Are you credible enough to your customers?
Online sales techniques are not quite the same as offline sales, as you nearly always have another major objection to overcome – and that’s one of credibility.
If you’re meeting somebody face to face then it’s much easier to form an opinion, rightly or wrongly, of whether someone is trustworthy, genuine and seems like they are able to deliver.
Online, all you have is your reputation, your own content on your site and testimonials to present your case for credibility. The all-important question is – how can we make our visitors feel comfortable about buying from us? And thus make us succeed in overcoming objections in sales online, if any.
Understand The Objections
Before being in a position to handle objections you need to understand what they are.
All the time when the customer visits your site there will be a conversation going on in their minds, before committing to buying. You need to be able to pre-empt those questions.
The most common questions you’ll face in the customer’s mind will be along the lines of the following:
Handling The Objections
It’s useful to understand these questions even before you start building your website as it can help shape copy and content.
Handling these objections can be roughly broken down into three areas you’ll need to focus on:
Proving credibility will encompass a variety of measures; testimonials are great because clients’ words carry more weight than your own – it’s already expected that you think you’re great! You can also use video to show how you understand their issues (FAQ videos are great) and to show how you are an expert in your field (how-to videos, for example.)
Making it about them means shaping all your content to the information and assurances your visitors need, rather than spouting out mountains of information about you. What are the client’s issues and how do your products/services address and solve those issues? That means talking about benefits, not just features.
Making promises and providing guarantees to back them up will help your visitor feel they have a safety net if things go wrong; they can get their money back. This helps to calm one of their biggest fears – that of being conned, which is an ever-present concern when doing business online.
In summary, you can have the best products in the world but, unless you can get your visitors to believe what you say is true and create confidence in them that you understand what they need, you will have trouble selling online.
Learning the ways of overcoming objections in sales online will go a long way to improving your success rates online; if you are just starting out with an online business and need some other tips and advice with getting started, head on over to watch the Competition Crusher Workshop at www.crusherworkshop.com.