Turning Leads Into Customers And Clients With Ease
- Nicola Kinnard-Comedie MSc, BHSAI Int. SM | NKC Equestrian Training
- May 21
- 5 min read
If you want to make more sales in your equestrian business (and hey, who doesn’t want to!) then you want to take a good look at your prospect/ lead journey. Or to put it more specifically, how do you encourage someone following you on social media, or looking at your website to become a repeat client or customer?
Most businesses (equestrian or not) are losing money, each and every day, because they haven’t made it easy for a potential client to buy from them. I know it sounds crazy, but have you ever shopped on your own website as a customer? Or engaged a secret shopper service in your own business to see how they found the experience? Trust me, it’s probably harder to navigate, buy, book a call or whatever else than you might think.
The secret is to map out the journey, making it as easy as possible for people to have an amazing experience when they want to move from being interested in your product or service to handing over their credit card details. This is a two part series, next time I’ll be looking at delivering an amazing customer experience.
How this process will look will differ depending on what you sell, and the value of the product or service, but you can take these suggestions and make them relevant to your equestrian business. For example, if you sell riding breeches then your customers most likely click online and buy a pair then wait for them to arrive. If you sell boarding or training, a potential client is going to want to speak to you, come and see the facilities and so forth before they buy.
I suggest that you approach that you want to be the ‘best in the world’ and give an incredible service and experience, whether you are selling saddles or riding socks.
Firstly, consider the existing ‘journey’ you have in place right now.
How do people buy from you right now, and where do they come from? Do they call you? Visit a physical store or premises? Fill in a form on your website? Do they find you via a Google search or social media? Referral or affiliate links?
Once you have mapped this out you can look at making it better (remember ‘best in the world’)
Here’s Some Suggestions:
Phone calls
If potential clients call you up, how could you improve this ? Do you always manage to answer the phone? Could you use a call handling service so that people get the information that they need straight away, rather than leaving a message?
Website Sales
If you sell products online, do you need more traffic to make more sales or simply increase the conversion rate?
What is the percentage of people coming to the site and buying?
It is really important to understand where the sales are being lost. Do you need retargeting ads or an abandoned cart sequence?
Is your check out experience too clunky and complicated?
Are you asking for too many details or requiring people to sign in to buy?
Do you have Link, Gpay, Apple pay and other well known ‘one click’ payment options enabled?
Do you need to use some social proof that other people love your products?
If so, an option like ‘Nudgify’, which is a conversion boosting tool, where a small pop up appears highlighting last purchases could be very useful.
Most people are buying from a mobile device, and you want to make it easy for them!
Maybe it’s a lack of information stopping people from making the purchase, so some useful information on your website answering common questions or concerns would help your ‘clients to be’. For instance, if you sell competition clothing for riders they might want a new show jacket, but be unsure if it’s allowed for a specific discipline, you could have an article covering the best show jackets for different equestrian sports.
Schedule An Appointment
For many equestrian businesses a new client needs to schedule an appointment for you to deliver the service (bodywork, veterinarian, trainer etc) or they need to speak to you or your team about the offering, and whether it’s the right fit for them.
When there is a time lag between someone booking and the appointment, you have lots of opportunity to impress them, and make the experience really memorable.
Here’s A Few Ideas:
Send a video or PDF about what to expect from their appointment and how to prepare their horse.
Send a link to your social media or to some helpful content on your website.
Drop a note in the post (for extra points, address it to their horse) about how you are looking forward to meeting them and helping them.
The only limit to making an incredible prospect journey experience is your imagination. Most equestrian businesses don’t put this level of thinking, and don’t step back and see the experience as their customers or clients. Improving this experience gives you a really competitive edge.
Remember that the prospect journey only really ends when someone makes a purchase from you, and that the follow up is an essential part of this cycle.
How you follow up will again depend on the nature of your business, but make sure you map this part of the journey out. People are busy, distracted and might need time to think or re-arrange finances in order to be ready to buy. Don’t miss out by neglecting to follow up.
So much of your prospect journey can be automated, or implemented by your team. Have fun converting more ‘almost’ customers into actual customers, and next month I’ll show you how to surprise and delight your clients.
Nicola Kinnard-Comedie (Msc, BHSAI Int. SM)
is the owner and founder of NKC Equestrian Training, delivering horse care training to horse owners and business and mindset coaching to equine practitioners.
Nicola is a qualified riding instructor and has over 20 years industry experience, and now uses her coaching skills to assist equine practitioners. Nicola decided to combine her experience of equestrian science, sales and marketing, and teach this to others. Nicola works with veterinary physiotherapists, massage therapists, osteopaths and other equestrians across the world to help them build their dream business. Nicola's work focuses on harnessing the power of your mindset, together with cutting edge marketing strategies to support equestrian business owners to realise the business of their dreams.
You can find out more about Nicola here: www.nkcequestrian.com
This article is from the May issue of Equine Business Magazine
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