but the process stays the same………..unless of course you have a habit of yelling “BUY BUY BUY” the second you get face to face with your customer – more on this later
For what ever reason, people seem to think that the Internet has changed the steps that a customer goes through before they buy a particular product or service.
It really hasn’t.
The customer still needs to establish a want or need, do some research on alternative methods of satisfying the want or need, compare the alternatives and then make a decision. Of course we could get into semantics about the particulars of each step, but from a 30,000 foot level, this is how people behave.
What has changed is the method by which the consumer goes through this process.
Think back to 40 years ago and imagine you are buying a house, selecting a private school for your kids, or buying life insurance.
Step 1 – Find someone who sells what you are looking for. You could ask a friend for referral, open the phone book or maybe walk down the street and see if there is any advertising promoting the above referenced services.
Step 2 – Repeat Step 1 a few times so you have a few different alternatives. You usually don’t buy the first house you see without having another to compare it to. You wouldn’t send your daughter to an all boys private school if the first school you found was an all boys school. And you may not buy from the first insurance salesman you find if it turns out they only sell whole life when you need term.
Step 3 – After speaking with the sales representatives, you would sit down and consider alternatives. Ask you spouse, your friends, your co-workers, your mistress, anyone you thought might have a valid opinion.
Step 4 – You make your decision.
Now flash forward to present day. How do you go about this process?
Well, there is probably a good chance you would start on the Internet, which is perfectly fine.
But the buying process remains the same for the customer – 99% of the time, they are not jumping at the first offer they see. They do research, they talk to people, they evaluate and then they buy………just like you.
BUY BUY BUY
So imagine a situation where you are meeting with a sales representative for the first time and the first thing that comes out of the rep’s mouth is BUY BUY BUY. Every question you ask is met with the same response – BUY BUY BUY. You are looking for some basic product information, get a sense of how the company can help solve a particular problem you have and all they can say is BUY BUY BUY.
Now, that would be weird, because everyone knows that you need to foster a bit of a relationship and a bit of trust before a customer parts with their money. It’s only natural. An especially on a first sales meeting because often the prospect is looking to fill a basic information void they have.
But for some reason, when people get in to marketing on-line, they forget this. They set up a few PPC ads, link them to some generic web page and you know what you get…………a situation where the company is yelling BUY BUY BUY at the prospect. The prospects’ questions and concerns are of no value to the company, because otherwise, they would have developed a better way to listen to them.
On top of this, the merchant is oblivious to the best part of selling over the internet……you can develop automated systems to educate a prospect about your product to see if it fits with their situation. You can use a number of processes to build trust with the prospect………in fact you can use the internet to automatically deal with the most laborious tasks that the average salesperson deals with………..prospecting……..so that by the time a salesperson finally meets a prospect, the prospect is much further along the sales process and has the expectation that the company can help solve their problem.
OR……you could keep yelling BUY BUY BUY at your prospects and have your sales people constantly spending time doing a manual task, like delivering basic product information, that could easily be automated
A perfect example of this is for this search: corporate training solution las vegas
If you take a look at the Raytheon ad, they dont really discuss any benefits of their product offering………but they must be #1 for a reason
When you get to the landing page, you see the typical mistakes (no information capture) and no way for the customer to easy communicate their needs to the company, but the company is telling you how great they are at” aligning performance among employees, customers and partners” and you say to yourself……..”I just wanted to teach my employees about our new sales process”
Have you ever tired using direct marketing to ask your customers about their needs? I bet it will work.
Just stop yelling at your customers!!!
If a PPC ad isn’t worth doing well, its not worth doing at all
