Retail Sales Techniques: Will They Help You?

Editor: The title of this post "retail sales techniques" is used as a general term. Some ideas here relate to corporate and other sales practices. In internet lingo B2B and B2C.

In reality, sales roles in most companies are not a valued position. In some business sectors, sales people are downright badmouthed and ridiculed. I have been at both sides of the fence, neither one is pretty. In the traditional corporate management world, the headquarters and regional offices, sales people are not always understood. Most are seen as slick (i.e. slippery) deal makers, ready to "bomb the price" to close a deal. In general, very few corporate managers without direct sales experience understand the intricacies and subtleties of a sales process. That said, there is awareness in most senior executive circles of the role sales plays in the success of the company. While it is simplistic to say that "without sales you don't have a company", the concept goes beyond simply stating this fact. Why is this an issue to address in this blog? Because I see gaps in the understanding of what it takes to sell on the internet. Real gaps in effective internet sales, lead generation and attractive offers. Many real gaps in sales operations. Real gaps in actually running a sales effort on company web sites or sales portals (online shops). So while you may have a good design and bring people to the site with SEO or fantastic writing... if you want to sell, you need to do more than that.

Strike While The Iron Is Hot: Do It NOW

Internet time seems to move faster than real physical time. This may sound extreme to most people who do not manage a fast moving project. Even if you are a contributor (writer, illustrator, videographer) or editor, you feel this time squeeze once in a while. Many people in other professions will tell you the same. Physicians have less time to actually examine and treat patients, insurance brokers have less time to evaluate risk and offer solutions, even teachers have to contend with massive amount of new material... so what makes internet time so much faster? It's the global scale connectivity which brings: competition, innovation (change), partnering, opportunity and other time pressure activities. For the first time, humans communicate (argue, agree, render opinion, expand) with zero time delay anywhere in the world. This gives people anywhere the ability to quickly use and abuse your creative material. If you are going to drive a point and influence people, you will support or rebut bloggers and commentators, you will keep a watch on what people say about your writing and keep discussions going. This is a new game, it is just digitized and communicated globally.

Google Blog: Don't Stay Old

Would it come to a surprise that Google has no traditional web site? The Google blog as it turns out, is THE user targeted site for the company. In my last article about Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert, the situation was about "pre-blogging era" newsletter format. In the case of Google, it's a case of "perfect blogging era" timing. Gooogle acquired Blogger and adopted the blog format as a user communication format. In the Google case, the blog format was the obvious choice. While internet use and innovation driven change seem to speed forward faster and faster, some things stay the same. In both cases of Nielsen and Google, the format they chose has stayed the same while users have moved to other formats and different uses.

Spread Your Coverage Thin...

Do you spread your coverage thin? By this I mean, do you have many places to promote your blog (product, service, message, etc.)? If you have a message that can appeal to a broad audience, spread the message in many places. Advertisers rely on broad audience. When Coca Cola, Ford and Google advertise, they go after most people. They don't know who likes their products but it does not matter much. In most B2B products and services this is not the case. It is the case for Google, Microsoft and Amazon. These are companies that offer something to most businesses. Of course there are big many factories that only need a few copies of Microsoft Office and the decision to choose a new version is minimal. Yet this does not account to the decision to advertise.

Is seven thousands clicks enough?

Will you be able to sell your software with a small audience? How many people do you need to reach, and how many times do they have to see your blog to get a sale? Well, it varies. Obviously it depends on a few factors. Some of the obvious factors I see every day fall into these categories:

• Clear product description: this may seem too obvious, yet I still see many product that do not describe clearly "what you get".
Clear offer: what do you get and for how much (sometimes, how long). It may be silly, but if you buy a professional audio editing application from Roland (Sonar), shouldn't you know what extras you get and when the offer will expire?
• Top list of customers: who uses the product and what are they doing with it.
• Top list of benefits and advantages: why is your product better than the many others that look the same.
• Continuous updating: sales, blogs and interest in a product is a daily routine. Keep up the effort on a regular basis (it could be monthly...)

Not Selling Enough?

The last article "What Are You Selling" I described blogs that sell may not be actually selling enough. So let's look at two types of blog selling techniques. The first type is the one which seem to annoy some readers. The blog with post after post about products, offers (specials and discounts), competitive advantages, differentiation in features and just about everything you expect a parrot salesman to spew at a trade show floor. The second type is building a sales "process" (sometimes also called a "funnel") with the blog articles. First it gives a little story how someone used the product, then why you need it, then how there is a new sales offer with a deep discount, and onward it goes. Every step of the way it offers another opportunity to buy the product. There are many other sales techniques, but these are the most basic and most popular.