How To Convert Enquiries Into Sales: The Essential Steps

The ultimate goal for any business is to increase revenue and drive growth.

Converting leads and enquiries into sales is a key part of achieving this goal and is fundamental for business success. 

Yet, despite its importance, many brands struggle to consistently convert the prospects they put so much effort into attracting.

In fact, research indicates that only 12% of sales and marketing professionals are fully satisfied with their lead conversion rates.

The lead conversion gap comes at a high price – a significant amount of time, profits and resources can be lost to the void.

So it’s imperative that businesses are well versed in the truly effective strategies that can address this issue.

Fortunately, we’ve compiled an essential guide to help you get the most out of your enquiries and conversion efforts. We’ll cover:

• The importance of the sales funnel
• Top strategies for converting enquiries into sales
• The next step to take your conversion game to the next level

Sales funnel explained

The sales funnel represents the customer journey process, from when a prospect first discovers your brand to when they make a purchase.

It's crucial that you thoroughly understand this process, as it's an essential tool for understanding consumers, generating leads, and converting them into customers.

There are four key stages of a successful sales funnel:

1. Awareness: This is the first step in the purchasing process, at the top of the funnel, when a consumer initially discovers your product or service. Effective marketing campaigns and outreach are key for this stage as they increase brand awareness and visibility.
2. Interest: Once a prospect has become aware of your brand, they'll evaluate it based on their interests, wants and needs. It's likely that they'll research your business and also look into your competitors for comparison and alternative options.
3. Decision: After confirming their interest and gathering the necessary information, a potential customer will be ready to consider making a purchase. They may be debating other businesses alongside yours, so this stage is critical for selling yourself and building a relationship with the client to secure a sale.
4. Action: This is the final stage of the sales process, where the lead makes a purchasing decision and becomes a converted customer.

For any business looking to convert more enquiries into customers, analysing and fine-tuning the sales process is an essential endeavour.

By doing so, you'll capture more leads and increase your chances of getting them to the bottom of the funnel.

Key steps to converting more enquiries

Now that we've covered the importance of the sales process, let's delve into some of the best strategies for optimizing your conversion efforts.

1. Do your research

Researching potential customers is vital if you're looking to increase conversion rates.

Case in point, 43% of marketing professionals report that failing to collect enough data on leads is the greatest barrier to a successful conversion.

So, it's important that you dig into the details when gathering information on your enquiries. Some examples of useful data include:

• Name and contact details
• How and when they contacted your business
• Demographic information
• Purchase intent
• Personal wants, needs, preferences, areas of interest
• Purchase/relationship history with your brand (if any)
• Closing potential
• Revenue potential

Armed with this information, your sales team will be equipped to tailor communication and pitches to the individual.

This personalized approach is a far more effective sales technique than trying to convert in the dark.

Conducting thorough research will also help you establish whether an enquiry is a good fit for your business and a prospect worth pursuing.

2. Improve your follow-up strategy

Following up on enquiries is essential if you want to increase your chances of a conversion.

In fact, 78% of consumers buy from the business that responds to their enquiry first.

That means your response time is critical - the time it takes you to get back to a customer can be the difference between a successful conversion and a failed one.

With Talkative, you can take advantage of social messaging channels like SMS or WhatsApp to communicate with enquiries more quickly and efficiently.

This is a far more effective tactic than the traditional email approach, as 98% of text messages are actually read by consumers, compared to just 22% of emails.

It's also easier to provide a humanized digital customer experience through messaging channels. 

A generic email from a faceless organization just doesn't have the same impact as a personalized message via social platforms.

By following up with social media customer support tools, you can boost customer delight, improve response times, and strengthen the emotional connection between a lead and your brand.

Ultimately, a fast and personalized follow-up demonstrates that your brand is reliable and values customer time. 

If you take too long to respond, you'll risk losing a potential client to your competitors.

3. Practice lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of cultivating relationships with potential customers with the goal of getting them to the bottom of the sales funnel.

The aim is to build trust and rapport, demonstrate brand credibility, and educate your enquiries so they can make an informed decision about your product or service.

Nurturing is primarily achieved through consistent communication with leads and enquiries which helps keep your brand at the forefront of their mind.

To make your lead nurturing efforts as effective as possible, you should aim to do the following:

• Make use of a variety of engagement channels to communicate with prospects - don't just rely on emails! Remember that a typical customer journey involves between five and twenty touchpoints.
• Aim to provide a personalized experience with all customer communications
• Establish a social media presence and use it to build your brand image and strengthen the emotional connection between consumers and your brand
• Align your sales and marketing teams for strategy consistency

Proactive nurturing is crucial to conversion success because it keeps leads engaged with your brand and makes them feel valued. This can prevent them from losing interest in your products/services or abandoning your business for a competitor.

Consequently, the nurturing process can have a significant impact on whether an enquiry decides to become a customer or not.

4. Have clear CTAs

Having clear Call To Actions (CTAs) on your website is key to increasing the chances of a lead becoming a sale.

CTA prompts are useful signposts that tell potential customers the next steps or actions they should take. They encourage enquiries to progress to the next stage of the sales funnel.

All CTAs should be relevant, on-brand, and easy to see/follow. You can increase the chance of success by making them visually engaging or interactive.

Without explicit CTAs, consumers may struggle to see the route to making an enquiry or purchase - they're the key to making leads say yes to your brand.

5. List your prices

Being clear about what you're charging for your products/services is essential for conversion success.

Enquiries are far more likely to end up purchasing from you if they know from the get-go how expensive it's going to be. They'll also put more trust in a brand that is upfront about its prices.

You can even use price information to your advantage by offering competitive rates or enticing new customer discounts.

If you don't list prices on your website, you'll likely end up wasting time on enquiries who are just trying to find out what they are.

By clearly displaying costs, you'll ensure that the enquiries you receive are from those who are genuinely interested in purchasing from your brand.

6. Connect better with customers

If you want to convert more enquiries, you need to ensure that you can connect with them effortlessly, via the right channel, at the right time.

And what's the best way to do that? By empowering your customer advisors with an innovative platform that can facilitate a truly bespoke and personalized customer experience.

With the Talkative platform, you'll gain a complete suite of digital engagement channels that will power better customer conversations and forge stronger relationships.

This will enable you to provide a level of digital customer service that is akin to the in-store experience in a way that other brands and customer support software fall short.

By setting yourself apart from the crowd with Talkative, you'll provide the superior customer experiences that are key to converting leads and enquiries into happy and loyal customers.

The takeaway

Turning enquires and leads into sales can be a challenging endeavour for many businesses.

The tactics detailed in this article provide a solid foundation to build upon in your efforts to improve conversion rates.

But, ultimately, the answer to converting more enquiries rests in the hands of the people that interact with them every day - your customer contact teams.

These advisors are the lifeblood of digital sales and the front-line ambassadors of your business. 

That's why they deserve to be equipped with a platform that'll allow them to thrive and reach their full potential as experts of your brand.

And that's where Talkative comes in.

With our Consultative Service Platform, you and your customer advisors can supercharge revenue and provide experiences that truly delight.

That's why Talkative is your key to contact center profitability.

Want to see for yourself? Book your demo with us today, and discover how Talkative can help you convert more enquiries into sales.