7. Internet Marketing—Some contrarian thoughts that work-guaranteed.
a. Rule #3 Know your customers better than they know themselves.
i. You know your products. What they do. What they don’t do. How long they last, etc. How well do you know your customers? Why do they buy your products? What do they really want from you? Chances are about 90% true that your customers don’t buy your product for the reason you think they do.
1. A quick example to stimulate your thinking.
I set up a contractor/retail stone yard for a client years ago. The business prospered ($1M in annual sales in 2 yrs). At the end of the second year, we had three acres of stone on pallets on the yard, over 500 tons, 100 different products to choose from. Fieldstone, flagstone, boulders, decorative gravel, pavers, manufactured stone, every kind and every color of stone that we could find East of the Mississippi River on one yard.
2. Nobody ever bought a single stone or rock!
3. What people bought were walkways, paths, patios, terraces, and waterfalls.
4. What they really wanted was a great backyard where they could live outdoors some of the time.
This is the level you must be at to convince me that you really know your customers.
ii. If you don’t know what your customer is going to say, before they say it,
then you don’t know your customer as well as you should.
iii. Talk to your customers. Listen to your customers. Everybody says that but this is what you need to do while you are doing what everybody else said do. Identify the common patterns, the common trends among the random conservations you have with diverse people, your customers. They will tell you what you need to know if you ask the right questions and listen.
iv. Make a list of the ten or twelve questions that are unique to your business that everybody always asks during the sales process.
v. If you have been doing this for a while, you already have most of the answers standardized. If you are really on top, then everybody in your business has the same answers to the same questions. If not, fix that immediately.
vi. Give all the questions and answers to the most analytical person that works for you and ask him to build you a flow chart of the sales process from start to finish using the questions and answers.
vii. Be prepared for him to return with holes in his flowchart where he needs
answers he doesn’t have.
viii. Get those answers and fill in those holes in the flowchart.
ix. At the advanced level, you need to know that the sales process does not always start when they walk in the door. It might have started yesterday when they planned what they were going to do today. One big change in customers over the last several years is the amount of homework they do on the Web before they go shopping in person. These days the customer rarely starts the conversation with you with “I don’t know what I’m doing, but somebody told me to come here because you would help me”. More often, the customer is busy trying to tell you how much he knows about what you’re doing. Get used to that. It’s not going away.
b. Standardize your presentations.
i. Give the flow chart to the most creative person that works for you. Write out scripts.
ii. Give the scripts to an editor and proofread, condense by 50% without losing anything other than verbiage.
iii. I strongly prefer writing scripts in past tense, but this is not 100% applicable in every case.
iv. Now you have quality content for your WebBusiness where space is at a premium and you did not have to pay an adman to write copy that may or not have reflected his understanding of your business.
c. In business, there is no better way to create immediate trust and confidence with a stranger that to answer their questions before they ask them. This is true in person and this is true on the Web.
d. Your objective should be to give the prospect just enough information to feel comfortable making a intelligent purchase decision. Not give away the company store.
e. You should not give away company secrets or enough information so that they can make their purchase with your competitor. This is always a difficult challenge.
f. Once you understand a few things about questions, this process becomes easier.
i. All questions fall in one of three categories.
1. A sincere request for information (when the questioner follows the first question with another question requesting more information).
2. A test to see how smart you are, (when the guy asking the question already knows the answer and doesn’t respond directly to your answer).
3. A polite introduction to the questioner’s opinion on the topic being discussed (when the guy asking the question clearly doesn’t care about your answer and immediately begins to answer his own question).
ii. For most questions, there is a clear “Yes” answer and everything else is a “No” answer, no matter what is said.
iii. People who are ready to buy have questions and answers. Everybody else just has questions. Back to the stoneyard. It was located about 30-40 minutes out in the country between two large metropolitan areas (only 7 minutes from interstate, an easy forty-five minute drive). Nevertheless, the second question we asked was “do you have measurements?” If they answered “yes”, most made a selection and a purchase. If they did not have measurements, they were not prepared to buy and very few did. There is a similar litmus test in every business.
Needless to say, all this was a lot easier when you were face to face with all your customers. On the other hand, because of the volume of WebBusiness, it is probably easier and faster to pick up customer trends.
a. Rule #3 Know your customers better than they know themselves.
i. You know your products. What they do. What they don’t do. How long they last, etc. How well do you know your customers? Why do they buy your products? What do they really want from you? Chances are about 90% true that your customers don’t buy your product for the reason you think they do.
1. A quick example to stimulate your thinking.
I set up a contractor/retail stone yard for a client years ago. The business prospered ($1M in annual sales in 2 yrs). At the end of the second year, we had three acres of stone on pallets on the yard, over 500 tons, 100 different products to choose from. Fieldstone, flagstone, boulders, decorative gravel, pavers, manufactured stone, every kind and every color of stone that we could find East of the Mississippi River on one yard.
2. Nobody ever bought a single stone or rock!
3. What people bought were walkways, paths, patios, terraces, and waterfalls.
4. What they really wanted was a great backyard where they could live outdoors some of the time.
This is the level you must be at to convince me that you really know your customers.
ii. If you don’t know what your customer is going to say, before they say it,
then you don’t know your customer as well as you should.
iii. Talk to your customers. Listen to your customers. Everybody says that but this is what you need to do while you are doing what everybody else said do. Identify the common patterns, the common trends among the random conservations you have with diverse people, your customers. They will tell you what you need to know if you ask the right questions and listen.
iv. Make a list of the ten or twelve questions that are unique to your business that everybody always asks during the sales process.
v. If you have been doing this for a while, you already have most of the answers standardized. If you are really on top, then everybody in your business has the same answers to the same questions. If not, fix that immediately.
vi. Give all the questions and answers to the most analytical person that works for you and ask him to build you a flow chart of the sales process from start to finish using the questions and answers.
vii. Be prepared for him to return with holes in his flowchart where he needs
answers he doesn’t have.
viii. Get those answers and fill in those holes in the flowchart.
ix. At the advanced level, you need to know that the sales process does not always start when they walk in the door. It might have started yesterday when they planned what they were going to do today. One big change in customers over the last several years is the amount of homework they do on the Web before they go shopping in person. These days the customer rarely starts the conversation with you with “I don’t know what I’m doing, but somebody told me to come here because you would help me”. More often, the customer is busy trying to tell you how much he knows about what you’re doing. Get used to that. It’s not going away.
b. Standardize your presentations.
i. Give the flow chart to the most creative person that works for you. Write out scripts.
ii. Give the scripts to an editor and proofread, condense by 50% without losing anything other than verbiage.
iii. I strongly prefer writing scripts in past tense, but this is not 100% applicable in every case.
iv. Now you have quality content for your WebBusiness where space is at a premium and you did not have to pay an adman to write copy that may or not have reflected his understanding of your business.
c. In business, there is no better way to create immediate trust and confidence with a stranger that to answer their questions before they ask them. This is true in person and this is true on the Web.
d. Your objective should be to give the prospect just enough information to feel comfortable making a intelligent purchase decision. Not give away the company store.
e. You should not give away company secrets or enough information so that they can make their purchase with your competitor. This is always a difficult challenge.
f. Once you understand a few things about questions, this process becomes easier.
i. All questions fall in one of three categories.
1. A sincere request for information (when the questioner follows the first question with another question requesting more information).
2. A test to see how smart you are, (when the guy asking the question already knows the answer and doesn’t respond directly to your answer).
3. A polite introduction to the questioner’s opinion on the topic being discussed (when the guy asking the question clearly doesn’t care about your answer and immediately begins to answer his own question).
ii. For most questions, there is a clear “Yes” answer and everything else is a “No” answer, no matter what is said.
iii. People who are ready to buy have questions and answers. Everybody else just has questions. Back to the stoneyard. It was located about 30-40 minutes out in the country between two large metropolitan areas (only 7 minutes from interstate, an easy forty-five minute drive). Nevertheless, the second question we asked was “do you have measurements?” If they answered “yes”, most made a selection and a purchase. If they did not have measurements, they were not prepared to buy and very few did. There is a similar litmus test in every business.
Needless to say, all this was a lot easier when you were face to face with all your customers. On the other hand, because of the volume of WebBusiness, it is probably easier and faster to pick up customer trends.
Upcoming:
The Culture Clash between Business and Facebook
The Culture Clash between Business and Facebook
