10 Killer Sales Conversion Strategies

Today we are going to cover ten sales conversion strategies that can help you make more sales.

We will:

Share the sales funnel that we used to grow our company from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue.
Reveal the Irresistible Offer Formula that you should follow if you want to create irresistible offers.
Discuss sales page design and copywriting.

Ready to take your business to the next level?

Table of Contents:

#1 Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Business

We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.

It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).

This sales funnel has four stages:

Bait. You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
Frontend. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.

Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.

We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross-sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.

Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Business

So the main idea is this:

Instead of driving traffic directly to your website or sales page, you drive it to your lead magnet landing page and convert those visitors into email subscribers.

Then you pitch your products and services to them via email and drive traffic from your email list to your sales pages.

The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.
Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email.
Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

Building a Value Ladder sales funnel and then driving traffic to it is the single best thing you can do to increase your conversions!

Example: “DotCom Secrets” Value Ladder

Russell has written three best-selling books on the subject of growing online businesses:

All three are available on Amazon but you can also get them directly from us for free because we use them as lead magnets. Each book has its own sales funnel.

Here’s how we structured our “DotCom Secrets” Value Ladder:

#2 Create a Super Valuable Lead Magnet

Your lead magnet is the foundation of your sales funnel so it’s extremely important to get it right.

What Is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.

Digital Lead Magnets

A digital lead magnet can be anything that the potential customer can either download to their device or access online:

A report.
An ebook.
A video class.
A video course.
An email course.
A webinar.

…etc.

For example, here are some of our digital lead magnets:

We recommend starting with a digital lead magnet because they are easy to produce.

That means that you can experiment with various ideas until you find one that resonates with your dream customers!

Physical Lead Magnets

You can also use a physical “FREE + SHIPPING” lead magnet.

For example, as we mentioned previously, we are using Russell’s books as lead magnets:

With this approach, you can expect to attract fewer but higher quality leads.

However, physical lead magnets are more expensive to produce, plus they need to be stored somewhere. This makes them a much riskier bet than digital lead magnets.

We recommend experimenting with physical lead magnets once you get the hang of generating leads with digital lead magnets.

Just make sure that you can afford to lose money that you have invested in creating that lead magnet in case it flops.

Help Them Get a Specific Result

Your lead magnet should provide an effective solution to a problem that the potential customer is struggling with.

To be more precise, it should help the potential customer achieve a concrete, measurable result.

It can be anything: do their first pull-up, get their first 100 followers on Twitter, figure out their skin undertone, etc.

But it has to be specific. Don’t be vague!

Set the Stage for Your Frontend Offer Pitch

Your lead magnet should not only serve as bait but also set the stage for your frontend offer pitch: you want to create a logical progression from the lead magnet to the frontend offer.

The best way to do that is to have a lead magnet that gives the potential customer a taste of the value that they can expect from your frontend offer.

For example:

Help them do their first pull-up then pitch them an online course that teaches fundamental calisthenics skills.
Help them get their first 100 followers on Twitter then pitch them an online course that teaches how to build a Twitter following.
Help them figure out their skin undertone then pitch them a service where you determine their color season, provide a digital color palette with a list of their best colors, and answer any questions they might have during a one-on-one consultation call.

Keep in mind that the more seamless the progression from the lead magnet to the frontend offer, the easier it will be to close the sale. Your frontend offer should seem like the logical next step!

#3 Follow the Irresistible Offer Formula

The most important principle that you need to understand if you want to create offers that convert is this formula:

High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer

This might seem like common sense but you’d be surprised how often entrepreneurs fail to get it right.

It’s a mistake to hike up the price as much as possible in order to maximize the revenue from that particular offer. Why?

Because undercharging and overdelivering allows you to build trust, create goodwill, and win customers for life.

So don’t be short-sighted and play the long game.

The real money is in the backend!

#4 Create an Irresistible Frontend Offer

Converting leads into paying customers is the greatest challenge in the entire Value Ladder sales funnel. But that’s what your frontend offer is for!

Here are three practical tips for creating an irresistible frontend offer:

Make it digital. This applies regardless of whether you sell services, digital products, or physical products. Ebooks, video classes, and video courses are all great frontend offer formats.
Price it at $7. This price point is not low enough to make the potential customer question the quality of your frontend offer but also not high enough to make them stop and think twice before buying.
Remove all financial risk by providing an unconditional, no-questions-asked 30-day money-back guarantee. This ensures that the potential customer doesn’t have anything to lose by checking out your frontend offer. Worst-case scenario, they will simply get a refund.

Remember: the purpose of your frontend offer is to convert leads into paying customers so don’t worry about maximizing revenue here.

Once again: the money is in the backend!

#5 Use Proven, High-Converting Landing Page and Sales Page Templates

We don’t recommend designing landing pages and sales pages from scratch unless you have previous design experience. Why?

Because online marketers have been relentlessly optimizing landing pages and sales pages for at least two decades now.

At this point, we know what works and what doesn’t. Or, to be more precise, we know what’s most likely to work.

That’s why when it comes to the initial designs of your landing pages and sales pages, it makes sense to follow the established best practices.

The most straightforward way to ensure that pages in your sales funnel comply with those best practices is to use proven, high-converting templates.

ClickFunnels includes a template library that features landing page and sales page templates for all of the most common use cases.

So why waste time reinventing the wheel when you can simply do what’s been proven to work?

#6 Use This Headline + Subheadline Combo

The purpose of the headline is to grab the potential customer’s attention.

There are several ways to write compelling headlines but the most straightforward one is to convey the value of your offer. How will it make the potential customer’s life better? That’s what you should lead with!

Meanwhile, the purpose of the subheadline is to provide more information about your offer such as its format, scope, etc.

It’s probably safe to say that people who read your headline will automatically read the subheadline because that’s just how human attention works.

This gives you the opportunity to convey what your offer is all about in just a few seconds.

Nick Stephenson does it well on his lead magnet landing page:

See how the headline + subheadline immediately makes it clear what this offer is about?

You want to do the same on your landing and sales pages!

#7 Structure Your Sales Pages the Right Way

You want to structure your sales pages like this:

Appeal to the emotional buyers by telling an emotional story about a result that your product or service got for you.
Appeal to the logical buyers by listing what’s included in your offer and making logical arguments as to why they should buy your product or service.
Appeal to the fearful buyers by introducing scarcity: limited-time offers, limited number of items, limited time slots, etc.

Here’s how Russell explains it:

@russellbrunson
You NEED to include these 3 things in every email and sales letter you send… #marketingdigital #entrepreneurtok #salestips #russellbrunson #clickfunnels
♬ original sound – Russell Brunson

Social proof is a psychological principle that says that whenever people feel unsure about what to do, they look at what others do in order to determine the best course of action.

In the business context, this means that whenever potential customers are unsure about whether to trust you, they will look for indications that other people trust you.

Those indications are also called social proof and you can take advantage of this by providing them yourself.

There are two types of social proof:

Direct social proof that relates to the offer in question. Typically, this means customer testimonials.
Indirect social proof that relates to you as an individual or to your company. This can mean mentioning relevant credentials, experience, and accomplishments, sharing endorsements from well-known people, displaying “As Seen On” media badges, etc.

We would argue that there’s no such thing as too much social proof unless it’s distracting the potential customer from making the purchase.

That’s why we advise adding as much social proof to your sales pages as you possibly can. If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

#9 Have a 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

We are all used to buying products online.

But there’s still wariness that isn’t present when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

This is the most obvious with physical products. In a brick-and-mortar store, people can examine them before buying but in an online store, they can’t. They have to take a leap of faith.

It’s also true with info products: you have to gatekeep the content to sell it, so buying it also requires a leap of faith.

This is the main obstacle that’s standing in the way of making the purchase:

No one wants to experience buyer’s remorse so potential customers take time to mull it over. And they might end up deliberating long enough to talk themselves out of buying!

You can remove this obstacle by offering a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. This eliminates all financial risk from the purchase decision and makes people more likely to take the leap.

#10 Add Downsells, Upsells, and Cross-Sells

Ideally, you want to add an upsell and a cross-sell to your frontend offer and then a downsell, an upsell, and a cross-sell to your middle and backend offers.

A downsell is an offer that is a downgrade on the offer that the potential customer has already rejected (e.g. if they rejected your $247 online course about dating, downsell them a $7 ebook that will teach them how to optimize their online dating profiles).
An upsell is an offer that is an upgrade on the offer that the potential customer has already accepted (e.g. McDonald’s infamous “Would you like to supersize that?”).
A cross-sell is an offer that is complementary to the offer that the potential customer has already accepted (e.g. McDonald’s famous “Would you like fries with that?”).

When it comes to downsells, the potential customer has already rejected your initial offer so you have nothing to lose by pitching a downsell.

Meanwhile, with upsells and cross-sells, the potential customer has already accepted your initial offer so you know that they are in a buying mood. This is the best time to pitch your other products and services to them!

If you follow the High Value + Low Price = Irresistible Offer when creating these additional offers, it’s pretty much inevitable that some customers will buy your donwsells, upsells, and cross-sells.

And that can have a drastic impact on your bottom line, especially over an extended period of time!

Build Your First Sales Funnel In Just Five Days!

Let’s keep it real:

Building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

That’s why we created our 5 Day Lead Challenge where Russell walks you through it step-by-step.

You will:

Create your first lead magnet.
Build your first sales funnel.
Set up a six-email welcome sequence.

…and launch your funnel in just five days!

So don’t hesitate. Take action now. It can change your life!

Join Our 5 Day Lead Challenge Today!

P.S. This challenge is completely FREE!

10 Killer Sales Conversion Strategies