Are You A Salesman — Or A Frustrated Teacher
Teachers. Ya gotta love them. It’s been … wow, that many years and I remember Mrs. Mascola’s 5th grade as if it were yesterday. And Mr. Price … and … you get the idea …. we owe them a lot, and the good ones and bad ones stick in our mind for life.
So in some ways maybe it’s better for your online earnings experience to be remembered as a teacher. people like Darren Rowse for example certainly stick in my mind more as a teacher than a salesman, even though he sells a ton.
One disadvantage of the teacher model, though, is a simple fact. Along with all their good points teachers test you. There are pop quizzes, those impromptu "call-on’s" in class, the ‘go to the board and embarrass yourself thoroughly episodes, exams, term pares … wow, it’s a wonder we love any of them after that.
If you want to be a teacher, that’s fine, but if you want to make money online, lose that mentality while you are designing your blog/site and think like a salesman.
Ever read any "how to make sales" literature where they advise you to show up with a nice quality pen and an order form, all filled out to make sure you are always ready to close, no matter what stage of the selling process you might be in? Well, it’s good advice, and it’s good advice because it works, and it makes sales.
In the past week or so I have been on a bit of a buying spree. My impression if the e-commerce sites I have been on in the past few days is total amazement. Amazement that any of these yoyos (and you know who you are) make money at all. Here’s some common sales turnoffs and how you can easily correct them. If you haven’t started your site yet, don’t fall in these traps as you design and build it out. One of the worst things you can do is let your coding guru anywhere near your sales pages until you get them designed for making sales rather than testing people’s’ knowledge and patience:
- Sign Up: A buyer sees something s/he wants to buy. Obviously you have a hand-dandy "Add To Cart" button, and a separate text link (in case they have graphics turned off) button, don’t you? Most sites do, but a surprising number insist on making people go through a signup ritual before they can even get going on the buying process. The last time you visited a brick and mortar store, did they make you fill out a form before you could go in an handle the wares? Of course not! Collect buy information when they check out … they will have to give you name, rank and horsepower to use their credit card, after all. Or make it even easier and feature PayPal, they can buy with one click. Do you want their email address, street address and phone number for some kind of misguided marketing blitz, or do you want the sale?
- Zip Code: One site that I spent money on this past week (congratulations, Crucial.com), one only, out of 12 or 13 was smart enough to realize the power that the US Postal Service 9and the postal agencies of most countries) put into site operator’s hand. When I made a selection to go to the cart the site asked me for my Zip Code. When the cart opened up, my shipping and sales tax was already calculated (how many people abandon at that least, stupid recalculation that nearly every other shopping cart forces on the buyer?). Also, my city and state were already pre-filled in the shipping address field. Not only does this save time … saving a few seconds per customer is like buying and expensive new server … but it eliminates one of the most insidious problems any sales organization has … errored and misspelled data. Neat and quick. When do you ask for the Zip Code?
- Hiding Prices: This is one of the most sales-killing "habits" of unsuccessful marketer I have ever seen. When a prospect looks at an item, the price needs to be there, right at the top of the screen. Why on earth would you hide it? If it is too high the prospect is just going to waste a lot of time tying up the shopping cart and then abandon, so why waste his time as well as yours. If you are ashamed of your price, rewicker your sales campaign. You can’t successfully sell what you don’t believe in. If you feel your price represents good value … post it and make the sale easy.
That’s it for today. I’ll repeat that last line … this is consultation advice easily worth $10,000 but you already won the lottery for today … I’m giving it away to every reader … Make The Sale Easy!
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Comments
I, also, agree. If they can’t show me the price right away, I’m certainly not going to search for it. One company I know of right now says that there are too many variables such as freight, location, etc. Well, then just give them the price of what they want and tell them that there will be extra charges for the rest. I just can’t see where that is so hard. It’s the way I like to do business.
[...] A few days back I wrote a post that was well received (thanks to those who emailed or commented) about the difference between selling things ("conducting eCommerce" for you MBA-types) and forcing, or "teaching’ users how you want them to perform on your site. [...]
[...] day or two ago I expanded on my "Frustrated Teacher" comments by explaining how foolish I think it is to hold up customers trying to buy something [...]
You are exactly right. If it is too hard to buy it, I move on. I don’t think I am at all unusual in that thought. In particular, if I can’t find a price, I don’t even bother.