As soon as a prospective customer views a product description wherever you market your wares, you’ve succeeded in capturing the interest of that person, but now you have a new goal—convincing the person to buy the product.

Converting an interested shopper into a paying customer (closing the sale) is not simply something that happens at the very end. It unfolds over the course of the transaction. As a retailer, then, the key strategy is to Always Be Closing. This article explains just what that means.

Grasping the decision cycle

Understanding the buyer’s thought process during the buying cycle can provide you with some insight on how to Always Be Closing throughout the sale. Most experienced sales people already understand the four-step process that a buyer uses to make a purchase decision:

1. Perceive a need or desire: Early in the sales process, with marketing and advertising, your primary role may be to assist someone in recognizing a need or desire that the person hasn’t yet considered.
2. Consider products or services that meet those needs: With your product description and photos, you have the opportunity to demonstrate to your customer that you have the ideal product for meeting the needs or desires of the person.
3. Compare value: Once customers have discovered a product or service that meets their needs, they want to feel as though they’re getting a good deal on the product. At this stage, you either want to have a competitive price or enough added value (primarily in relation to customer service) to make your higher price attractive.
4. Evaluate risks: Sales often fall through at the final stage, when customers either don’t trust the salesperson or simply feel uncomfortable about moving forward. By building customer clear trust and simplifying the checkout process, you can often close a higher percentage of sales that reach this point.

The following sections offer some additional tips on how to catch a customer’s interest and hold onto that customer throughout the buying cycle.

Image by starryeyez024

Selling the benefits in your listings

Most online shoppers already have recognized a need for a product, and they’re on the Internet to find products that meet those needs. As an online retailer, you can gain an edge over your competitors by using keywords to make products easier to find and by selling the benefits in your product listings and descriptions.

Selling the benefits means that instead of focusing solely on a product’s features, you focus on the customer’s needs. Your product description and photos should show and tell customers specifically how the product will improve their lives.

Caution: When adding keywords to make products easier to find, don’t stuff your listing with keywords that are unrelated to the product in an attempt to have your products pop up no
matter what a person searches for. This simply annoys people.

Creating a professional listing

To begin increasing sales immediately, make your listings as professional looking as you can. Having a professional listing involves the following:

• Write engaging and descriptive text. As an online retailer, you rarely have the chance to talk to your customers. All they see are the text and images you use to promote your business and your products. Make sure the text is engaging, entertaining, descriptive, well-written, grammatically correct, and typo-free.
• Go easy on graphics and animations. Forget the flaming fireballs, dancing wizards, barking dogs, and anything else that has nothing to do with the item you’re selling. If an image doesn’t serve a specific purpose to help you sell an item, leave it out.
• Use clear photos. Avoid product images that lack detail, are too small, are blurry, or just plain don’t look very good. Visit the manufacturer’s website to see if they have any packages containing promotional images or brochures containing images you can use.

Offering a great deal

Ever wonder why some retail chains seem to be constantly running sales? It’s because they know that sales draw customers looking for great deals.

Many retail stores will advertise a sale without even marking down any prices! It doesn’t matter though, because as long as customers think they’re getting a good deal, they’re much more likely to buy something.

Building customer trust

With Internet fraud on the raise, customers tend to get the jitters when ordering products online. Many customers are happy to pay more for products from established retailers, including Amazon.com, to reduce the anxiety of ordering from a lesser-known company.
Tip: Go light on the policies. Don’t bog down your buyers with a huge list of policies that might scare them off. In the policies you decide to include, try to sound neutral rather than angry
or aggressive. You want a person to buy from you, not scare them off with threats to report them to eBay and leave negative feedback.

Simplifying the checkout process

It’s not uncommon for 30 to 40 percent of prospective customers to stick an item in their shopping carts and exit an online store without proceeding through the checkout process and finalizing the order. This phenomenon, know as shopping cart abandonment, plagues most online retailers, but you can reduce the incidence of shopping cart abandonment by simplifying the checkout process and nurturing a sense of trust.
By employing a few proven sales and marketing strategies and following the ABC’s of selling, you can close a much higher percentage of sales. Keep the buying decision process in mind as you create your product listings and set up your online retail business, and remember to Always Be Closing.