Closing With Confidence: Convert Leads Into Paying Customers

Closing With Confidence: Convert Leads Into Paying Customers

Generating leads is hard enough, but how do you convert them into paying clients? Here are six tips to help you close deals with confidence.

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The sales cycle for healthcare consultants is a lot longer and more challenging than in many other industries. Bringing leads into your sales funnel takes a digital marketing strategy that cuts through the noise, and a message that strikes a cord with your busy and inundated audience. That’s no easy feat.

Thankfully, Perla simplifies this process for consultants. Through the B2B matching service, advisors who work in healthcare law, practice management, finance, banking, and accounting create profiles to advertise their services, with dozens of subcategories to better define their areas of expertise. Doctors and healthcare executives who are members of trusted healthcare and trade organizations can search the Perla consultant database for advisors who specialize in their niche.

Every Perla user who views your profile is a verified healthcare professional in a position to hire, drastically increasing your lead accuracy compared to traditional digital marketing and ensuring you never waste time (or money) on leads that won’t convert.

But even after you connect with leads on Perla, the sales process is far from over. While working with high-quality leads will automatically increase your conversion rate, you’re still tasked with establishing trust, building a relationship, and closing the deal. Here are six tips to convert your Perla leads with confidence.

1. Convey What You Really Offer Clients

The way you perceive and understand your work may be different from how clients understand it. While you’re aware of the latest developments in your industry, your client is probably focused on just one thing: how you can solve their problems. When discussing your services, avoid using buzzwords or industry terms that might confuse or cause them to lose interest. Speak authentically in plain language that centers around meeting their needs rather than on impressing them.

Also remember that your professionalism and customer service are other aspects of the expertise you want to showcase to potential clients. When leads reach out to you, respond to them within 12 to 24 hours. This is especially important in the Perla platform. While you’ll receive emails about leads, it’s up to you to follow up with them directly.

2. Practice Your Pitch

Many mistakenly believe that if you are a good public speaker, you’ll be good at pitching — but the latter takes a different approach. In speeches, you have a captive audience, a set time to speak, and a memorized monologue. A pitch, on the other hand, occurs within a conversation, and needs to flow organically. Even though it’s different from a prepared speech, you won’t nail it without a lot of practice.

First, write out your offerings and value proposition in a few sentences. Say it out loud to make sure it sounds natural. Make edits and then recite it again until it’s easy for you to deliver. Later, write down questions you may get from prospective customers, and the answers you can provide. Practice and edit these answers as well until they are easy to say out loud.

Try reciting your answers in front of a mirror. When you’re ready, enlist friends, family members, or colleagues to roleplay as potential clients, so you can practice your pitch on them. You’ll know you’re ready for the real thing when you can speak about your work with poise and confidence.

3. Set the Tone

Presenting your services to new people can be nerve racking, but you can get ahead of anxiety. Many of the same tips for a job interview apply to a sales presentation as well.

If you’re meeting a prospective client in person, arrive on site at least ten minutes early, so you can see the lay of the land and get comfortable. Make small talk with people there to calm your nerves. For video meetings, log in a few minutes early so you can get used to being on camera, as well as make changes to your background. For phone calls, try standing during the conversation to stay alert and feel empowered.

4. Let the Client Talk

Successful pitches aren’t about dominating a conversation — they’re about building rapport with the customer and ensuring you really understand each other. Give the potential client time to talk about their own background and what they need from you. This will help establish the trust and give you better insight into how to help them. 

Close listening also helps build a personal connection to your potential client. The more you listen, the more insight you gain into their interests or personal life. Feel free to comment on what they share or use the opportunity to share more about yourself — especially if you have something in common.

5. Ask the Right Questions

Language can either expand or limit how we understand each other — this especially applies to the terminology used in different industries. Key performance indicators may vary in different industries, or people may use jargon incorrectly without realizing it. When your clients are outlining their problems, don’t just listen — ask follow up questions to make sure you understand exactly what they mean.

Never fall into the trap of believing that questions show ignorance. For example, whenever a potential customer mentions specific metrics they’re struggling with, ask them to clarify these metrics. The better you understand your client, the more of your expertise you can confidently bring to the table. That’s the basis of good service.

6. Be the Solution

Follow all of this advice, and you should have all the information you need to close the deal. When you’ve conveyed what you can offer a prospective customer, know exactly what their pain points and goals are, and have begun building a personal connection, you can actually be the solution to their problems.

Don’t feel pressured to fully close a deal within the meeting, especially if it’s revealed a lot of new or unexpected information about what the customer needs or expects. Take time to absorb the information and formulate a response, so you can form an authentic working relationship with your new client. This will help you begin your relationship on the right foot and with appropriate boundaries in place if you do start working together.

Advisors on Perla are two steps ahead of other healthcare consultants who have to comb through hundreds of leads. But when you know how to close a sale, your Perla leads become that much more valuable. If you haven’t already, become a Perla Advisor to see how this cutting-edge new platform can help you land new clients.


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