To master the art of sales you need to look beyond enticing your potential customers to engage with your business, but know how to keep them moving through the sales funnel all the way to the payment. Many businesses get lost when it comes to the sales funnel. These businesses are able to generate leads, but they are unable to convert these potential customers into paying customers.

Successful lead engagement will require the creation of a personal relationship with the customer. While the days of face-to-face sales are fading, personal methods are still at the heart of sales. The personalization of the sales approach is actually what makes modern sales successful. Technology also provides businesses with a way of tracing engagement and a focus for sales efforts.

The challenge is creating this connection in the heavily competitive modern world. However, this is possible when you use the right techniques. If you want to increase your conversion rates you should look at 5 essential tips.

Provide Value

Before you look at anything else, you need to provide value to your customer. This is the start of the sales process and the heart of the hook which leads to the end sale. You need the customer to see the value in the offer you make and provide them with something they want. The value proposition is often so obvious that many businesses do not properly think this through, but crafting this is the vital first step that you have to take.

Are you going to offer something that makes their life better or easier? Does your product replace something negative in their life or does it add something positive to it?

The other aspect of providing value is to give your customers the content they want in a form that they need. There are some customers where this could be direct mail while there are others that would want it in a mobile app. Video content is ideal for many potential customers and you need to consider this. When you provide the right content or the right product in the wrong format, you are not providing the value that your customers need.

Offer Information

Information is power and offers comfort. In order to engage potential customers, you need to offer them as much information about the process as possible. It is important to remember that you will be intensely familiar with the workings of your business, but your potential customers will not be as informed.

You should not wait for your potential customers to come to you with a question or concern, particularly when it relates to the delivery or managing of potential problems. You should always reach out to them first when you have any new information. When you keep your customers in the loop you will show that you are invested in them and want to offer them a sense of being a valuable part of the business process. A simple email or blog post could be enough to keep your potential customers in the loop, but you need to look at the contact method that is appropriate.

Maintain Integrity

According to Matthew Woodward’s blog honesty is an essential part of the sale process and in building any successful relationship. There is no reason why you should provide a customer or potential customer information that can be misleading. You need to make a commitment to being honest and to operate with integrity regardless of the problems that might come up.

This is particularly important when you are dealing with the efficiency of the product and the timeline of the delivery. You should never promise your customers more than you will be able to deliver and do not hold back on telling them what the process actually is. You will never have to be sorry for telling a customer the truth, but any lies will come back negatively on your company and damage any potential leads.

Create An Experience

It is important to look at the overall experience that you are creating for potential customers and keep in mind that they will be driven by their humanity. You should run through the process from start to finish and think about any improvements that you would make to it. You should keep in mind that each step is not unconnected but needs to work with the one before and after.

You also need to consider the feedback that you get from the process. Are there any gaps in the experience? You need to look at the sales process as a chain and all of the pieces need to be linked to each other. You should then consider how you can tighten the connection between the links to make the experience easier for your leads. Weak links can be amended to create a better chain and make the process more compelling to potential customers.

Tailor The Approach

As you work on the overall experience, you need to ensure that you meet your leads where they are. You have to consider at what point they are entering the sales funnel. Are they researching or are they ready to buy? Your customer engagement efforts should not be the same for someone who is contacting you for the first time as for the person who has contacted you before.

Lead engagement is all about personalization and the individual experience that you offer to your customers. One of the best ways to provide them with a human experience is to amend your message to meet them.