Losing sales opportunities is never something you wish to do. Still, it’s something all businesses will inevitably have to deal with all the time. Ideally, you’d have a 100% lead conversion rate, turning all of your leads into sales. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to ever happen. No matter how good your conversion strategy is, you’re going to miss out on sales. This might discourage you, leading you to think that there’s no point in focusing on your missed sales opportunities. However, there are many times where you’re losing sales that could easily be converted.
What’s the best way to stop yourself from missing out on easy sales? Well, you need to understand why you’re losing them! Here are the top ways businesses lose sales and miss out on opportunities:
Landing pages are the pages that people land on when they click on your online adverts. The best landing pages will direct leads towards a specific decision, based on the purpose of your ads. For example, if your advert is for a new sale, the end goal is to get people to buy products. Therefore, the landing page must reflect this and encourage people to add things to their basket. A great landing page gets straight to the point and directs consumers to the end goal. It explains why they need to do this thing, then makes it easy for them to do it.
Terrible landing pages come in all shapes and sizes. Some examples of key issues include pages that take an age to load, ones that give no information, ones that give too much information, and non-existent landing pages. If a landing page takes ages to load, people will click off it before they even see what it has to say. Similarly, pages with no information are too confusing for consumers, so they just leave the page. If there’s too much info, it gets annoying for the user as they can’t be bothered to read all of it. Again, they click off after a few seconds. Lastly, non-existent landing pages are where you just make people land on a random page of your website that doesn’t connect to the advert. E.g. you advertise the sale, but the landing page takes them to your homepage. You’ve put extra steps between the user and the end goal, so they’re less likely to make a purchase.
As a consequence, you miss out on loads of sales by having awful landing pages. Work on this, and you’ll be surprised at the boost your conversion rate receives.
Lots of businesses still make sales over the phone. This is particularly true of small companies or service-based businesses that rely on consultations/bookings. Therefore, you need to answer the phone when people ring. Remember, consumers are impatient people – and you should know this by looking at yourself. If you try to call a business and receive no reply, what are you likely to do? Sure, you may try again or you may leave a message. What if there’s still no reply after a few hours or a day? The chances are you give up and find another business instead.
Now, from the business owner’s perspective, this is the worst possible thing to happen. Not only have you missed out on a sale, but you’ve driven the consumer to one of your rivals. If the rival company answers right away, they’re as good as gone. Understandably, you might be in the middle of a job or have lots of work going on, meaning you can’t answer all your calls. Not only that, but you also don’t have the time to respond instantly. After all, you have a backlog of calls to return, so they keep piling on top of one another.
The simple solution is to ensure you stop missing out on calls – or at least manage to respond right away. Nowadays, companies like Zintel provide services to notify you of missed calls. This could help you send a message or call someone back immediately, rescuing a sale. Or, if you can afford it, you can outsource your call management to a virtual receptionist. Now, someone will answer all of your calls and forward the messages to you. Here, the consumer knows their message will reach you, so they’ll wait for you to get in touch. Again, there’s no telling how many sales you miss out on by not answering the phone!
Source : https://www.mikegingerich.com/blog/easiest-ways-to-miss-out-on-sales/
