How easy do you make it for prospective clients or customers, to spend their money with you?
That may sound like an odd question. After all, every business owner should be making the purchasing process as effortless as possible. As you know, this is often not the case. In fact, we regularly encounter challenges that stop us from choosing a particular vendor.
Thankfully, it’s not that hard to significantly improve your sales (or client acquisition numbers), by paying attention to the following 4 areas.
1. Make it as easy as possible for people to contact you
A common mistake most business owners make, is to require too much information on their contact forms. When someone is making an initial enquiry via your website, you need their email address, name and message. That’s it. Just the most basic details so you can contact them.
Every additional piece of information you’re asking for, loses you enquiries from prospective clients.
Ask for the minimum amount of information to get the maximum amount of enquiries.
It makes absolutely no sense to have unnecessary hurdles in the way, which are reducing the number of enquiries you get. And as you know, fewer enquiries means fewer clients. Remember, you can get whatever information you need, after you’ve connected with them. At this point it’s a lot more comfortable for the prospective client.
You’ll get everything you require, without losing all those valuable enquiries.
2. Be open for business when they need you
Most businesses copy the opening hours of their competitors. A better model, is to base your opening hours on the needs of your marketplace.
If you’re available when your marketplace needs you, but your competitors are not, you win. Being available doesn’t mean using a call-handling firm to take details. It doesn’t mean having an AI bot on your website. It means having a member of your team available, who can provide an informed, human connection.
Sounds like a bit of a pain, right?
Exactly!
That’s why your competitors aren’t doing it. And why the opportunity to gain a huge advantage could be staring you in the face.
3. Provide flexible payment options
I’m often amazed at the limited payment options offered by small businesses. That’s never a smart move, but during a global economic crisis, it’s a potentially fatal error.
Thankfully, it’s totally avoidable.
Thanks to services like PayPal, it has never been easier for small business owners to accept payment via credit card, debit card and charge cards. And if you factor the payment fees into your prices correctly, all those additional transactions needn’t cost you a penny.
Important: If you use a lesser-known payment provider, because they’re a little cheaper, be aware that many (and I mean many) prospective customers won’t trust them. Consider the cost to you in lost sales, against the gains you make from lower transaction costs. There’s almost always a significant trade-off, in my experience.
4. Use Risk Reversal
I do this with my Pick My Brain service and people love it. It works like this. If someone uses the service and doesn’t believe it’s worth the fee, I offer them an immediate, 100% refund. It means they can hire me with total peace of mind. No one has ever requested a refund, but the offer shows how confident I am, that I will provide massively more value than they pay for.
Clearly, this type of risk reversal doesn’t work for every business model. However, if you think it could work for you it’s definitely worth exploring.
Take a moment to review the suitability of those four options for your business. Any one of them could potentially bring a significant improvement to your business.