Increase Conversion with Situational Selling
- by Diane Metz
- Published on 2/13/07
- Article views: 595
When you walk into a sporting goods store, does the salesperson immediately assume that you play hockey? Of course not. In fact, he'd probably never make a sale if he greeted every customer with 'Hi! We've got some great ice skates in just your size. Would you like to see a pair?'
On the other hand, the one-size-fits-all sales pitch -- 'Hello, may I help you?' -- doesn't exactly entice shoppers to break out the old wallet either.
Instead, the really good salespeople are trained to discover details about the customer before trying to pitch a particular item. A question like, 'Hi, how are you? What sport do you play?' is a great opening line. It gets the customer to focus on a general topic, and then persuades him or her to narrow down the choices. And a focused customer is a buyer, not a browser.
What does this have to do with your online sales? Plenty. Especially if you'd like to increase your conversion by 50 percent or more.
You see, if you focus just on increasing traffic without increasing your profit per visitor, well, you're missing out on more money. Or more e-mail opt-ins. Or whatever it is that you do to monetize your site. Fewer clicks and more sales should always be the goal. You'll improve those two metrics when your site successfully gets visitors to focus right away on the homepage and then proceed directly to checkout.
That's where the 'situational sell' can be your super-cyber salesperson. On a website, you can give visitors a few choices that best describe their situation, and entice them to click on the description that puts them into a specific segment of the market.
The situational sell is a way to pitch products and information strictly from the customer's point of view. If you're selling sports merchandise online, you would want to get customers to click on their favorite team right away, and then choose the item they want to buy. After all, a New York Yankees fan isn't interested in looking at merchandise from the Arizona Cardinals. If you're selling real estate, you could ask visitors if they're buying a starter home, a vacation home, or just looking to remortgage an existing home. Think of the situational sell as pre-qualifying your visitors, before they get a chance to wander aimlessly through your site. If you pre-qualify them, you can funnel them through the sales process a lot faster.
One traffic school website who tried this tactic ended up increasing its email opt-ins by a whopping 60 percent! How did they do it? Instead of simply listing the names of the courses it offers, the website asks visitors what type of driver they are, literally. On the site you'll see 3 boxes in a row in the main body area. Each box contains a unique headline, a photo to illustrate the idea, and a description of services within the category.
Box #1 contains the headline 'New Driver?' and includes a picture of teenagers laughing and hanging out in a school parking lot. Box #2 carries the headline 'Too Many Tickets?' and includes a picture of a driver getting a ticket. Finally, Box #3 has the headline 'Trying to pass the state exam?' along with a picture of a recent immigrant holding paperwork.
Under the headlines, a series of links appear. This is also a great place to include your top-tier keywords. Once a visitor clicks on one of those links, he or she is guided to a page specifically geared to sell products or services to their demographic.
The beauty in setting up a 'situational sell' website is that it's a very flexible way to market one type of product to a wide selection of site visitors.
If you're selling e-books or informational products, there will be different features or advantages that you'll want to highlight, depending on the visitor. By segmenting your visitors first on your homepage, you can funnel them to specialized pitches.
The situational sell sounds logical because it is logical. But in the day-to-day minutia of maintaining a website, the big details sometimes get lost in the shuffle. Take a fresh look at your homepage and give your visitors a fresh perspective. Try the situational sell. It will make your visitors comfortable, they'll feel as if you already understand their point of view, and you'll most likely be rewarded with higher conversions.
Diane Metz writes about website marketing and development.
She offers free, unique content to select websites. Her companies include
Crown CD Manufacturing, which specializes in
CD duplication and
CD replication, for marketing, music, promotions and software.
More Articles
-
-
-
» Latest articles
-
» Highest rated articles
- Event Promotion Techniques that really work
If you organise an event, they will show up - the notion could just work. However, if you want an excellent ending for your event, you will need a lot more than just faith and commotion. Even the most reliable events need a powerful promotional drive to fill up the space.
- International Brand Naming And How Words Can Hurt You
It was the famous publicist PJ Barnum who said in 1855 'I do not care what people say about me but get my name right'. In today's international marketplace, getting names right is vital. Marketers and brand managers are becoming more and more concerned that their newly created name will be inappropriate in their target markets.
- Increase Conversion with Situational Selling
When you walk into a sporting goods store, does the salesperson immediately assume that you play hockey? Of course not. In fact, he'd probably never make a sale if he greeted every customer with 'Hi! We've got some great ice skates in just your size. Would you like to see a pair?' On the other hand, the one-size-fits-all sales pitch -- 'Hello, may I help you?' -- doesn't exactly entice shoppers to break out the old wallet either.
- Effective Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
Many business owners would give their left arm to have the same brand recognition as Oprah, Microsoft, McDonald's, Starbucks or Amazon.com. But you don't need the marketing budgets of these behemoths to promote your company and get your piece of the pie. A creative approach to self-promotion will put you face to face with your prospects and, properly executed, can help you become a well-known name.
- Why the Best Marketing Tactics May Fail You
Ever wonder why some marketing tactics work for some businesses but not others? Maybe you heard about a business that paints their company website's URL on the top of their delivery trucks and increased online sales by 25% in a single quarter. However, when you try the same tactic, your sales remain flat.
- Effective Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
Many business owners would give their left arm to have the same brand recognition as Oprah, Microsoft, McDonald's, Starbucks or Amazon.com. But you don't need the marketing budgets of these behemoths to promote your company and get your piece of the pie. A creative approach to self-promotion will put you face to face with your prospects and, properly executed, can help you become a well-known name.
- Increase Conversion with Situational Selling
When you walk into a sporting goods store, does the salesperson immediately assume that you play hockey? Of course not. In fact, he'd probably never make a sale if he greeted every customer with 'Hi! We've got some great ice skates in just your size. Would you like to see a pair?' On the other hand, the one-size-fits-all sales pitch -- 'Hello, may I help you?' -- doesn't exactly entice shoppers to break out the old wallet either.
- Why the Best Marketing Tactics May Fail You
Ever wonder why some marketing tactics work for some businesses but not others? Maybe you heard about a business that paints their company website's URL on the top of their delivery trucks and increased online sales by 25% in a single quarter. However, when you try the same tactic, your sales remain flat.
- International Brand Naming And How Words Can Hurt You
It was the famous publicist PJ Barnum who said in 1855 'I do not care what people say about me but get my name right'. In today's international marketplace, getting names right is vital. Marketers and brand managers are becoming more and more concerned that their newly created name will be inappropriate in their target markets.
- Three Ways to Start a Conversation and Finish with a Sale
Ditch your elevator pitch. Zap your infomercial. And whatever you do, keep your carefully worded, painstakingly developed, positioning statement to yourself. They may make you sound clever, but your elevator pitch, infomercial or positioning statement don’t exactly make for good conversations. Which is a shame, because last I checked, even a sales conversation is just that – a conversation.
- Gain more knowledge by sharing it
ANOVA answers software, the first script that allows webmasters to build answering communities online where users can ask questions and answer in text, audio and video.
- Bright future for students through online education
Knowing is not enough; one must apply what they have learnt! Without education this is not really possible. Education plays a very important role in today's world. Just like oxygen is required by the body to survive, education is required by person for smooth running of life in general.
- Advantages of Taking a CLEP Exam
The College Level Examination Program, also known as CLEP exam, accelerates your educational plans and saves you money! Rather than spending four boring years to get your degree, have you ever considered finishing your degree in only 2 years?
- All about Leucoderma
Leucoderma is a rare skin disease characterized by white spots and patches. In this distressful but not contagious disease, there is a gradual loss of pigment called melanin from the dermal layers that results into white patches. Leucoderma may begin with a small patch but slowly and steadily spreads throughout the body. The actual cause is still not known though several studies have been conducted on the subject. Some of the perceived causes are emotional stress, hereditary factors, worms, sunburns and physical illness.
- History of the Brazilian Bikini
An examination of the history of how the original bikini was developed and how that design has developed into more sophisticated, designer Brazilian bikinis.
- How to Create a MySpace Layout
Creating a MySpace layout might seem tricky when you think about it but it is actually pretty easy. Here's a few steps that will help you in designing myspace templates.
- A History of Vintage Automobiles - From 1916 to 1924
Before cars were around, people usually traveled distances using horse-drawn carriages. But as early as 1335 several bright minds have been trying to come up with a 'horseless carriage'.
- Ecommerce Checkout - Make Them Register
The world of ecommerce is expanding daily as more and more retailers take their business to the web in the hopes of attracting a percentage of those ever finicky web shoppers. As the amount of businesses open up ecommerce shops online, the amount of web development companies is also growing, offering ecommerce solutions for even the smallest of budgets. It is important that web developers understand the dynamics of the checkout process when discussing the options with the client.
- 3 Rules to Follow in Your Logo Design
When designing your own logo or getting it done by logo design professionals, ensure the following three basic rules and you will have a great and memorable corporate identity.
- Top 10 SEO secrets
Today everyone wants to have better search engine result pages ranks. However only one can have the rank 1. Therefore you need to optimize constantly your websites and to have an edge over others you need to do something different and unique. Following are 10 rare tips/secrets which can help you get high search engine ranks.
