Meet Your New Salesperson; Your Website

If you’re a salesperson, you need to embrace a new member of your department. He already works for you, but he had been sharing his time between IT and Marketing.  He came to work for your company around 10 years ago.  He was a little quiet in the beginning; no one came to visit.  Eventually he got around; became known internally, and then you and the other salespeople started introducing him to the clients.  In a short time, everyone knew who he was.

In the early days, his job was to promote the company’s products on the Internet.  The marketing people wrote copy for him; mostly they just re-purposed brochures.  Sometimes the sales manager came to him and gave him a list of products to promote.  Consumers could even buy stuff from him.  The IT people made sure he worked flawlessly; that there were no technical glitches with how he communicated to prospects.

Eventually, the IT guys analyzed his performance, and realized he had some problems.  Too many prospects were visiting him, but he didn’t sell the company products well enough, so those prospects left to find other companies.  Sometimes his communication was jumbled, so much so that prospects couldn’t figure out what he was selling.  He tried to give away product literature and case studies, but nobody wanted to fill out the long survey to receive them.

Mr. Salesperson, your new member is known as “your website.”  In this age of web 2.0 and social media, your website is now an integral part of the sales process.  He needs some help though; he needs to improve his lead generation and conversion process.  His web designer made him pretty, but your marketing people didn’t write his copy well enough to be Google-friendly and compelling.  He needs to be optimized; make him a relevant landing page with bullet-point buyer benefits rather than that technical “we do this” jargon that chases people away.  Make it easy for visitors to contact him with a clear but short web form.  Large phone number okay too.  Ask your boss to buy a marketing automation system, so your new website colleague can identify the quality leads for you, and you don’t waste your time with bad leads.

And one more thing- even though “your website” is now a more assertive salesperson, please make sure the marketing folk still visit, as it’s essential that everyone is aligned with the same goals.  Once “your website” is redone and ready to generate quality leads, take him to lunch (bring your laptop!).

Paul Mosenson

President

NuSpark Marketing

www.nusparkmarketing.com