Every month we hold a customer conference call that all of our customers are invited to join. At the beginning of these conference calls we have a section on what is new in the online marketing world that we believe is worthy of your attention. This is a video of the introduction of March’s conference call.
This month we talk about a new Google Penguin Update, Google AdWords Offer Extensions, Google Analytics Access Controls, and ValueTrack Paramenters for Enhanced AdWords Campaigns
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDFi7t_CLMw&feature=youtu.be
You can find our latest Website Marketing Update Here
Compared to other online marketing tactics website optimisation is probably the hardest to deliver successfully.
For instance let’s consider the more commonly used strategy for traffic building, Google Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). There are pages and pages of content from even Google themselves on what to do and specifically what to avoid in this space. Most recently during this month’s customer coaching call we spent 45 minutes working through a 32 page PDF document written by Google on this exact same subject. I realise that we are dealing with principles here that need to be applied properly, rather than dead cert tactics that work every time, nevertheless there’s a barrage of content on the web to help you better understand what the Google search engine is looking for.
And what about SEO’s paid advertising cousin, Google AdWords? Again you can you find a plethora of information to help optimise your campaign. Once again Google does a great job here too. Naturally it’s in their best interest that every advertiser achieves a positive return on their ad spending. And if learning from Google is not your thing then there are gurus galore that will take your money to help you optimise the paid advertising bidding environment.
So why is website conversion so different from these two tactics to make it an order of magnitude more challenging to apply?
Short answer:
People.
(And your ability to positively affect their behaviour)
Here you are not dealing with algorithms, bidding scenarios or advertising channels, you are dealing with red blooded, emotionally charged people and their travels through your pages.
Now don’t get me wrong, Google Analytics does a great job of translating these people into sessions, visits and visitors to help along the way, but in doing so it misses out on softer measures including points such as emotional state, inherent desire and even motivation to take action. Sound too hard? Well for some it is so they dive into traffic generation to solve their conversion problem. However if your site converts only 3% of its 10,000 visits per month and there’s a desire to double sales then you have the tough task of finding another 10,000 visits. So where’s that going to come from?
If you are lucky you may be able to optimise your site for a collection of target keywords from Google’s organic results. Or if money is not an option – and the sums work – and again the keyword traffic is there – then you could launch your first paid advertising campaign and hope your competitors don’t follow you into keyword bidding oblivion.
Over 50% of websites don’t have options like these. In their case they are getting all the traffic they can from organic in addition to an AdWords spend already maxed out. The only way they can grow is through making better use of the traffic they have.
So where do you start?
One option is to rely on the hard, functional data that Google Analytics can provide. Here you are looking for 20% of your web pages that are causing 80% of the problems. These tend to confuse rather than clarify. They reveal themselves in your Google Analytics account with high bounce rates, high exit rates and low time on site. They are bad in every way possible and need to be re-vitalised quick smart to ensure they help rather than hinder the sales process.
Another step is to stand back from reviewing individual page stats and work to uncover the true intent of the visitor as they work through your session. This is made easier when you employ some session recording tools as we have done with some of our client projects. These allow you literally sit on the shoulder of your visitor and follow where they go as they click around your pages. The Google Analytics “Visitor Flow” report helps here too. Review enough of this type of information and you will start to get a feel for the pathways people tread through within your websites pages and the problems that they experience along the way.
For instance after one series of sessions for a client we found a rather innocuous field that tripped up 17% of people that tried to complete a lead generation form causing them to leave the site in frustration. In another project we located a navigation option visitors were taking on a hotel booking website that when clicked took people out of the booking engine and in the process removing all of their booking history forcing them to start again with their registration.
In both situations you could almost hear the yells of angst coming through the browser screen. Fortunately both were easy to fix and once done produced a nice bump upwards in conversion rates.
These are just a few examples of what can be done to move a websites’ conversion rate upwards. Once achieved there’s nothing more inherently powerful than owning a website that converts twice as much as a competitors. Contact us today if this appeals to you.
Life would be so much easier if everyone who visited your website did exactly what you wanted. But of course they don’t. And if you own an e-commerce store then the proportions can look quite scary. For instance think 3% do what you are aiming to achieve leaving the remaining 97% to slip through your pages, leaving only a trace of session history in your Google Analytics accounts before they are off.
Nevertheless the positive part in all of this is that those 97% did at least arrive. Just by completing this action they are naturally one step closer to buying when compared to those that stayed away.
Remarketing helps you market to those who took that single step as they trawl around the Internet looking at other “stuff”. For instance you can remarket to these visitors while they are browsing videos on YouTube, reading a message within their Gmail account or just visiting one of the millions of websites that allows Google’s advertising to display.
Sound all a bit “Big Brothery” to you?
Well it is.
That’s why Google ensures you follow their simple guidelines to ensure you don’t step over the mark and push your potential customers away rather than enticing them back.
Once you have updated the Google Analytics tracking code on your site, Google also tells you to that you need to update your Privacy Statement (you do already have one don’t you?). This change is to include easy to understand commentary on what you have done, how people can opt out and a link to the browser supported add- on Google has to make the opt out process a breeze.
And there’s more. Google also stops you from using re-marketing when you may use sensitive information about your visitors to build your remarketing audience. For instance say you run a medical supplies website then you couldn’t re-market to those who visit certain product pages based on the assumptions that they have the ailments solved by the products they have seen.
Once the web “paperwork” is done and the strategy fits within Google’s guidelines then you are off. First up you need to design the audience that you want to remarket to. Perhaps it’s everyone with a pulse who visited your site. For them remarketing could include creative links to special promotions that run through the year.
Or how about those that came and purchased. Here you could have special customer offers that are too good to open up to a wider audience. Perhaps those that came to you via Facebook so you can present your remarketing in a way that fits with their use of social media. As you can see there’s a number of ways to go about creating an audience and then picking the right strategy and design to match (contact us for more details on which options may best suit your needs).
Once all the design and strategy work is done then the Google magic can begin. You add the single line of code to your Google Analytics tracking code, build the audiences you want to market to and then “push” the data through to your linked Google AdWords account. Currently we are told that you need more than 100 unique cookies (visitors) for the audience to be marketed to.
Next up you need to produce your ad content. Google gives you a range of banner image sizes you can apply as well as the vanilla search text ads. Some of the image ads are more effective than others. So it pays to take time to figure out which ones have the greatest likelihood of converting and to design around them.
So you have your audience and your ads – all you need to do now is to get the two to meet by presenting your advertising on the right websites. This can be the greatest challenge of re-marketing. Up to this point it’s been relatively straight forward. Consumer product / service people may find this easier than their business to business cousins. For example YouTube could be an option, remembering your ads will only be shown to previous web site visitors means you can pick some high volume sites just like this with safety.
Nevertheless, stalking your visitor for ever as they move around the Internet is not a good option. Google helps you to avoid this by limiting the amount of time your ads can run for – say 60 days after the visitor became part of your remarketing audience. Plus they also allow you to cap the frequency the remarketing ads are shown so your ads are only shown 10 times per week. “Ad fatigue” is a problem here so ad creative is best re-worked on a frequent basis to ensure this doesn’t occur.
And the results?
We’ve seen clients achieve a cost per click that is a fraction of their search campaign alternatives and to then produce a significantly reduced cost per conversion. Of course your results may vary but the logic makes sense to try to bring back those that came before in conjunction with plans of creating that first visit. Contact us today to learn how this strategy could work for your business.
You can find our latest Website Marketing Update Here
Every month we hold a customer conference call that all of our customers are invited to join. At the beginning of these conference calls we have a section on what is new in the online marketing world that we believe is worthy of your attention. This is a video of the introduction of February’s conference call.
This month we talk about AdWords Enhanced Campaigns, Google AdWords Script and important reports to improve marketing efforts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK7IFoqKkeo
Sometimes delivering more traffic to your website is the last thing required to finally make it work. Last month I completed a website marketing review for a website that highlighted this exact situation. They came to us complaining of a website delivering very little in the way of leads and on the hunt for a SEO consultant to help fix the problems. For them the answer was very clear – more traffic. I wasn’t so sure.
Fortunately they had Google Analytics installed so job#1 was to get stuck into some facts and figures of what was happening and where. Quickly it was apparent that traffic wise they were doing quite well. When we ran keyword searches for high volume terms in their market they came up well. Nevertheless, after a while I gradually created a list of a dozen or so issues that pointed towards the real underlying problem. Here are just three that are worth a few words:
• A high bounce rate on the sites main landing pages
• And an imbalance in the type of content they offered
• No Goal Tracking set up
High Bounce Rates on main Landing Pages
Most think their homepage is the only way through which people enter their website. This is very rarely the case. Google’s indexing machine does a great job of crawling around a website classifying each and every page and all going well – showing these in their results for the keywords they were optimised for.
So by looking at the top landing pages page within Google Analytics – found by Content > Site Content > Landing Pages you can see these pages that people land on when entering your site. Yes, your homepage will be there but also will be a cluster of other pages from deeper within your site which are the first thing visitors see.
In this case the report showed five landing pages with bounce rates that were well above the site’s average. Remembering a “bounce” is someone who visits one page and then leaves – something you definitely don’t want to occur for these “first impression” pages.
An imbalance in the type of content they supplied
Broadly speaking there are four classifications of content a site needs to create conversions namely who you are, what you do, why you are different and finally what needs to be done to learn more. In this case the first and last content categories were OK standard however the middle of what they did and why they were so different was a problem. The main issue being there was nothing that exactly spelt out why they were different from the rest.
They were not alone here either. When I reviewed five of their competitors websites and looked for the same content they all were all very, very similar. I’m sure if I swapped the imagery between each you couldn’t have picked one from another. Which was all very interesting especially when the client told me three really specific, solid benefits why they were different from the rest! Which would have been fine if this great content had made it onto their website.
No Goal Tracking Established
Goal tracking is one of the most valuable features available in Google Analytics. It allows you to track actions taken on your web pages that show visitor “conversion intent”. These could include forms being completed, PDF reports being downloaded or even videos played. Now I realise that a visitor that completes a “Contact Us” form is “warmer” than someone who downloads a FREE PDF report, but nevertheless if the latter isn’t being tracked then you have no idea if it is having any effect in convincing visitors to convert later on. In this instance nothing was being tracked. Fortunately we managed to tweak the system to come up with an effective conversion rate to share with the client. It was less than a third of the industry standard.
All of this added up to a classic problem of a website looking for traffic to improve its lead count when really it was its conversion rate that needed fixing first. Then, once we had this sorted, we would grab as much traffic as we could.
Need to know if your website is in the same situation as this one? One quick way to find out is to call in and have a quick discussion with one of the team here at Permission.
People behave in mysterious ways. For instance let’s imagine the expected path someone takes when noticing your paid advert in Google. This is how you would “think” the series of events would play out.
First – search Google looking for what they want.
Second – see your advert.
Third – read your ad and agree silently to themselves that this is worth investigating more.
Fourth – click your ad.
Fifth – read the copy on your web page and decide whether to take action.
Sixth – either take action and complete form or leave and start looking again.
Six logical steps that you would assume many – if not all – would take when clicking away on your paid advertising. Now let’s look at a relatively new report from Google Analytics that shows the actual paths this group took. Please note the graphic to follow. On the left you have collection of traffic sources that the group used and on the right the conversions each delivered. The first thing you should notice that there is no group that did what you thought it did, e.g. visit from paid advertising one time only and then convert (line 2 is the closest but these people came into the site after clicking on two paid ads).
Also take the time to look at line 7. Here the visitor arrived from an organic search (the middle non paid area of Google) then returned to the site by clicking a paid ad in Google AdWords and finally returned to convert from another organic search result. Think of it as an organic – paid sandwich with a nice conversion at the end.
Or how about Line 5. The visitor starts with coming directly to the website – so they must know its URL but then returns to convert from a paid advertisement. It seems that visitors are using every traffic stream available to them to come and go before making a decision and converting.
You can find this report in your Google Analytics account under the “Conversions” area in the section marked “Top Conversion Paths” (be aware that nothing will show if you don’t have any goals set up on your website for the paths to relate to).
So other than disproving our original theory of how paid advertising visitors behaved, what else does this information reveal?
First off is the obvious one of how different types of traffic can work together for a visitor to help them convert. Digging further into this – as we did in the earlier graphic – can be especially handy when reviewing the merits of paid traffic streams like Google AdWords. For instance Lines 1, 8 and 9 are all instances where paid traffic went onto boost both organic traffic and organic conversions. Likewise lines 3 and 10 show a boost in direct traffic and direct conversions that come from a paid campaign.
Secondly, reports like these reveal how some traffic sources are great at starting the sales process while others do their best at the end. Here’s a snapshot from another report from the same area in analytics that helps to explain this a bit further (for client confidentialities sake I have removed the $ values but kept in the parts that we are discussing).
This chart is found in the Conversions – Multi-Channel Funnels – Assisted Conversions part of Google Analytics (no doubt as soon as I publish this Google will change its location J).
Anyway, let’s look at the data for Paid Search traffic stream again. This shows for the period reported on that this channel assisted 84 Conversions but was the “Last Interaction” on just 37.
A channel can assist a conversion when it is included in the journey of the conversion but not at the end. Likewise a “Last Interaction” is exactly that , when the channel is the last one used before the conversion is made. In the paid advertising area – the Assisted / Last Interaction value is 2.27 – that means it assisted 2.27 times more than it converted. It’s a great channel for starting the sales process but does a lousy job of closing the sale.
You could conclude from this that paid traffic is more likely to attract those at the start of a multi-stage buying process whereas direct does a great job of completing the hard part of closing those final stages.
And finally if these two points weren’t enough, this type of data reveals the search keyword progression prospects go through across both paid and organic traffic streams. For instance let’s look at the image below from our own reports. For lines 3, 4 and 6 where you can see the paid search term “seo”, it is then followed by organic search of “seo marketing”, “online marketing” and “website marketing” – and line 5 where you see the paid search of “seo” followed by another paid search of “online marketing” then a direct visit before the conversion.
So there you have it. Google’s conversion attribution tools are a smart way to follow the journey your visitors take on their way to completing your conversions. There’s a ton of data in here so take your time to devour all you can find. And of course don’t hesitate to give us a call if you need any help understanding what you find 0800 893477. We can provide you with a range of Google Analytics set up services suited to your website requirements.
Every month we hold a customer conference call that all of our customers are invited to join. At the beginning of these conference calls we have a section on what is new in the online marketing world that we believe is worthy of your attention. Below is a video of the introduction of January’s conference call. This month the focus was not so much on new information, but rather a focus on moving your website analytics forward in the year ahead. The first topic discussed is increasing conversions by designing and testing landing pages to optimise them, the second topic is 10 new years resolutions to focus on with your Google Anlaytics account.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tX5fV6p2bg
My Kindle got a good workout during the holiday break and one book that stood out as worth a comment was the Arnold Schwarzenegger biography – Total Recall. Man – what a motivated soul Mr Muscles is. Anyway, one part that relates to online marketing is his life in movies. Trust me there is something of value here.
Apparently when a movie was getting close to release the team would test screen what they had so far to an audience to survey their reaction. Having someone say they liked the movie wasn’t enough. They were looking for those who said they would rave about it to their friends whilst also seeing it multiple times themselves. Great scores in both these areas nearly always produced a fantastic result at the box office. And conversely low scores almost always meant it was time to re-shoot parts of the film to get things back on track.
Now I realize that not all businesses have the budget that a movie studio may have to “test screen” their product. That is fine. Fortunately for most businesses who have been trading for a while a lot of the answers can be found in their customer database.
What you are looking for is your customer’s expected lifetime value. This is a prediction of net profit amount attributed to the relationship they have with your business. Think of it in rather crude terms as the value of each of those customers who decide to come back again and again – just like those that did the same to see Arney’s latest classic. The more times they come back – the more they are worth.
It’s a simple concept to grasp but one rarely known by business owners.
For instance – last month I asked three business owners what the expected lifetime value of their customers were and received exactly the same response from each.
“I have no idea.”
All three provided a product or service that would be purchased multiple times by their customers over a twelve month period and had been trading successfully for many years. Even so, neither knew the amount.
“So what’s the problem with that?” I hear you say. Each is surviving well. Profits are being made. So why bother spending valuable management time digging out this fact? The simple answer being that not knowing this fact is going to make your future online marketing efforts a challenge.
You see each company existed within a category that was becoming more competitive online by the month. This was naturally pushing up their cost per lead and unless they knew their customer lifetime value they could end up spending more per lead than they would return in profits for the life of the customer. Not a happy space to be in as the year starts to ramp up.
I can guarantee that a high proportion of your competitors will be in exactly the same space as these business owners. It’s just so much easier to think this way. It lets you treat all customers the same. Plus you avoid the hassle of allocating sales to customers to locate those that really do buy more than once.
But you are smarter than this. So don’t be afraid of the data. Get stuck in there and dig it all out for everyone to see. Here’s what may come up.
Scenario #1 The gift that only gives once.
I have seen a few customers uncover the sorry tale that this reveals. Yes you have a product that should be bought many times during the year by the same person but No none of your customers are taking you up on this.
All of those transactions were driven from new customers, with a fair dollop of marketing spend attached to them, buying for the first and last time. Lot’s of sales but hardly any profits. Some serious triage is required at a product or service level to sort this mess out and get people buying again. But once sorted, the results can be amazing as a new stream of repeat revenue floods the business with practically zero marketing costs attached to it.
Scenario #2 The gift that keeps on giving – but to just a select few
A step in the right direction this time. All the data analysis turned up some good news – there is a small selection of customers who bought more than once. Now all you need to do is find out what makes these people so different from the rest to make it easier to find more of them.
One customer I worked with found out that everyone of their repeat purchase group had a rural postal address way in the back blocks of the NZ countryside. Another sold a cosmetic product that were being purchased by a certain ethnic group. Neither could see this in their data beforehand but now, once revealed, it heralded a new approach to marketing to find more of these groups.
Scenario #3 – The gift that keeps on giving – to everyone.
Occasionally this one comes along and what a nice surprise it is when it does too. This is when the data shows a broad range of customers who are doing exactly as you hoped they would – buying more than once during the year.
Now it would be too much to ask for every customer to do this – so there are still a bundle who do the single purchase – but still the good news is there for all to see. The job now remains to a) follow the marketing thread back to see where these multiple purchasing customers came from so you can get more from this space while also b) motivating them to keep doing what they are doing and finally to c) explore ways to get more customers into the phase of purchasing again and again.
So there you have it. One goal for 2013 would be to tune your business so that scenario #3 is for you a reality. By linking your customer database with your online marketing activities you can go searching for those customers that have the highest potential of delivering a super duper lifetime value.
You can find our latest website marketing update here
I first arrived in Auckland in August, 1986. I remember taking the bus from the airport into town and noticing the green fields of pasture along the way. Fresh from a 3 month tour of a very urban America this was a refreshing change. It reminded me of my home back in a very green part of Sussex in South East England.
I came full of hope but severely lacking in hard cash. Long story short – after touring both Islands I landed a job driving around the city selling engineering wares. My job had me leaving the office at 9.00am, crisscrossing around the city and returning later that evening after seeing a half dozen or so clients. Back then, day time Auckland traffic was a breeze.
Then things got busy.
All Aucklanders have their own personal traffic horror story. Last week I added a new one to mine when I tried to get to the Airport from Grey Lynn for a 11.00am flight to Wellington. I left the office at 7.30am and only just made it in time to check in. These days there is no way I could leave the office in the morning hoping to see six people across various parts of Auckland and hope to be home by 5pm. Things have changed.
The same can be said of Google’s AdWords system and the amount of people now using it or planning to use it in New Zealand. Strategies that used to work two years ago would flounder now. The competition for attention around those search results is so much greater.
Fueling some of this demand is the mainstream promotion of paid search advertising. For instance I noticed running across the sidelines of the last All Black test at Eden Park advertising for Search Engine Marketing services. Then a few weeks later I pull out an eight page insert to the New Zealand Herald trumpeting the benefits of Google’s advertising. All great marketing – all targeted at middle New Zealand companies keen to grow their business and looking for the next space to do it.
So what does this all mean for you – the long term user of Google AdWords?
Firstly – when it comes to your costs per click you are either a “price maker” or a “price taker”. Those “making” the bid prices are the ones bidding up the costs per clicks as they are driven to grab as much traffic as they can. These advertisers know their numbers.
They see costs per clicks as costs per leads which naturally trickle down into costs per successful sale. When the system is performing well – transforming clicks directly to profitable sales – then pushing more money into clicks makes perfect commercial sense.
This is frequently the opposite approach for those who are price “takers”. These marketers usually run a system bereft of any analysis. Here they take the click cost they are given by Google and “hope” it translates into sustainable marketing.
Secondly – now’s the time to stand out when all around you are your competitors. A few years ago you could select a few keywords, kick off your campaign and appear with very few – if any – competitors around you. You may well have been the only option in paid search for that keyword– what a luxury.
Move forward three years and you are one among many listed in the 10 paid search places on page one of Google. So what is going to make your 25 character headline and two lines of 35 characters of description stand out from the rest? Already know what to say? Great – any strong unique selling proposition can be distilled down into three lines of text.
Stuck? Well now’s the time to let your AdWords activities help you locate exactly what makes you different from the rest AND attracts the right prospects to click your ads.
And finally – your ongoing success online may well be dependent on what happens AFTER your clicks become leads. We spoke about this point during our conference call last month. Consider these two scenarios to move the concept further ahead.
Let’s say suppliers A and B are from the same industry. Both buy 500 clicks off Google for the same price of $1000. Each have their website tuned to deliver 20 sales leads from this traffic. However supplier A has a sales process that is unreliable, weak and very ineffective. So staff don’t follow leads up – conversations are hurried and have no structure – and very poor questions are asked. All this results in only 5 sales worth $750 are made producing a total of $3750 revenue. Remove just the advertising cost and we have $2750 remaining.
This compared to supplier B who has a super sales process that is crafted to make the most of each contact. People are called back – the conversations that ensue are well thought out and the right questions are asked. Due to this they close 10 sizable sales worth $1250 each which produces a grand total of $12500. Again remove the advertising and we are left with a sizable $11500.
So who’s in a better place to manage a tripling of the click cost taking the monthly advertising cost to $3000 for the same amount of leads?
Gone are the days of buying AdWords clicks and looking like the only game in town in paid search. Now expect the space around you to get “chocka block” with every person and their advertising pet. Whether you remain there in 12 month’s time will depend on the strategies you deliver both on and off your website. The three strategies outlined above should get you going in the right direction.
Every year we pick a charity for Christmas and make a sizable donation on behalf of our customers. This year we asked our customers for their help and based on their feedback we will be sending these three charities a donation of $500 each.
Cancer Research through the Cancer Society
Our offices close Friday 21st December at 5.00pm and will re-open January 7th at 9.00am.
And just early warning for our customers. We are planning a “customer appreciation” event for Thursday, February 7th @4.30pm. This will be hosted in our offices and will involve some mixing, mingling and all round good free stuff – so add it into your new 2013 diary today.
Have a safe and relaxing Christmas
All the best
The team at Permission
Every month we hold a customer conference call that all of our customers are invited to join. At the beginning of these conference calls we have a section on what is new in the online marketing world that we believe is worthy of your attention. Below is a video of the introduction of Decembers conference call. This months new and noteworthy information relates to Facebook’s EdgeRank, Cyber Monday, Google Analytics Intelligence Events, Analytics in Adwords, and Analytics in Real Life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX6TqoZJEak
Are you distracting your customers, and deterring them from buying what they really want on your site? This humorous video highlights how some missteps in the online shopping experience would look if they actually played out in real life.
Shopping online is meant to be easy. Find out where your customers are “checking out” with Google Analytics.
What is the roadblock between finding semi-skim milk and milk skim-semi? Check out this video and learn how improving your site search can help. This humorous video highlights how some missteps in the online shopping experience would look if they actually played out in real life.
So you have fought it out with your competitors in the online market place and won. A nice new shiny lead has arrived in your inbox. Now what do you do? Is your selling process as good as your lead generation? Just by the nature of selling work – more humans than machines involved – I can guarantee there will be room for improvement. However, by following some basic steps, most can make their selling offline good enough to match their selling online.
So where are the gaps? Let’s think through the atrocious selling experience we have all been on the receiving end of.
Here are a few that immediately come to mind:
• The company that never calls you back.
• The sales person who talks, talks and talks about them and what they do, but never listens to what you want.
• The detailed presentation you sit through on the product that does exactly what you don’t want to achieve.
• The sales person who never gives up on the follow-up stage but you still don’t make a decision.
Now let’s work through each with some suggestions on how an optimised sales process could plug these gaps.
#1: The company that never calls you back
You fill in the form on their website or call the office after hours using the phone number you find on their home page and leave a message. Next day – nothing. The following – still nothing. Did they get the message? Did the form actually work? Fortunately, the other two suppliers you contacted that same evening have called and things are underway. So
what went wrong? ‘Lots’ could be the answer. What process do you have when people leave a message? Which form is completed and who is responsible for following these people up?
Web forms that used to work can fail. Yep, while it may have worked last month, your hosting provider could have altered some settings so that what was working before is now broken. Run tests over them if you see a reasonable gap between leads.
#2: The sales person who talks, talks and talks about them and what they do, but never asks what you want
I am in the market for a new car. Such fun. What I have now is ideal for city driving but open road jaunts of a couple of hours are a bit beyond it. Last week I walked onto a car yard and began the purchasing experience. The first sales person I met was the person who I bought my current car from. We exchanged pleasantries and then I told him I was looking for a new car – specifically one model that is the size up from the one I have.
We then walked out into the yard to kick some tyres and sit on some leather. We chatted about this and that. Guess how long we talked about why I needed a car in the first place? About three minutes. I told him I needed one for longer drives – he acknowledged the fact and then carried on presenting another great feature the car has, something to do
with engine facts and figures.
To be honest I can understand – it’s the easy route to take. Asking all those “why” questions is way more difficult than presenting what’s in a brochure. Nevertheless, it’s this work that really uncovers the true meaning behind the purchase. Two hour journeys would be well within the reach of the model I have if it wasn’t for the lack of boot space for all the junk I need to take along. And I would never try carrying two bikes on the roof of my car in case it toppled over. So a bike rack needs to fit neatly on any new purchase. Plus I like listening to music from my iPhone as I totter along. So seeing that the designer of the model up had hidden the auxiliary input jack in the glove box, making it an impossible
challenge to navigate song selection, made this option a complete no go.
All of this resides neatly in the “current situation” section we discussed in the coaching call. All of the great sales people I have met have spent a good 60% of their sales presentation time in this area, asking all they can about what is going on now and why there’s a need in the first place.
#3: The detailed presentation you sit through on the product that does exactly what you don’t want to achieve
This neatly points back to the last point, just to highlight the importance of asking all the right questions to find out
what’s happening now.Personally, I try not to trust my failing memory during this stage. I have taken a nice short cut and written down all the questions I need to find answers to and then work through the relevant ones when we meet people for the first time. In nearly every case the conversation goes off track and I have to refer back to my prompt sheet to ensure that I have
asked everything I should. Why not consider this yourself?
#4: The sales person who never gives up on the follow-up stage but you still don’t make a decision
This can be frustrating for everyone involved. You spend all that time meeting, discussing and being presented to but still you don’t go ahead. The reason? Nobody answered the question “what happens if nothing happens?”
Doing nothing is an incredibly strong force to overcome. It’s almost like we are hardwired to protect the status quo and keep on doing what we are doing. A good sales process recognises this and ensures this question is asked and answered. In some cases the results of inaction are relatively hidden.
Market share slowly declines due to ineffective advertising, machinery gradually becomes less efficient as maintenance steps are avoided, or personal motivation slips down as holidays are missed. By asking “what happens if nothing happens?” you expose the insidious nature of inaction for everyone to be aware of and act upon.
These are just some of the points that can highlight a sales process that’s in need of work. Just thinking of it as a “process” rather than a single “event” is a step in itself. Good luck with your endeavours here. Customers can access the full recording of the coaching call in the members’ area of our website.
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