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November 26, 2007 | Written By Mason Hipp
The process of getting a new customer has four main challenges. At each of these points, your potential client will either move towards your company, getting one step closer to becoming a customer, or away from your company, never to be heard from again.
Knowing and planning for each one of these conversion points can make a dramatic difference in your success rate as a small business. The fifth conversion point (the least talked about since it occurs after the sale) is perhaps the most important.
View the full article to learn about these 5 stages and how you can prepare your small business to shine at each one.
At this point, your potential customer doesn’t know anything about you. As far as they are concerned, you don’t exist.
Your goal for this stage is to introduce them to your company. Don’t try to make any sales, just get your company name in front of as many prospects as possible. An important measurement for this conversion point is Reach, which basically means how many people will see your brand. But be careful; don’t spend your money on a campaign with huge reach if you won’t be able to complete the next conversion steps with that same audience (a.k.a, don’t run a national campaign for a local store). Check out these 9 effective ways to advertise a small business.
Knowing what your company does follows quickly after knowing that your company exists. A lot of people try to rush this point, but I highly recommend you slow down and really take your time to explain yourself.
Make sure that your potential customer really understands what you do—moving forward before this stage is complete often results in a train wreck. Have you ever heard the line “that sounds like a good deal, but what do you guys actually do?”. What’s worse is that for every person who actually asks for more details another 15 will walk away just out of indifference.
This stage is significantly more personalized than the previous two. By now, your prospect is no longer interested in your company, and in fact, they’re probably tired of hearing about you.
Once they know you exist, and understand what you do, it is critical to explain how your company will benefit them directly. They will only become interested if they think they have something to gain (or some way of avoiding a loss) by interacting with your company further.
Many people have written about the need to use benefits, so I’ll just reinforce the main points: explain what’s in it for them, why they’ll benefit, and what they’ll miss out on if they pass. You’ll never sell to someone who doesn’t know how they’ll benefit.
Lack of trust and credibility is the number one killer of small business deals.
Most small companies can come up with a lot of good reasons for people to buy, and most of their potential clients could get the money to buy if they wanted to. The deal breaker is usually a lack of confidence that your company will deliver on its promises.
They might even like and trust you as an individual, but like all sales people, they think you are exaggerating your claims. It’s a sad fact that most small businesses exaggerate and a lot of them don’t deliver on the results they promised.
During this key conversion point, it’s your job to convince them that you aren’t exaggerating, your company is trustworthy, you will deliver on your promises, and that if they still aren’t happy they can have their money back (or some other potential recourse). Only when they truly believe in your claims will they become a customer.
So you finally convinced them to buy something, and now you have a shiny new client. That’s great news! But stay vigilant, new clients don’t last long—and they can become ex-clients very easily.
Turning a new client into a lifelong repeat customer is the final, and most important, conversion point I’ll be discussing today.
Lifelong customers provide a constant source of income, and you don’t need to advertise to keep it coming. What’s even better, they will tell all of their friends about how good your small company really is. Turning current customers into long-term customers isn’t even that difficult (it’s a lot easier than constantly trying to get new clients).
Excellent customer service, a good product, honesty, and upheld promises are the path to lifelong clients. If you want to learn more, check out these 7 ways to ensure repeat business.
Now it’s your turn—how does your company handle each of these conversion points?
I really have the most difficulty going from interested to customer. I find that a good number of my prospects are very close to buying something, but they often never follow through.
Any advice, aside from being as credible and trustworthy as I can be?
According to me, there is one step missing here. After your client shows interest, you must educate them and take away the risk from your offering.
Hey Shama,
Wouldn’t that be part of the conversion from interest to customer? Or would you put an “educated” stage in there?
If you would put an educated stage in there, after interest, what do you think is different from the education between awareness and interest?
- Mason
hi, Mason, how are you doing?
I just came across this & liked it a lot. I think one of the best parts of the internet is that you can very easily roll parts ‘1’, ‘2’, & ‘3’ into one (awareness of existence, awareness of what you do, interest in what you do) because people are *usually* searching the opposite way round: they’ve found you *because* they’re looking for something they’re already interested in. creating a new customer & keeping them for life are arguably tougher though!
I look forward to reading more of your articles.
daniel
Hey Daniel,
I was waiting for someone to bring the internet into this : )
You’re definitely right that the first three stages happen a lot quicker online. Surfers know what they want; and it’s your site’s job to show that you’ve got what they’re looking for and that you are a trustworthy company. Often within seconds.
I think that makes it a lot more important to pay attention to those steps online—a good and visible slogan is one of the best ways to educated web surfers very quickly. Quality page design is one that helps with trust and professionalism.
Great comment, I’m going to have to write more about this in a post.
- Mason
I like this article very a lot. It is very informative. I would say the most important part of it is to make your customer and/or viewer interested. If they are not, they are never coming back unless they have to. You should make them want to come back. Some times it is as simple as having a nice layout even. Interactivity is nice too.
When we have a new customer at our doorstep, then we feel that we have taken one more step towards success. When we have a lifelong customer, we feel that our company is gaining popularity with trust that shows a wonderful future. We must be kind to our customers so that we can forms a positive image in front of them.
Hey Mason,
I know you’re all having an intelligent discussion here, but I wanted to dro by and say that anyone who can work a kitten shot into a marketing post gets major kudos from me. [insert kudos here] You rule.
So often I see marketing and sales separated into individually wrapped packages. What is interesting is the fact that simple taking your headers and stringing them along shows the gradual dynamic between a company and their customer - apply sales and marketing to those and I suddenly notice that the roles shift back and forth.
jr_sci: Absolutely right, every single lifelong customer can make a huge difference.
Naomi: What can I say, I like cats.
Shane: It really is amazing how many things are interconnected in business, especially anything having to do with customers. Customers rarely see a business as having individual parts, they just see the whole experience and wrap it into one ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feeling. I think that makes it really important to consider how it all fits together. From reading your website, I’m sure you’re way ahead of me with that one.
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