Sales Leads - How to Redesign Your Website to Generate More Online Sales and Sales Leads

A question I get asked frequently by clients goes something like this:

"My company's website doesn't generate many online sales or sales leads. What can we do to get our website to produce more sales and leads?"

As soon as I hear this question, I have a pretty good idea what I will see when I visit the client's website. Chances are it will include one or both of the two most common flaws that prevent websites from generating sales leads:

Flaw #1: The home page focuses on the COMPANY rather than the VISITOR.

"We do this." and "We're the best because." and "We've won all these awards." You know what? Website visitors don't care! At least, they don't care yet.

When visitors arrive at a website, they are thinking about themselves and their own problems. What they want to learn (as quickly as possible) is whether the company can help them solve THEIR specific problems. There is a time to build credibility by talking about the awards the company has won, its stellar customer list, etc. But, that time comes later in the sales process.

Flaw #2: The language on the home page is stilted, boring, and includes lots of very big (and probably very technical) words.

Maybe that kind of language works for very specific kinds of visitors. What about the average consumer or businessperson? Will they be able to figure out what the company does? Will they be willing to invest the time required to puzzle out what the big words and jargon mean?

Just about every website will generate more online sales and sales leads if it is redesigned to do the following three things:

1. Help visitors RAPIDLY answer two questions:

"What does this company do?", and
"Is there anything here for me?"

How much time do you think your website visitors are willing to spend trying to figure out whether your company can help them? If they are like most website visitors, the answer is probably between three and ten seconds. That's it! That's how long you have to grab your visitor's attention and entice them to learn more about your company's products and services!

The best way to accomplish this goal is to tell your visitors, in plain English, the kinds of problems you can help them solve and specific, QUANTIFIED results you have produced for current and past customers. That's the kind of information that really grabs people's attention!

2. Encourage visitors to OPT-IN to receive free information resources.

If you can motivate a visitor to opt-in to receive information from you, the website visit is no longer a one-shot opportunity. And, if you deliver truly useful information on a regular and consistent basis, you will earn the visitor's trust and build a relationship with them over time. This will increase the likelihood that the visitor will eventually buy from you.

There is a catch. Many people feel overburdened by the amount of e-mail they already receive. Why on earth would a website visitor sign up to receive MORE e-mail from YOU?

The best way to overcome this reluctance is to offer to offer visitors something of value if they will provide just their first name and e-mail address. (The more information you require visitors to provide, the fewer sign-ups you will receive.) One very effective approach is to offer a free special report or mini-course that will help your visitors solve a specific, important problem. Make sure your special report or mini-course has a compelling title such as, "Twelve Things You Should Know Before You (fill in the blank)."

3. Motivate ACTION

If a website page is going to motivate a reader to take action, the focus needs to change from you, your company and your products and services to your visitors and their problems.

Web pages that motivate action are not distant or aloof . Instead, reading them feels like a one-on-one conversation between you and the reader. The copy invokes the reader's emotions, plus provides enough supporting details to enable the reader to feel comfortable making a decision. The copy ends with a clear and compelling call to action. This is where you ask the visitor to make an online purchase, contact your company for more information, or take some other action.

This very specialized form of copywriting is called a "sales letter". You have probably received sales letters in the mail or seen a similar type of advertising in television infomercials. Some sales letters and infomercials sound pretty "cheesy"; yet, for decades sales letters have repeatedly proven to be one of the most productive forms of direct marketing.

The biggest criticism you'll hear about sales letters (usually from corporate website designers) is, "This copy is much too long! Nobody's going to take the time to read that much information!"

You know what? The critics are ALMOST right. Probably 95% of readers will not read any given sales letter in its entirety. That's OK, because sales letters are not written to appeal to everyone! They are written to appeal to specific individuals who have the specific problems the sales letter addresses.

Most people will skim a sales letter... IF it has a compelling headline or sub-headline that catches their attention. They may read a paragraph or glance at a few bullets. If the paragraph or bullets are compelling, they may read another paragraph. Once they have read several compelling pieces of information, they may decide to go back and read the sales letter from the beginning. At this point the chances dramatically increase that the reader will take the action the sales letter recommends.

Conclusion

If you want your website to generate online sales and/or leads, it needs to do three things:

1. Help visitors rapidly figure out what your company does and whether you can do anything for them.
2. Encourage visitors to opt-in to receive regular, value-added communications (so that you can build relationships and earn trust).
3. Motivate action.

To motivate action, change every page that describes one of your company's products or services to a sales letter. Make sure each sales letter includes a compelling "call to action", whether it is making a purchase or contacting your company for more information.

Change the focus of your website from you, your company, and your company's products and services to your visitors and their problems - and watch the online sales and leads roll in!

Copyright 2007 - Alan Rigg

Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don't Perform and What to Do About It. His company, 80/20 Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.

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Zero to Hero

I once worked for a company which had 120 salespeople, initially I did quite well and made the top ten from time to time. But a few months later, my results deteriorated and I went for over a week without a sale. The usual negative spiral set in; I was depressed, so I didn’t make much effort and unsurprisingly my sales performance hit rock bottom.

The company did not tolerate this sort of thing for very long, it was bad for the others’ morale. In fact, if you didn’t get at least one sale every three days, you got a talking to from one of the managers, twice that period and you were fired. It was only my earlier good performance which saved me from that fate.

‘Go out with one of the people who is doing well and see what you need to do to fix your problem’ said my manager. The person I accompanied was an 18 year-old girl and this was the first job she had ever done. At that point, I had been in sales for 15 years. On the face of it, there wasn’t much that she was going to be able to teach me.

Wrong.

As Michelle did her presentation, I was highly impressed by her level of enthusiasm. Every aspect of the product was AMAZING, and she bubbled away to the customers and they mirrored her excitement. When it came to matters technical, she just said, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out for you’, then she continued with her high-energy showing.

Even though I really didn’t feel like it, with my next prospect, I gave the highest enthusiasm show I could muster and bingo – my first sale in a long while. With that success achieved, the positive feelings and adjectives came a lot easier and my one-off sale turned into a roll.

A sales slump hits most people in selling sooner or later. We see the same features, promotional offers continuously and whatever magic they have initially dwindles to a yawn pretty quickly. But for the people we are selling to this is all new and attractive so don’t let your own over-familiarity dull what the customers feel.

Put a healthy dose of zip and kerpow into your presentation. It worked for me.

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