Prospective customers, or prospects, are people who are interested in buying from your company. Prospects are very likely to become your active clients.
So, in a marketing rush, businesses need to gain as many of them as possible.
Thereby, it is a must to know how to convert prospects into real customers and receive your profit.
Difference between a potential client and a real customer
You should know how to differentiate prospects from active customers, so you can communicate with them both correctly.
Let us start with the prospective customer definition.
A prospect is a person intending to buy from you, intending to become your active customer. It is a person with a visible interest in your business’s items or administrations, basically, the one you’ve been already in touch with, although a purchase has not been finalized yet.
A real customer is your existing consumer who has made a purchase/a number of purchases so far. All you need to do with this one is to make sure he or she likes everything and is ready to cooperate in the future, again.
How to turn a prospective customer into a real one?
Now, as you know the differences between potential and real buyers, you must be interested in converting the first one into the second one. You can do it by using the right channels and tools as a part of sales prospecting concept:
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Use fresh communication channels
Commonly, to interact with prospects companies prefer emails and calls, though nowadays technologies offer new forms of communication.
For example, offer your consumers to use a chatbot.
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Stick to a client-oriented strategy
A customer-centric business model, a.k.a. a client-oriented strategy, demonstrates an improvement in consumer satisfaction, retaining customers, bringing in newbies, and boosting sales. With customer-centricity, you start by understanding your customer’s needs, wants, and desires, and after that you outline your business items, management, and campaigns to suit your customers’ needs.
To use this strategy right, you need to clearly define your target audience to make your product a successful shot within the market. It is also essential to make a buyer persona.
To determine the target group, answer one simple question: “Who is interested in buying your product or service?”.
There's also a strategy of analyzing an intended audience called “5W”, where you need to answer 5 questions: Who, what, when, where, and why?
Put simply, you’re looking at everything your business does from the viewpoint of the client. What do they like? What do they need?
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Show how to use your products
Most prospects are eager to find out how the product works. Therefore, it will be useful to show them the total set of features and opportunities your product gives. In other words, you can make a content guide with a detailed introduction of the product.
Once you describe your product, focus on the benefits that the customer gets upon buying your product or service. Most of the audience won't be interested in what you want to sell them, although they will be curious about something that will help them solve their issues and problems, and make their work easier.
If you are a SaaS product, you can offer prospects a free trial. It helps potential buyers to figure out whether your offer fits their needs as well as gives you an extra reason to reach them after the trial terminates.
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Be about people rather than only sales
Don’t try to sell straight away, be a caring person instead. It’s crucial for everyone in your organization to pick your goals and your clients’ needs to be able to convert relationships with prospects into long-term cooperation. A good content plan, competent coworkers, and a good budget don’t guarantee success. You need to become friends with your customers or help them solve their problems, first.
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Send follow-ups for effective customer retention
If your business is not engaging with the prospects, your sales won’t boost, thus there is a need to follow up with your potential client on each step they are at by using a variety of channels, providing relevant content to customers and making sure they don't forget about your product.
Email is the best channel here. It is used by 73% of customers.
Important
Please be advised that you need to get users’ permission to be allowed to send them follow-up emails, like abandoned cart and abandoned browse emails.
Create follow-up emails and automate them to show that your business does care about its users.
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Add prospects to your CRM
CRM system is a vital part of the sales prospecting concept, using it you'll be able to visualize your sales processes. It will help your business to record purchases, monitor their progress, store data about clients to understand how well procedure works as well as maximize conversion and client retention.
Once you add the prospects to your CRM, you won’t forget to send them a follow-up.
