When you consider the easiest thing, what comes to mind? A poor product? No sales funnel? While relevant, the real answer is simpler than that.
The #1 thing killing your sales is inattention to detail.People notice the little things most when they’re determining whether or not you’re a reliable business with a solid product. Below, we look at the easiest sales tips to employ to tip the scales in your favor.
Spelling
You might be thinking: “Duh.”
But when was the last time you saw an email or article with typos? Maybe within the last 30 seconds? Or if you’re lucky, the last 5 minutes?
This one still hurts when I see it. Not only does your spelling ability speak to your perceived intelligence, but maybe more importantly, it speaks to your attention to detail.
Although it’s difficult to quantify the impact of spelling mistakes, Charles Duncombe set out to do it:
As CEO of a an online retail company that does over $20 million in sales per year, he noticed that one of his pages was performing significantly worse than his others. Upon further inspection, he noticed that someone had spelled the words ‘tights’ as ‘tihgts’. After they fixed this mistakes, the conversions on their page jumped by 80%!
Although your copy may not seem as important as your product, the words on your pages say a lot about your company. When it comes down to it, choosing the right words can be what makes your breaks your business.
Grammar
Much like spelling mistakes, bad grammar can destroy your company faster than anything else. Does your skin crawl when people say “your” instead of “you’re”? Maybe “lose” vs. “loose”? Or my personal least favorite, “their, they’re, and there”.
You aren’t the only one, and you better believe your customers notice too.
The dating site OkCupid did an interesting study on the effects of grammar on response rate, and what they found tells you a lot about the importance of grammar on your pages (after all, building a business is all about building relationships with your clients).
After looking at over 500,000 responses, OkCupid found that having one tiny grammatical mistake such as ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’ or using internet language such as ‘u’ instead of ‘you’ had an overwhelmingly negative impact on response rates.
Perhaps even more surprising, is that a small mistake such as saying ‘cant’ instead of ‘can’t’ dropped the response rates from 32% to 8%, a *75%* drop.
As a business owner, you are pursuing responses from your customers, and if your grammar isn’t up to par, your response rates are going to drop significantly.
What Else Your Copywriting Says About You
Aside from the what the numbers say, also consider the negative qualitative effects of poor writing. As more and more people find themselves online, many filters for spammy messages and content have “popped up”. And as a result, people are significantly less likely to trust you or your brand if your writing is riddled with errors.
When did you last see a phishing email or fake website? What did you notice about it?
It’s likely that the copy was written in a clunky, unprofessional manner with spelling mistakes and poor grammar. Instantly, alarms go off, right?
Moving Forward
Luckily, having high-quality, error-free copy isn’t that difficult. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a professional writer, there are plenty of resources out there that can help you avoid business-killing mistakes.
Grammarly, for example, provides a comprehensive analysis of both your spelling and your grammar.
Hemingway App evaluates the strength of your writing, helping you avoid passive voice, difficult-to-read passages, among other offenses.
Daily Grammar Blog is another resource to help you keep your grammar skills sharp, with quizzes and lessons suitable for any learning style.
Whether you decide to take advantage of these resources, or just add in another proofreading pass to publishing copy, you’ll find it a breeze to produce and maintain high-quality, error-free copy for your cold sales emails.
Your sales will thank you.
—-
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like “Building a Sales Team? Here’s How to Do It Successfully.” or “Learn Sales Techniques from the Experts“
Or if you’re looking for more information on sales tactics, download our “Ultimate Guide to Triple Your Sales Meetings” below.
