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What is a sales conversion rate?

Understanding your numbers is vital for success, but so many don’t have a target or don’t understand some of the basic, important factors.

One of the most important is your sales conversion rate.

But what is your sales conversion rate and why does it matter?

Here we’ll talk about what it is, how to measure it and, most importantly, provide some strategies to help improve your conversion rate.

Defining your sales conversion rate.

Your sales conversion rate, or conversion ratio is a simple calculation that let’s you know how many of the potential customers you are speaking with are likely to buy. It helps you to understand your performance and provide clues as to what is and isn’t working so you can adjust your sales strategy moving forwards.

To define it, you need to be clear on when a person becomes a lead – is it when they email/call or enquire on your website? or do you count clickthroughs and advert impressions? We need to be as conservative as possible here.

Once you define what a “lead” is you can then use this number, along with the sales you have made, to get your sales conversion rate.

Calculating your sales conversion rate.

To calculate the sales conversion rate, follow this simple formula:

Sales Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions / Total Number of Leads) * 100

For instance, if your website generated 500 leads in a month, and out of those, 50 leads made a purchase, your conversion rate would be 10% [(50 / 500) * 100]. Monitoring this rate over time allows you to track performance trends and identify potential issues that might be hindering your sales process.

Factors that affect your sales conversion rate.

There are a myriad of factors that can affect your conversion rate, but getting the basics right can really help. Your buyer is trying to make the best decision possible for themselves and be sure that they can get the result they’re looking for, without wasting time or money.

Here are 3 simple things to consider:

1 – Are you speaking with buyers at the right time? Understanding the trigger point of your buyer and knowing WHEN to speak with them can make a huge difference.

2 – Are you reassuring your buyers you can deliver? Providing evidence, proof and guarantees to minimise risk, helps buyers to feel more confident about proceeding.

3 – Are you making enough offers? Most people don’t ask for the business, or post about their offers enough on social media – are you making enough offers?

How to increase your sales conversion rate.

There are over 50 different strategies you can employ to increase your sales conversion rate.

We cover all of them as part of our simple, actionable and affordable Practical Sales Training™ courses.

Click here to find out more.