Acquiring New Customers

It is so sad to see a customer walk-out of the door empty handed. A potential sale goes up in smoke so does the potential for acquiring a new customer. Nowadays a lot of small businesses turn to plenty of channels to acquire new customers. However some of them are expensive that it acquiring new customers cuts down your business profit. Acquiring new customers does not have to be tedious and expensive.

For start-up businesses every sale counts. As a newbie in the industry you have to make sure that you maximize every customer you acquire, every sale that you make.

The first step to acquiring new customers which will eventually increase sales is to calculate your actual conversion rate. Since you are running an online business, web analytics software should do the trick for you.

The optimal conversion rate of course will vary from business to business depending on the product being sold. However, knowing the ratio is the key because many businesses overestimate this figure. Seeing the actual numbers is a signal for entrepreneurs to focus more on acquiring new customers hence sales are improved.

Once conversion quotient is determined, you are on your way to improving it. These strategies will help you close more sales and of course assist you in acquiring new customers.

1. Stress your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Making your business unique, separating it from others is an effective way acquiring new customers. You have got to deliver you message loud and clear.

2. Figure out the bottleneck in your sales process. If you are set on acquiring new customer you also need to analyze the steps required to convince prospects to buy from you and pinpoint the weak spot. Say for example you are in the wedding dress business. To help you acquire new customers you need to show photos of your work, propose a design for your client, price the item etc. Look closely at the pictures you provide are these pictures clear enough? Are these pictures detailed enough for your customers? Figure out the flaws and for sure acquiring new customers will not be far behind.

3. Rewrite the sales pitch. One of the biggest roadblocks to acquiring new customers can be traced to sending the wrong message. Take the home security firm whose opening line will be, “We heard there have been series of break-ins in your neighborhood and we would like to assist you in keeping your house secured.”This approach was a major turn-off so it has to be changed. With the revised opening the firm acquired new customers and hence increased their sales.

As you can see acquiring new customers for your start-up business need not be expensive. It is more of a controllable facet that some entrepreneurs fail to look into. Do not make the same mistake and start acquiring customers for your business and in doing so you also increase the sales of your business.