Podcast Episode

Transcript:  

Hello, and welcome to the sales show. I'm Maree Kirkpatrick, your host. And today we have a really exciting episode in store for you. We are diving deep into the world of conversion rates, one of my favorite topics when it comes to business. And I want to help you understand how optimizing them can make a significant difference in your business.

So whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur, or you're just starting out, I want to make sure that this episode is packed with valuable insights that you don't want to miss.

Now, let's kick things off by understanding what exactly is conversion rates. In the simplest of terms, conversion rates measure the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on your website or engage in your business. This can either be people on your website who purchase something from you, or it can be the number of people that you jump on a call with and decide to work with you and move forward with you.

Now, our conversion rates are a critical keyword critical metric, because they directly impact your bottom line, they will determine whether you are making money or you're not. And tweaking that conversion rate can make a huge, huge difference on your sales on your bottom line and on the profitability overall of your business.

Now, if we talk about conversion rates, even increasing them slightly, can mean that you're spending less money, less time, and even less energy focusing on getting more leads, as you know how many you need to hit your target, or your sales total that you're looking for whether it be monthly, yearly, weekly, whatever that is for you in your business.

 Now, what I find really interesting is when people talk about conversion rates, they only look at it from a business perspective. But a little while ago, when the World Cup was on, I was watching an interview from the Matilda's coach, and they had just lost to England in the semi-final of the World Cup. And he said they lost because they just didn't convert. He knew the number of shots that they took, he knew the number of shots that they needed to take, and their conversion rates just weren't there on the night. But what if they had increased their conversion rates by five or 10%? Would that have meant that they won the game? Who knows? 

But what a really interesting way to look at it even from a sporting perspective, people will also say to me, Oh, my conversion rates are really high. Or they'll say, Oh, should my conversion rates be 100%? If your conversion rates are 100%, then there is something going on in your business that you need to change. You're either too cheap, you are either not talking to enough people, or there's things that you need to change to stretch your business out. I don't believe that your conversion rate should ever be 100%. But that's just my thoughts.

 I also have people say to me, can I just speak to more people or get more inquiries coming through? Who cares about the conversion rate? But what if you could have less leads, less energy, less marketing, spend less marketing energy out of your business, and actually just increase your conversion rates to get the same amount of sales so much more powerful?

 In her Sales Club, we actually have a sales calculator that can help you understand not just your conversion rates, but how many leads you need to make the dollars that you want within your business. How cool is it that you know exactly how many people you need to talk to? how many people do you need to hit your website? how many people do you need, to hit your landing page?  So it's so easy once you've got that calculator, and that is all in her sales club.

 Now, what actually influences your conversion rate? Well, there's a whole heap of different influences that can impact your conversion rate. But if we look at it from an online perspective, it can be things like the design of your website, it can be your user experience, it can be how easy it is for people to buy from you. Dude, I find it so interesting when I'm on someone's website, or even in a store, and people make it so hard to give you money. 

Don't be one of those people. Make it really easy for people to buy from your website. Make sure that you're selling really well on your website. People think that if they build the website, and they've got an Add to Cart button that everything should be seamless and easy and people should just throw money at them.

 That's not how online sales work.

 Although I know a lot of us would love it to be like that. But we actually want to make sure that you're selling on your website, not just having a digital store on there. And imagine if your website are like those websites that are hard to navigate, or even those ones that don't load properly on mobile devices, that is so annoying. And with everything going on and our busy lives, people just click out of it, they'll go and find someone else to throw their money out to purchase somewhere else, or to find a solution.

We want to make it really easy for people to buy from us. If you're a service-based business, there are many things that can also impact your conversion rate. And this is where my heart gets really excited because I know how tweaking just a few things in people's businesses when it comes to selling, can really boost their business so easily.

 So we want to look at how well you are actually connecting with your potential clients. So if you've jumping on a call with someone, does it actually mean that you're connecting? Or are you just there to have this robotic, disconnected conversation? How do we increase the connection with our potential clients? Are you asking enough questions to really dig deep into what your potential client is wanting? Not what you think that they want? What they actually want? What are they telling you that they want? And if they're not telling you what questions can you ask to uncover more about what it is that they are looking for, we then want to know that we are transitioning from getting really clear on where they are at and where they want to be, and how we can actually help them. So many people just go into this spiel of these are other ways I can help you and it's going to cost you this much. And this is exactly how it works.

 When sometimes we just want people to ask us questions so that we know that they are understanding us they have the right solution for us when we are connecting with them, they are potentially a great opportunity for us to work together.

Are we talking about our products and services in a really easy, clear, optimized way so that people understand exactly what we do? How do we do it, and they can see the value in it? How are we explaining our pricing? So often when I talk to people in their business, and I'm like, Cool, how much is it to work with you, they'll give me like five or seven different numbers. And I'm trying to write them down on my remarkable and I'm thinking oh my god, I'm so overwhelmed. It's all too hard. And you know what I'll say, thank you so much, just give me some time to think about and I'll come back to you when really, it's probably not that I need more time to think about it. It's that they haven't clearly articulated the value and the pricing, so that it makes it really easy for me to buy. If you nail how you talk about your packages and your pricing, you will increase your conversion rates. tenfold. I promise you.

 What I also see happen when we talk about conversion rates is if someone gives us an objection, we kind of buy that objection and go okay, no worries, I'll follow you up or we can touch base in a couple of weeks or whatever that is, are you actually answering the objection and helping them move through it to helping them make a decision? Or are we just going okay, cool? Not a problem, we'll just leave it for now. I also see people say things like, or they're just not ready, or they need some time to think about it, or they need to go chat with their partner, which sometimes are all relevant reasons why people don't move forward with us. 

But my question to you would be, what can you do to increase your conversion rates and have conversations around the objections that people are giving you help them move through it so that everyone is really clear on where they stand?

 So if we sum of all of this up, the best way to increase your conversion rates is to have a really, really good tailored sales process specifically for your business and for your clients. Whether you are selling online or having those sales conversations, you want to make sure that that sales process is streamlined across everything that your clients touch within your business. 

I have a free download that you can check out that will walk you through the steps for your sales process, you can go to www.mareekirkpartick.com that’s mareekirkpatrick.com/7steps and that will give you the seven steps that you need to have within your sales process, whether you are online or whether you are talking to people in sales conversations.

So let me give you some tips to improve your conversion rates. And these tips are actionable. If you implement them, you can actually go in and go great. What do I need to do to tick these off to make sure that my conversion rate is as high as it absolutely can be?

So first, you want to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile users. And I know this sounds pretty basic and common knowledge. However, I will be telling you this, if I didn't think that more people needed to know that their website needed to be mobile friendly, make sure that if you turn it sideways, that it still looks good on a mobile, make sure that if someone's on a tablet, it still looks good. And the reason why I say the tablet thing is not necessarily that people are buying on tablets, although some people are with a smaller percentage of users are buying on iPads and stuff. 

But there's so many different sizes of phones these days. So just make sure that it's optimized across a whole heap of different sizes of screens. You know, the growing number of people using smartphones as a shopping device is huge. So making sure you have a mobile-friendly website is a non-negotiable.

Next, you want to create clear and compelling calls to action. So you want to make sure that you're guiding your visitors or your potential clients on what you want them to do next, whether that's a requested quote, whether that's Book Now whether that's moving forward with you, whether that's subscribe to an opt-in, or jump onto your database, so they can get some more information and value and understanding of how you work. But make sure that your calls to action are really clear and that they stand out. So stand out in those conversations or stand out on your sales page. So many sales pages that I look at, and I say people sales pages on a regular basis, I get at least 10 awake, come through my inbox and say, Hey, Maree, can you have a look at this, your call to action buttons needs to be bright, need to be bold need to stand out and need to be really clear on what you're wanting people to do next.

The next thing that will help you increase your conversion rates is to have a sales process that your potential clients work through so you know exactly where they are up to within your business and so that they know how to buy from you. So that you are ticking all the boxes with the trust the knowing with the liking of you to make sure that the sales process is so clear and optimize within your business, that it's a no-brainer. That will be a huge game changer to increase your conversion rates.

Make sure your descriptions and this is both online as well as offline or having those sales conversations, make sure your descriptions and the way that you talk about your products and services is sales optimized, not jargon optimized, not making it look like you know all this stuff, make sure it's sales optimized and is connecting with people, your potential clients on the right level, not on your level on their level. That may mean that you need to go back to the basics or what I say get down on the ground with them. Make sure that you are talking to them in their language. And you're talking about the benefits and outcomes of using your products or services and why they would want to buy it. This is so important. You need to actually sell what it is that you do, and make it really clear as to why someone should work with you or purchase from you.

 Another thing that you can do, but it's a little bit more techie and a little bit more complicated is a B testing. It's a really powerful tool to experiment with different website elements, different headlines on emails and sales tools, and things like that as well. And even on the calls to action, you can split-test them to see which one's working better. That can be a huge that can have a huge impact on your conversion rates. And then you want to make sure that you're nurturing anyone that comes through your door so that you're adding value, it isn't always just about selling, it's about serving. Don't just connect with people when it comes to having something for you to sell.

 Now I've had clients with online stores who once we've optimized their business for sales have increased their turnover by 27%. That is huge just by going through and optimizing their e-commerce sites, their landing pages, their websites, their email marketing that they're doing their campaigns. Once you've optimized that, you will see a huge increase in your conversion rates. I've also had service base clients that I've worked with who wants weaving in crease their conversion rates by whether it's implementing a sales process, whether it's changing the way that we talk about their products and services, whether it's nailing their messaging, whether it's nailing their sales pages, whether it's Facebook ads, whether it even if it's their social media strategy that they're using, so that their marketing and their sales are so aligned that people are really clear on what they do. If they're really clear on how they can help people, but once they have optimized that they have increased their conversion rates and saved so much time, money, and energy.

But the most exciting part, if you ask me is that they have doubled, at least doubled their turnover. Holy cow, Batman, I would love you to email me, if you don't want to double your turnover. Every single business owner that is wanting to grow their business would love to double their turnover in their business, the best way to do it, increase your conversion rates, best way to do it have a sales process so that you can track what your conversion rates are. And you can tweak and optimize things as you go.

So when it comes to your conversion rates, make sure that you're tracking them. So make sure you're tracking how many people hit your website, make sure you're happy tracking, how many people are abandoning cart, make sure you're tracking your open rates, your click-through rates on emails is another great indicator of your conversion rates. If you are having conversations, how many conversations are you having? How many conversations are you having to get people across the line? Is it one or two conversations? Is it five or 10? Does it take people five months to start working with you? What does that look like? All that data will help you with your conversion rates.

So in conclusion, find ways to increase your conversion rates if you want to grow your business, even if it's just by 5%. The strategies I've given you today and that we've spoken about are really easy to implement. They are within your reach, and implementing them can lead to substantial improvements in your conversion rates.

 I would love you to implement something to boost your conversion rates and tag me on social media so I can see it. I can cheer you on I can even maybe give you a few tips and tricks and strategies to help you increase your conversion rates even further.

But make sure you actually are implementing rather than just listening and thinking you'll do it later. I sometimes do that and with everything that's going on across a couple of businesses, family life, all of that. I know sometimes things don't always I don't always get back to things. So make sure you pencil in into your diary to implement these strategies to boost your conversion rates.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the sales show. If you found this episode value valuable, don't forget to subscribe. For more insights and tips to help you grow your business. Feel free to also connect with us on social media at mareekirkpatrick on Instagram. Or you can shoot us an email podcast at mareekirkpatrick.com with any questions or thoughts that you've got. We would love to hear from you. Until next time, keep making more income and more impact