Online Conversion & Beyond

Please Come Back - We're So Sorry

We live in the age of public apology. And since a week in rehab (or a few hours, ala Britney) is not an option for poor behavior on a corporate scale, new media has become the confessional of choice.  Witness the JetBlue CEO's recent appeal to customers  on YouTube after a horrible week. 

Will this translate into repaired customer relations (and sales)?  It may be too early to know, but it's a good start.  And it is really, really quick, a good attribute for any attempts at "We're so sorry." 

We'll be interested to see whether the buying public responds positively.  Or if this will seem lame after the newness of the approach wears off.

Sales Incentives and ROI

Conventional wisdom regarding sales incentives is that salespeople simply follow the money.  And that management can get salespeople to do just about anything for the "carrot" dangled in front of them.  But just how directly do sales incentive programs impact the bottom line?  Is there always a positive correlation? Or do other factors (non-cash recognition, loyalty, etc.) provide more "bang" for less "bucks?"

According to a recent artile in Workforce Performance Solutions, "Dr. Srinath Gopalakrishna, associate professor of marketing at the University of Missouri has successfully isolated the economic impact or ROI of sales incentives. " 

In a study sponsored by the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement (Northwestern University),  the $1 trillion spent annually on salesforce compensation and incentives appears to be well spent .   It appears that sales of  "incentivized" (I really hate that word) products at one company studied doubled during the incentive period, resulting in a 12% boost in ROI.  In the same study, the boost in the sales of the targeted product did NOT result in cannibalization of sales of other products, a common fear of most sales executives and comp plan designers.   In fact, the company got residual benefits from the incentive program after the program had ended, an unexpected bonus.

What does not work as well as managers hoped are non-cash incentives.  The study found that:

"What employees most desire might not be best for optimal business results. Employees indicate a preference for cash incentives, while managers think recognition (noncash) awards are more effective in producing the desired results. "

While non-cash rewards may work well in other parts of the company, sales people are a different breed.  They recognize the transactional nature of the relationship with the organizations that hire them, and for the most part (correctly) believe that if sales drop, they are gone.  "Take the money and run" is not an indication of disloyalty . . . it is simply a rational response on their part.  This is something their managers should never forget.

We're Just Curious

It's springtime in Massachusetts (at last) and yet we're not getting much opportunity to get outside and enjoy it.  The Red Sox played their home opener yesterday (a local "holiday" as most employers will tell you), but we didn't get a chance to tune in until the evening news (ahem, we won).  The reason (good news/bad news) is that we have been swamped with work, and from what we can tell, so are almost all of our friends and colleagues in the web marketing business.

Given the doom and gloom of our local newscasts, highway robbery at the pump, nuclear Iran and gold at new highs, we're frankly surprised to see so much business growth.   Maybe it's just a reflection of all the marketing and networking we've done for the past 18 months (slow conversion, but conversion nonetheless).   

Over the next few weeks we're going to be reaching out to see just what is behind the apparent surge in business activity.  If you've got a clue, please don't hesitate to share it.  Comments are welcome.

Call Center Blues - From an Indian POV

For those who may be considering using an offshore call center to handle inbound sales calls, we'd like to suggest a little reading: One Night at the Call Center by Chetan Bhagat.  According to a recent post in the FreeNewMexican this little expose has sold 100,000 copies since October, no mean feat in the book biz.

What struck this writer was the author's straightforward description of the contempt with which call center management holds the North American customer base that they "serve."  Anyone who has struggled to understand the directions being given during a late-night, high-anxiety service call (e.g. attempting to get a failure-prone home network to return to life) will get a real kick out of the 10=35 "golden rule." 

Hopefully, this book will find readership outside India, where it has certainly had a great run.   For those in the HR side of the telemarketing and customer service business, it presents a "distant mirror" that will hopefully lead to improvements in a part of the work world that is in great need of humane attention.

Just Say No

One of the most important lessons that successful salespeople learn is when to "let go."  This is particularly difficult when you've worked so hard to get that first appointment with a prospect, invested time in getting to know the organization and its products and spent significant time with the prospect, establishing rapport and trust.  You've grown comfortable with the relationship . . . and find it much easier to spend the morning with the prospect than with your phone, making cold calls.

The problem is that this sales relationship is going nowhere.  The signals are all there.  If you are one of my clients, you probably have a "red light - yellow light - green light" job aid that allows you to filter sales conversations, looking for phrases that signal a prospect's intentions.  And the lights you have seen for weeks have all been red.  But you keep going back for yet another meeting.

If you're having trouble breaking away from non-productive relationships, take a look at Paul Trout's excellent article,  Tech Salespeople Should Say ‘No’ to Prospects Much More Than They Do .  As Paul tells us:

"It may seem backward – salespeople saying “no” to prospects – but salespeople should say it much more often than they do now. By claiming “the power of no,” technology salespeople are allowing themselves to free up time to focus on opportunities that have higher likelihoods of closing. By saying “no” to the wrong opportunities and “yes” to the right ones, making your quota becomes much easier because you become more productive."

Saying "no" to prospects who will not convert into customers should not come off as an act of arrogance.  Instead, it should come from a place of respect . . . both for your prospect and for yourself.  You know what to do . . . now do it.

Is Solution Selling Still the Solution?

Solution Selling has always seemed like a great idea.  "Rather than focus on our products," we've advised our (and our clients') salespeople, "focus on what the customer needs . . . get a fix on the problem they are dying to solve and then . . . offer just the right solution!" 

So, imagine our surprise last Thursday evening when Donald MacDonald and Rich Vancil of IDC, sharing their latest research, displayed for one and all that there's a downside these days to Solution Selling, at least in the IT marketplace.  As they explained to a full capacity crowd at the quarterly NETSEA meeting:

• Solution Selling has become ubiquitous . . . apparently everyone else has been telling their salespeople the same things we have.  Result = No distinction in this message.
• Solution Selling disempowers the salesperson.  Instead of driving the deal, the salesperson becomes a business development person who simply orchestrates the conversation between the potential client and your technology, customer service, engineering and R&D people.  As MacDonald put it, in today's sales environment "The salesperson can LOSE the business, but they can't (independently) WIN the business." 
• Solution Selling drives up the total cost of sales.  When you add up the time expended by all the people contacted by prospects, you realize that each sales effort is costing a TON.
• Solution Selling lengthens the sales cycle.  When the traditional (big-ticket B2B)sales cycle is replaced by the solution fulfillment cycle (which includes both the customer's decision-making AND implementation cycle), the time line for closing a sale has grown from 6 - 9 months to 14 - 16 months (according to research).

Does this mean we should move away from solution selling?  No, we've trained our customers to expect (demand) solutions, so there's no going back.  But we really need to look carefully at our model, and ask ourselves (1) what type of salespeople do we need now, (2) how should we prepare internal resources to respond to potential customers, (3) how do we screen prospects so that we only invest time in the "highly likelys" and (4) what do we do to explain the new cycle to those responsible for forecasting?  But for the time being, just accept that it's not going to be pretty.

People online do not want to get sold

In a recent article in adBUMb, Maria Veloso reminds us:

"People online do not want to get sold—a fact documented in a recent study conducted by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen. The Internet population goes online to find information, Morkes and Nielsen found."

If we accept this premise, then even the most blatantly commercial site managers need to review their copy, and honestly determine if visitors get value when they click through.   As much as we may want to shout "Buy my stuff!!!", or say "We are the greatest!!!" the truth is, these messages are just not effective.   

Maria advises web marketers to ". . . wrap your advertising message within the soft cushions of an informative editorial piece of interest to your target audience."  The key words in her message are "informative," "of interest" and "target audience," which imply, in turn, that you really have something to say, that you can say it in an interesting and engaging way and that you actually know who you should be speaking to. 

Yeah, it's basic.  But how often, in the pressure-cooker environment of sales, do we forget that:

• The sales cycle is not the buying cycle,
• Potential customers do not share our urgency, and that
• We cannot annoy someone into liking us.

Take a moment.  Read the article.  What she has to say is worth repeating.

Sometimes It's What You DON'T Say That Counts

We bloggers love to talk and write. The payoffs we get from filling the void with valuable content draw us to post, post and post again.

So it may seem somewhat out of phase when a blogger speaks out (Huh?) in praise of silence.   But in the interest of improved conversion, I'd like to do just that.   

Kelley Robertson's wonderful article "Bite Your Tongue" in the June 17 issue of WorkZ is a great read for those of us who sell or influence for a living.   Knowing when to sit quietly, and let the customer or client deal with the resulting silence (without one of us jumping in to fill it) can pay real dividends. 

It's tough to do.  For example, when we ask a clients or prospect a question, and they don't immediately respond, it takes an act of will (or a big, mouth-sized sock) to hold back from answering it ourselves.   When we "ask for the order" and nothing happens, we often start speaking out of sheer nervousness.

Consider how you use (or could use) silence to improve your conversion results, particularly in telephone or face-to-face interaction.  Try it.  You'll learn a lot when someone else speaks first.

How About a "Top 1" List?

We're as fond of "top 10 lists" as David Letterman.  In the business world, such lists often go under the heading of "10 tips" or "10 things no (fill in the blank) should be without."  As such, they represent a distilled version of the writer's wisdom, passed on in a format that is immediately accessible to their time-challenged readership.

But do we really need 10 tips?  Especially when the whole idea can be boiled down to one simple statement?  As our example for the day, we turn to Keith Gloster's article in today's WebProNews, "10 Tips for Writing a Highly Persuasive Ad."  After reading his list, and agreeing that each item contains a nugget of wisdom, we stepped back and thought, "what's really being said here?"  Every action he suggests serves one goal: build buyer confidence.  And by building buyer confidence, we mean the buyer's confidence in their own ability to make a decision that will not come back to haunt them.

Buyer confidence is at the heart of conversion.  Once achieved, the buyer is acting from an "internal locus of control" rather than being influenced and shaped by all the forces (and conflicts) around them.  Gloster does a nice job of showing us some of the ways to help the buyer get there.  Our friends Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg cover this topic from almost every angle in their highly-acclaimed best-seller Call to Action.

Focus on making your buyer a winner.  Winning buyers are confident.  And when they are confident, you win too.

Cold Call Lessons from the World of Human Capital Conversion

One of the reasons we track practices and trends in recruiting is that the lessons learned in getting candidates to say "yes" to a job offer (a sale by another name is still a sale) apply readily to other selling processes.  Some are very basic, but bear repeating.

In Lou Adler's article "Get Off the PC and On the Phone" in today's Electronic Recruiting Exchange, we are reminded that the best way to deal with "no" answers is to frame the early part of the discussion where "yes" is the only logical answer to the question. Specifically talking about cold-calling "passive" (not looking) candidates, Lou advises:

"Recruiters need to lead the cold call conversation by asking appropriate questions. The best ones are those that can be answered by a yes."

Lou contends that candidates have legitimate reasons to say "no" if we don't provide information early in the conversation that says what we have to discuss is worth listening to.   Lou says:

"When a candidate says no to anything, especially early in the recruiting process, it's usually because he or she doesn't have enough information to say yes, and the opportunity doesn't seem worth spending the time to consider it."

So it's up to the recruiter (or any salesperson, for that matter) to provide enough information up front to intrigue the candidate (or any other sales prospect).   

Yes, the basics of good cold-call work apply across industry boundaries.  When we forget them, we get rejected . . . for good reason.  Take a look at Lou's article, and see if it rings any bells.  In our efforts to employ sophisticated techniques and technology, we often forget the basic tools of our trade.  Don't let this happen to you.