A Guide to Converting Prospects

We all know that lead nurturing is extremely important when growing your business. Though a marketing qualified lead (MQL) may vary from business to business, it’s important to attract the right kind of prospect. Do you find yourself asking, “What happened there? Why weren’t we able to close the sale?” One of the challenges businesses face lies in the conversion stage of the sales funnel. Examining your customer’s behavioral history, identifying patterns, and developing lead scores are just a few of the many ways you can close the deal. And, we’ve created an in-depth guide to help you start converting prospects.

Customer Behavior

It’s important to take a look at your customer’s recent activity. How soon did they travel through your sales funnel? Have they been a loyal customer for very long? What is it that drove them to your brand? Ask how they heard about your business and take into consideration the number of page views, content downloads, or event registrations that took place before your lead become a customer.

Buying Patterns

Most often when you’re studying your prospect closely, you’ll identify patterns that indicate the likelihood of closing. Frequency is a great measure to watch out for. Are they visiting your website often? Have they signed up for a free trial? If you hosted a webinar or event, take a look at the number of attendees versus ones who became customers. Divide the number of closes by the total number of leads to calculate your closing rate. This may change during different levels of the of the sales funnel.

Lead Scoring

We recommend using a lead scoring program that incorporates data from your sales funnel to help you determine which level you’re catching the most customers. Look for actions that boast a significantly higher close rate. Then, consider these when building your marketing strategy going forward.

Optimizing Funnel Stages

In our last blog, we identified the different stages of the sales funnel, but we mustn’t forget to always be looking ahead. Optimization is an ongoing process which requires continual research and analysis. Some of the metrics we recommend monitoring when you’re converting prospects are:

• Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate
• % Sales Accepted Leads
• Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate
• Sales Cycle Length
• Average Cost Per Sale

The metrics above will be helpful in building (and adapting) your marketing strategy. By paying close attention to where you’re catching prospects and where you may be losing them, allows you to pinpoint concrete actions. We hope you all have enjoyed this article, let us know how you’ll use this information for converting prospects in the near feature!