You’ve Got Leads But Why Aren’t They Buying?

Why leads aren’t turning into sales

When seemingly solid leads don’t turn into actual sales, several issues may be involved. We’ll explore six reasons why your leads may not be buying.  

1. Your leads aren’t ready to buy.

You may be generating qualified leads who aren’t ready to buy right now. For example, according to Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Generation, only 4 percent of website visitors are ready to buy. Yes, they’ve taken the time to check out your website. However, this is the very bottom of the sales funnel. The vast majority of these visitors are only doing preliminary research.

2. You lack timely and consistent follow-up with your sales leads.

Lead nurturing is the process of cultivating a sale by anticipating a potential buyer’s needs and understanding where they are in the sales process. For example, prospects should receive immediate acknowledgment if they’ve taken a desired action, such as filling out a web form or signing up to receive emails.

Effective lead nurturing is crucial. Many leads never turn into sales, and lack of lead nurturing is the most common cause of poor performance. Marketo found that high-level lead nurturing results in 50 percent more sales at a 33 percent lower cost. Additionally, according to a widely referenced statistic from Annuitas Group, nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than those who buy immediately.  

3. You don’t have enough website content to inform the prospect.

Since many online visitors are in the discovery phase, your website must have compelling content. The prospects are there for information, so you must provide everything they may want to know. Your goal is to keep customers on your website by presenting high-quality, engaging content while establishing your company as an expert in its field and generating goodwill. 

Your website may have the following problems that can cause visitors to lose interest:

• Inconsistency: According to Stephanie Pelaez, digital marketing lead at Pierpont Communications, your website messaging must be consistent with your marketing and advertising. “From a paid campaign perspective, you must ensure your ad copy and assets are cohesive with your landing page,” Pelaez advised. “If you take the user to a website that does not have the same messaging as the ad, then there is a higher chance for them to click out and not convert, ending the user journey early.” 
• No urgency: Megan Taylor, copywriter and messaging expert at The Copy Template Shop, stresses that a sense of urgency is crucial to a cohesive marketing campaign that generates sales. “When a prospect lands on your site through a paid ad or high-intent search keyword, urgency is the game,” Taylor noted. “Ask yourself: are you giving them a reason to buy right now? Are you giving them a discount, a bonus or a free trial? Are you showing them why they need this specific solution today and why you’re the best option?”
• No clear call to action (CTA): Users may be interested but not know precisely how to proceed. “From an organic perspective, where the organization receives free high-quality traffic, the website content must be engaging and have clear calls-to-action,” Pelaez explained. “The best thing I learned about copywriting and page optimization for conversions is that you have to tell the user what you want them to do for them to convert.”

4. The leads aren’t qualified.

The leads you’re generating may not be your actual target audience. If you attract attention with online giveaways or wild claims, you’ll draw people who want something for nothing. These individuals never had any intention of buying in the first place. 

One way to tell if leads are qualified is to utilize lead scoring — ranking potential customers using specific criteria to determine which leads are ready to purchase and which are unqualified. For example, if you sell expensive equipment to other businesses, a startup wouldn’t be a qualified business-to-business lead prospect since it probably can’t afford what you’re selling. Iif you sell wedding cakes, people who aren’t engaged wouldn’t be qualified leads. 

Tim Peters, chief marketing officer at Enghouse Systems, advises businesses to target leads more precisely by using intent-driven keywords, building detailed customer personas, and carefully segmenting audiences. “It’s essential to focus on quality over quantity by refining your SEO, paid search, and referral strategies to attract users who are most likely to convert,” Peters explained. “Scaling back irrelevant traffic can result in higher conversion rates and more actionable insights.”

5. Your team is making ineffective sales pitches.

To convert your leads successfully, you need a refined, effective and confident sales pitch. Your sales pitch is crucial whether you’re making it via a website product page, phone call or in-person meeting. 

A good sales pitch considers the customer’s needs, budget and hesitations and preemptively answers objections. It uses facts and emotions to make a sale, appealing to the prospect’s emotions and using facts to support their buying decision. 

If you suspect your team’s sales pitches are causing your lack of conversions, listen to sales calls, sit in on meetings and analyze your product page. After gathering information, modify your training and materials to build a sales team with top-notch sales pitches.

6. Your website offers a poor user experience. 

Imagine that a prospect comes to your website, ready to buy, but is then confused and frustrated by your website design and functionality. Next thing you know, they’re gone — along with your sale. 

An effective website user experience ensures prospects can easily find the information they want and purchase your products or services effortlessly. A good user experience includes the following: 

• Clean, attractive and uncluttered website design
• Well-written and error-free copy
• Code without bugs
• Logical flow of information
• Clear navigation elements
• Call-to-action buttons, such as “Buy Now”
• Fast page load speeds

How to turn potential customers into buyers

Most companies don’t know what to do or where to start. What sort of communication moves customers closer to making a purchase? How do you get them to buy? Will a hard sell work, or will it alienate the prospect?

It’s easy to believe there’s a laundry list of things you need to do before making a sale. But really, you only need to do five things well to get customers to buy:

1. Agitate their problems, solve them, then repeat.
2. Stay in regular communication.
3. Make regular deposits in your customer’s emotional bank account.
4. Provide value.
5. Get a steady stream of “micro-yeses.”

1. Agitate prospects’ problems, solve them, then repeat.

Problems get our attention much more than solutions. In a classic study, the late professor and researcher John Cacioppo showed that people have intense and immediate reactions to things they perceive as negative.

Problems create fear and anxiety but solutions relieve these emotions:

1. Remind leads of their pain: Tell them about the pain they’re experiencing due to their problem and the consequences of leaving it unsolved — or only partially solved with a less adequate solution.
2. Offer a solution: Show prospects how your product or service will solve their problem and how solving this problem will make them feel, such as relieved, happy, proud or secure. To make them feel confident in buying from you, deal with their objections proactively and provide social proof, such as testimonials, reviews and the size of your customer base.
3. Repeat as necessary: If the sales process involves multiple interactions, address different pain points, revisit the original pain points and repeat the process until the prospect takes action. Toward the end, ask the prospect if they have any unanswered questions or concerns to uncover additional pain points to address.

2. Stay in regular communication with your prospects.

Create and stick to a prospect contact schedule that details how and when you’ll reach out to them. Depending on the type of product or service you’re selling and its cost, you may want to contact prospects one to three times a week. 

More frequent communication is appropriate closer to receiving the initial lead, becoming less frequent as time goes on. If you contact prospects only a couple of times and then ignore them, you’re leaving money on the table. 

3. Make regular deposits in your customer’s emotional bank account.

A marriage proposal on the first date scares off most people. Yet that’s the same mistake most companies make when they expect customers to buy right away. Do you want them to commit? Here’s how to make regular deposits in their emotional bank account:

1. Start by giving: This doesn’t mean flooding prospects with content marketing spam. Instead, give them the information and solutions they want and find out what they want by asking and observing.
2. Gauge their responses: Ask your customers about their problems and watch how they respond. Did they respond well to your infographics? Are customers raving about your latest blog post?
3. Generate more deposits: Use the data you’ve accumulated to create more information and solutions. Do everything you can to give consistently to customers before asking for a commitment. But whatever you do, don’t abandon the relationship.

4. Provide value so prospects know they’ll get their money’s worth.

Prospects must feel that your products and services are worth their money. This includes the actual product and its features as well as your company’s customer support, warranty or guarantee, return and exchange policy, instructions and documentation. 

Here’s how to show prospects they’re getting their money’s worth for an excellent value:

• Back your offering: Let your prospect rest easy knowing your company fully backs the product or service. Offer detailed information about warranties and guarantees and showcase your customer service offerings, including live chat support.
• Ensure your offering is the latest and greatest: Assure prospects that your product is based on the latest industry information and isn’t outdated.
• Offer future support: If you provide updates or discounts on future versions, let your prospects know.
• Showcase your expertise: Before the sale, demonstrate your value by providing helpful content, frequently asked questions, case studies, and other information that showcases your expertise and customer care.

5. Get a steady stream of ‘micro-yeses.’

Remember when you signed up for a free offer and got an unexpected phone call the next day? Remember how persistent they were — how they wanted you to buy something you weren’t quite ready for?

If you’re like most people, that approach didn’t work.

Mastering the “micro-yes” is vital to closing more sales. A new customer relationship is fragile; there’s only so much it can handle. These people usually aren’t ready to buy an expensive, premium product immediately — it takes time.

It’s sort of like school: It’s not a great idea to stick a first-grader with eighth-grade work. Treat your prospects like that first-grader. Give them “grade-appropriate” material and time. Then, give them legitimate reasons to say yes repeatedly so you can move them to the big yes (whatever that is for you). 

Taylor emphasizes that patience with the process is key. “If a website visitor found you organically on Google and [reads] a blog post, they might be in the research stage of their journey and not ready to buy — yet,” Taylor explained. “That’s your chance to offer them a free guide or resource — something they can’t resist, and that helps with their immediate problem — so they join your email list, where you can further nurture them toward that sale.”

If that sounds like a long process, that’s because it often is.

What not to do when closing a sale

Keep these “don’ts” in mind when implementing your sales process:

• Don’t manipulate prospects: Working with a customer’s wants means agitating what’s already there, shortening the sales cycle. Manipulating a customer’s wants means acting dishonestly, introducing something that’s not there (or twisting something that is). As soon as customers believe you’ve manipulated them, they’ll get angry and want out.
• Don’t pressure prospects: While it’s OK to introduce urgency with such phrases as “limited-time offer” or “get it before it’s gone,” customers get turned off if they feel like they’re in a sales pressure cooker. While you may prefer to close the sale in one visit, this is not always feasible. Even if you get a quick sale, the customer may have sales remorse and cancel the transaction. 
• Don’t give your pitch without listening to the prospect: Many organizations give their sales team a pitch script they must memorize and give precisely as written. While a pre-written sales pitch ensures the salesperson covers all of a product’s features and benefits, reciting without listening to the customer can backfire. For best results, take pauses to let the customer comment or ask questions, and then address them before picking up the pitch again. Let your prospects know you’ll answer their questions in detail a little later once you’ve given them the basics.
• Don’t make promises you can’t keep: When you overpromise, you may get the sale, but you also may end up with a cancellation, a terrible reputation, or both. Unhappy customers love telling others about their disappointing experiences, causing short-term and long-term damage to the company. Be honest about your product’s capabilities and redirect the focus toward positive aspects. Ask questions to guide the prospect toward the sale, such as “How will you feel when you no longer need to [deal with the problem]?” and “Is [feature] important to you?”