Tips from Tina: Convert Your Website into the Ultimate Sales Tool

How do you expand your sales team’s influence beyond their meetings with prospects? Your website!

When used as a sales tool, an optimized website has the power to extend your sales team’s influence beyond a scheduled meeting time and provide your prospect with the answers, information, and insight that builds relationships and makes sales. 

So, is your website ready to be leveraged and is your sales team equipped to share its power?

We’ll take a look at some of the things you can do to make your website one of your sales team's most powerful tools. 

Organize Your Website for Ease of Use

For your website to be an effective tool for your sales team, it has to be well-organized. 

The point of driving prospects to your website isn’t to make them feel like they’ve been dumped on a deserted road without a map. It's to give them an easy, informative, and satisfying experience. 

Thoughtful website organization starts with understanding what your prospects need from your site. Sounds simple enough, but depending on what product you sell or service you provide, your prospects may need different things. 

For example, if your customers are primarily within one industry sector, organizing your website by product might make the most sense because prospects will come to your site looking for a specific product line. 

However, if you’re selling products and services that reach across multiple industry sectors, your site might be most helpful organized by personas.

For example if your product is a clinical test, lab professionals and pathologists who run the test will  have different questions and needs than primary care physicians who administer the test.

Show the Way with Relevant CTAs

How do you know if your call to actions (CTAs) are relevant?

Consider this scenario: you walk into a clothing store and barely make it over the threshold before the clerk asks you, “Ready to buy that shirt?” You haven’t looked around the store yet and you weren’t even looking for a shirt. 

How do you feel? You might feel confused, a little rushed—and you maybe even want to run. That’s how your prospects feel when you hit them with a “Book a Demo NOW” CTA at the top of the homepage.  

If your sales team is referring prospects to the site for more information, you don’t want to chase your prospects away when they are just getting started. A more appropriate CTA at the top of the homepage might be “Learn more about us” linked to an overview video about your company, or a ChatBot that offers links to specific persona or product pages.  

Using CTAs that are appropriate to your prospects' place in their buyer’s journey is important to ensuring they have a good experience. 

Optimize the User Experience with Video

The buyer’s journey can be a long and winding road. But the good news is you can help make it smoother by paving a path through the awareness, consideration, and decision phases with engaging video content.

In the awareness stage, prospects are checking you out. Who are you? What do you do? What do you provide? Don’t just tell them, show them who you are. An overview video displayed prominently above the fold on your homepage will quickly answer their basic questions and it enables your prospects to learn about your product or service without having to piece it together by clicking around your website and reading text. The overview video is perfect for not only prospects who’ve met with a salesperson and want to get a little more information, but also for those who are browsing your website for the first time.  

For those prospects who have learned about you and are now weighing their options, comparing apples to apples, and looking for in-depth information, demo videos and testimonial videos are very powerful content. 

When given the choice of learning about a product or service, 73% of respondents in Wyzowl’s 2022 Video Marketing report said they prefer to watch a short demo video. That means they’d rather watch a video then download an ebook, attend a webinar, or have a sales demo—and a well-placed demo video could actually be selling itself.

Testimonial videos are another powerful tool because they leverage your satisfied customers to advocate for your product or service. In fact, consistent use of testimonials can help you generate 62% more revenue from every customer, not just once, but every time they visit your site.

And remember it’s not just for customer acquisition, video can help your sales team support customers during and after the decision phase of the buyer’s journey. Order forms or requests to complete? Use video to explain next steps to your prospects. After an in-person visit with a sales rep, video can be a great way to support your new customer with the next steps. 

Arm Your Sales Team with Effective Tools

Finally, make sure that your sales team has the tools they need to leverage your website’s full power. Think beyond the website URL on a brochure to placement that can engage the customer and entice them to visit the site themselves. 

First, make sure your sales team is well-versed in all the content that is available on your site.  Consider holding quick training sessions to walk them through the content and keep them updated when new things are added or changed. 

While not the most effective tool, printed collateral material can provide an inexpensive, portable option for salespeople to leave behind. But remember that all printed material should contain simplified direct links or QR codes to the specific product or service for that client. This is especially important if your company has an expansive complicated website. 

Again, you are trying to reduce friction and make the buyer’s journey as easy as possible. You don’t want your prospects to have to hunt and peck through your website to find what they want. Consider some of these ideas to better align your website content with your sales needs to make sure you’re getting the highest return from your marketing and sales efforts. 

Want to learn more ways to optimize your digital marketing efforts? Sign up for a WireBuzz strategy session today to start making an impact.