Closing Online Sales

Closing online small business sales requires almost more finesse and verbal legerdemain than closing face-to-face sales does. After all, since you are operating in cyberspace, you must close without the benefit of body language context and without being able to adapt your pitch individually to potential buyers. All that said, small business owners can learn the art of closing online if they follow a few simple rules.

Get into the mindset of the prospective buyer by asking questions which lead indubitably to the confident final closing pitch. One of the benefits of creating an online small business e-portal is that you can test many different variations of your sales pitch. Show these to different business associates, and get feedback from customers. In addition, use online conversion rate metrics to rate your top three or four best sales pitches, and see whether key demographic groups react differently to differently worded pitches.

Adapting your language is critical, but so is pitching the product successfully vis-à-vis your web page. As a small business operator, you don’t have the benefit of latching on to brand name recognition. However, you can take advantage of the “small business mentality” to appeal to your customer as a near equal. Describe in clear, logical, simple language (augmented by visuals if and only if necessary) what makes your product stand out and how your product can serve a particular need or desire.

Remember that online visitors have nearly zero loyalty to individual web sites, even web sites that they go to often for information. Moreover, many surfers like to go to professional small business sites simply to glean information -- not to make buying decisions. To cut through that haze, you need to force the issue at some point in your spiel, or you’ll end up with lots of traffic and few conversions.

Forcing the issue of the closing doesn’t mean creating jarring copy or timing out a customer's web visit if he or she doesn’t respond to your small business pitch with enough enthusiasm. What it means is that you need to make a persuasive argument, ideally phrased in the form of a question or a leading sentence (you want the buyer to agree with you and come to the conclusion to buy “on his or her own”).

Don’t be ashamed to be direct. Ask for what you want. Be specific about why your service is good for your customer. Check out lots of small business ecommerce sites -- both successful and unsuccessful -- to see what works and what doesn’t. Listen to your customers when they give you feedback after visiting your site.

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