Tips to get buyers over the line

The rate of growth we can achieve in any business is fundamentally tied to the sales cycle of the product being sold.

So if it takes us 12 months from lead generation to closing the sale, we can improve our growth potential by reducing that to six months. In doing so, our sales resources become more productive, we generate the gross margin quicker, and we are able to fuel expansion faster.

Identifying means by which we can reduce the sales cycle is thus critical to improving growth potential.

One major impediment to a sale is the lack of experience of the prospective customer with the product or service.

While this is not an issue with low cost products, it is a huge problem when the sale is in the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If the first time I get to use my new expensive widget is after I have purchased it, I am going to be very reluctant to commit to the purchase unless I have exhausted every avenue of product evaluation.

We can substantially change this situation by allowing the prospect to try the product before they buy it. Even a limited experience might be sufficient to confirm the purchase decision.

And even if the decision is negative, the seller is better off not wasting additional time with that prospect and can move on to find another.

You see lots of examples of try-before-you-buy situations in the marketplace. You can test drive a car, listen to a CD in the shop, rent an item of equipment from a hire shop, try out a painting or rug in your home, or borrow an item from a friend.

The smart vendor creates a try-before-you-buy environment so that the prospect can reduce their fear of making the wrong decision. However, not everything can be tried out in advance.

It is difficult to try out a haircut or restaurant meal without undertaking consumption. It is hard to choose an adviser before you get the advice, or to have a unique home design undertaken before living in the finished house.

Recognising this problem, we need to go as far as we can to put the customer at ease. Thus videos of the product being used, testimonials of happy customers, limited trials and visits to see the products working in live environments, can all be used to ease buyer resistance.

In this situation we need to be pro-active. Understanding the need for the prospective customer to undertake a usage experience, we can go about our sales strategy with this in mind.

Can we create a usage situation where the customer can partake of the experience? Is it possible to set up a limited demonstration or have items that prospects can borrow for short periods of time? Can we bring them into a live environment so that they can see the product in use, or can we stage such a situation?

We need to constantly be aware of what is troubling our potential buyer to see if we can make their evaluation easier and quicker. In so doing, we will drive higher growth in our business.

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Tom McKaskill is a successful global serial entrepreneur, educator and author who is a world acknowledged authority on exit strategies and the former Richard Pratt Professor of Entrepreneurship, Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.