Sales conversion and the common forgotten secret …

When it comes to growing your sales (and profit more importantly) one of the best and most often overlooked strategies is to work on conversion rate. Conversion rate is simply the ratio of customers that buy versus those that enquire. Any gain in conversion goes directly to the bottom line. i.e grow your conversion by 15% and your profit goes up by 15%. Well pretty much …

While there are many ways to improve conversion rate; I’m going to focus on a strategy that anyone can do which is extremely powerful. It’s called authenticity.
Have you ever been talking to someone (common in networking situations) and you can tell they are putting on a bit of a facade? I mean they are trying to be someone they really aren’t. It’s not like they’re acting intentionally, they’re just projecting an image you know is not them. It may not always be conscious but you are just left with the feeling that you didn’t really “connect” with them.
Perhaps you’re a victim of this yourself. It usually happens when we feel ourselves under pressure to perform.
Common in sales is the need to “make the sale” and that brings with it a level pressure for us to get the job done. Often when we feel that pressure, we believe we need to be somebody else in order for the person we are talking to to believe in us. We feel we have to be some superhuman person who has this super awesome product and we get caught up in that belief.
The problem with that situation is you become the non-authentic version of yourself and subliminally your audience is picking up on it.
The answer?
Just relax! Be yourself and be okay with it. Yes, it is important for people to like you; and yes it’s important that people believe in you. The secret is, there is more chance of that happening if you are being yourself. Your TRUE self. The power of authenticity is magnetic.
We’ve all met those people who just seem to “have it all together”, who have a calmness of presence about them. While it can take some work to gain that uber-confidence; as long as you are not burning energy in trying to be someone you’re not, you can put that energy towards focusing on the other person and “being yourself”.
So how do you just be yourself? The trick is not to focus on it. Instead focus on the customer/prospect. If you are in a networking situation, think about how awesome it is going to be to meet all these new people. If you are in a sales situation, task yourself with being 100% present and focused on the other person and their needs. This alone has massive value.
So get to it people…Be great by being authentic!