Which Conversion Counts the Most?

In our fast paced world of instant gratification, our technology has to be able to keep up. In the marketing world we talk about conversions; does an ad convert into a page visit, does a page visit convert into a lead, does a lead convert into a sale? Meta and Google talk about “custom conversions.” Tracking conversions helps with finding more people like the ones who converted and all these conversions have value, BUT what is the conversion that matters most? Simply put: when your relationship with a prospect becomes a friendship. 

At Direct Success Digital, we are a different kind of a direct response agency. We want to integrate with your sales culture and raise the opportunity level by giving your sales professionals the path to more success by promoting the tools and culture that promote relationship selling. In a world full of bottom line messaging, like "0% for 24 months", we know that closing tools are for closing and they don’t stuff your pipeline effectively. Our clients know how to sell after the fish is on the hook, our job is to find the school. We then work together to marry human and tech actions on how best to get them on the showroom floor where they, the sales staff, can do their thing. 

The conversion that counts is that moment when you are talking about something other than what you’re selling, when you reach that place where you are on a personal level and have gained their trust. Early on in my career, I had colleagues and family members ask me why I “wasted so much time” talking about random stuff with my prospects and clients instead of “getting down to business.” They advised me that I could sell more and manage my time better by being more economical with my words. This, like many life circumstances, leads to me recalling an “on topic” shareable a story:

During my career I was hired by an agency who performed weekend sales events. I knew the owner and lead salesman well and had watched them sell, and noted the difference in their mannerisms. Both were wildly successful and legendary. The difference in the approaches hit home with me and became more of an accidental study after I had observed their techniques. This story is dated and timeless.

I was in my office when a report was errantly sent to me. It was a sales report from a recent college sale in a large piano market, San Francisco. It came across the fax machine just before they became obsolete. These two sales professionals had both worked the event and were part of a 4-man rotation that took the next event visitor in line to show them choices and help them select a piano. My one sales friend was laid back and methodical, and as had been my habit, took more time visiting and getting to know the visitors than the other top performer who was full of energy and could process visitors and sell pianos at a record clip. He had no rival in the industry when it came to the amount of deals he could write at an event. 

My friend on the other hand, the friendlier more deliberate type, had the highest closing ratio. They were both successful in their own way but there was a glaring difference that struck me when looking at the report, and I paraphrase these numbers a bit (barely though) to abide by my ethic to never share proprietary information. They were always 1-2 at the top of the event sales board. I was NOT supposed to be sent the report because I was just the marketing guy, and it's the only one I ever go to study because I told the event coordinator to make sure my fax number was not in the event reporting protocol. I did see this one and it was a lesson in method. The gentleman who owned the event company, who churned and burned, had sold 27 pianos in 3 days totaling $297k in gross sales. He had an $11k average ticket. He had 38 ups, so his closing ratio was a respectable 71%. The minimum goal back in the day was 70% so he was right on the money.

My friend, who worked slower especially at the front end of a selection process, sold 21 of his 25 ups for an 87.5% closing ratio but that was not the telling stat. He grossed $435k in sales making his average sales ticket $21.7k. 

The first year, the other on-the-road, event sales folks gave him a hard time about “getting lapped” on the ups and how slow he worked. As time went on, he became a mentor and went on to an impressive career in sales management, as a managing director overseas and corporate sales manager for Steinway & Sons. 

The moral of the story? He was a mentor and taught me to deepen the relationship enough before doing the discovery. I still do. 

As Alex Hermozi says, ”Duplicate before you Iterate.” I did “monkey see-monkey do” before coming up with my own version. The whole “burn and churn” and “make up for a lack of margin with volume” strategy never fit me anyway. It doesn’t work as well in the luxury marketing space as it does for lower cost, more commodity-oriented items. Bottomline? It's OK to get to know someone and not "get down to business right away.”

The above story illustrates the power in numbers of the most valuable conversion you can make. It matters not how you meet the prospect, on the phone, online, or on the gallery floor. The most important conversion is that magic moment in time when you make a friend and they give you their trust. Most relationships start online these days; that doesn't change the need to be a friend and the chosen concierge. 

Many sales professionals have a "today and today only” price oriented closing approach. They leverage whatever manufacturer financing promo is available and spend a lot of time and effort trumpeting it. They absolutely should use whatever they can to help people save money, but that is a closing tool. It only helps if you have enough folks in the pipeline and someone far enough down the sales funnel for it to be an influence. Don’t be fooled into thinking that an overly aggressive approach will fill the pipeline best; it won't because it won’t help you make friends. Possibly some low hanging fruit sales, but not friendships. If you learn to focus on the most important conversion: making friends, then you will have more people to serve and talk to about the logistics of taking their new piano home.

It’s actually more profitable to be a concierge than a run of the mill, “today and today only” sales person. The consumers are callous and weary of the predictable manipulations. They need a friend. Be one. 

“Build trust and earn attention. The entity which gets the most trust will get the most customers.” - Seth Godin

"Frequency led to awareness, awareness to familiarity, and familiarity to trust. And trust, almost without exception, leads to profit." - Seth Godin