This is a continuation of Friday’s post on understanding your customer’s buying process. At the Bootstrapper’s Breakfast®, one of the frequently recurring conversations is how to convert an interested prospect into a paying customer. It can often be the case that a prospect understands the product and believes that the team can deliver but still takes no action. In these recessionary times, this is very common.
How do you convert your customer’s understanding of your product or service into a sale? In order to sell your product or service, you have to ensure that your customer believes in your teams ability to deliver. Then you have to harness the right moment to make that sale.
Get your customer to view you as trustworthy and credible:
Here are some great suggestions from the Stanford credibility project:
- Make it easy for the customer to verify the credibility of your service. Have references, sample projects, etc easily accessible to the customer.
- Show that there are trustworthy and ethical people behind your product or service.
- Make it easy to get in touch with you. Make your email and phone number available to your customer.
Harness the right moment to make the sale and look for potential triggers
Some instances of triggers:
- Constantly communicate with your customer and be aware of his needs. There are many instances when your customer may think is an appropriate time to start with a new service or product.
- Keep track of when your customer is starting new projects. This is probably a time when s/he will like to make changes, implement a new system or service.
- New employees that your customer hires may have a different mindset to a product or service. You can educate them about your product/service.
- New rules and regulations: These are times when customers upgrade their systems and processes. Send reminders to customers about what your product/service can do to help them adhere to these new rules.
- Tax season/Accounting cycle: Be aware of the accounting calendar of your customer.