The Selling Power of the One Time Offer

Converting a qualified lead into a paying client using nothing more than text on a page can be a real challenge. There are many ways to boost your sales conversion rate, and one of the best is the one-time-offer. Here's how it works...

A lead generation campaign turns visitors into qualified leads
Lead are entered into an automated selling programme
The automated sales programme delivers a number of communications over time. Not all these communications are sales offers
When leads convert to clients, they're dropped from the automated selling programme
After many communications, the programme asks the remaining leads whether they still want to receive communications
Those that do receive a one-time-offer

Note the psychology in play here. The automated programme creates 3 groups of people...

The first are those who are ready to become clients. These people leave the programme quite quickly.

The second group are those that are never going to buy, and/or who don't bother reading any of the communications. These people don't specifically ask to remain in the programme, and are dropped.

The third group are those who opt to remain in the programme. The one-time-offer goes out to each of these people within 24 hours of their decision to remain in the programme.

This ensures we restrict the offer to those leads who have demonstrated the greatest resistance to buying, but who have given some indication of a desire to continue to receive our offers. This allows us to be usually generous when making the one-time-offer (as does the once-only nature of the offer). In other words, we fire our best shot at our most resistant prospects.

The one-time-offer must have a deadline, and we must be prepared to stick to it. No exceptions. The person receiving the offer must be told...

The offer will not be repeated
There is a strict deadline
No exceptions will be made

It is essential that we stick to these rules without exception. By doing so, we get to make a less generous offer in future, and lock in the future conversion of those who miss out on the one-time-offer. Here's why...

Every prospect who misses out, and then tries to bully us into breaking our own rules, will either buy at the full price. Or jump on a less generous offer made at some point in the future. In this way, a one-time-offer improves conversion both now and in our next campaign.

This ongoing and automated programme is inexpensive (perhaps even free), and boosts the overall return on investment of the campaign that generated the leads in the first place.