertising. Being known in the community increases both lead count and lead quality.

18. Make sure that non converted prospects get into your marketing database. Design specific campaigns that might entice them to try you in the future (special new customer offers).