Two flavorful words that tell a whole story. A story born
of over 50-years’ experience in selling, and through
that experience, understanding people and what it takes to
turn browsers into buyers. And the
story is simple: the technology may be new, but people
aren’t.
Smoke
signals didn’t change human nature or psychology or the
dynamics of buying and selling,
the printing press didn’t, nor the telegraph, nor the
telephone, nor radio nor television. Buying and selling
have been going on for thousands of years, and the
fundamental sales process, while more sophisticated,
remains essentially the same. Why? Because communication
technology may change, but people don’t. How come,
that 69-year-old guy wondered, after all those other
communications revolutions, suddenly in the world of the
Internet the old rules no longer apply and buyers have
instantly been transformed into some other kind of being? He
didn’t see any valid reason why it would
happen, didn’t see any process that would make it
happen, didn’t see why it should happen. And
three years later, guess what? It didn’t.
The
proof? Look at the flood of red ink and the barrage
of dot-bombs. Listen to the clamor by investors for
profits. See the sudden swell of articles about customer
experience and usability. Ultimately, just consider the
following statistic: the average conversion rate of
browsers to buyers in the brick and mortal retail world is
48%. Know what it is on the web? 1.75%. LESS THAN TWO!!
SHEESH!! (Sorry for shouting; I get pretty frustrated
about this.) Gazillions of dollars spent on the Next Big
Thing and the conversion rate is LESS TH... (oops, sorry)
less than two percent.
Well,
that very smart 69-year-old guy is now 74 (God bless him),
and his also-smart son Henry Kauftheil happens to be the
president of
I.C.E.S.,
Inc.,
a successful Internet incubator focused on developing
businesses that know how to sell in the real world,
know how to translate that to the web, and are committed
to making a profit. As you humans like to say, "What
a concept." The same year his dad made “Internet,
shminternet” famous -around I.C.E.S. anyway, Henry was
interviewed by The New York Times and said this
about his company: “This is a different kind of
business. [It] is not run by cyber-jockeys. This is run
by merchants.”
Merchants
are successful over the long term only if they’ve
learned how to work with people. Lots of people.
Kauftheil finds the notion of eyeballs amusing, and so do
I. When was the last time you sold something to an
eyeball? So he talks the importance of what he laughingly
calls ‘pinchable eyeballs’ - real,
identifiable, motivated buyers and sellers. One of the
things the Internet does best is bring together pinchable
folks who have something to offer and are looking for
someone else who might want it, or who want something and
are looking for someone who might have it. Everybody
benefits. And again, it’s simple.
Whether
your business is B2B or B2C, the critical relationships,
even in the age of the Internet, are still what Kauftheil
calls "N2N" (“nose-to-nose”).
Kauftheil is proving what his dad said three years ago:
the web is one of the best communication systems ever, but
that’s all it is, and if you forget that, you’re in
trouble - especially against a competitor who hasn’t
forgotten, or never bought into the myth that it would
change “everything” in the first place. In order to
sell more, you have to sell more. Apparently
it took somebody from Mars to say it, and if you get that,
you get it all. Learn how to sell to people. Learn
why people buy. Then you can use any technology you
want, or none at all, and still be successful. Plus
you’ll be lots more successful than your competitors who
are whizzes at the technology but never learned how to
sell. And they’ll never catch you because they won’t
even be asking the right questions. When their sales go
down, or just don’t go up fast enough, all they’ll
ever be able to do is throw more technology at the
problem.
So,
“Internet, Shminternet!” indeed. Think of the web as a
good tool, a great tool, but at the end of the day,
it’s just another tool. Follow Henry’s dad's advice,
and never lose sight of the fact that sitting at the
monitor at the other end of that T1 is a real person.
click here for a printable version of this whole article
Will They Trust You With Their Privacy?
Sorry.
The odds are stacked against you, and you probably
didn't have a thing to say about it. Unfortunately, 64% of
online customers surveyed don't think websites are
trustworthy enough to follow even posted privacy
practices, and that includes not passing along their user
information to third parties1. So how are
you going to sell to someone who doesn't trust you?
You can
change the perception out there, and give your business
a big edge. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science
to inspire trust. Just some honesty and integrity and
plain talk. So here's what you do: have a clear privacy
policy, display a brief version it prominently on your
home page, provide a link to a fuller disclosure if
one is necessary (written in human-speak, not
lawyer-speak), have great customer service both to explain
the policy and to support the heck out of it, and stick
to it as if your life depended on it (it does). And
while you are at it, don't force your customers to fill in
oodles of info about themselves in the first place. The
more you ask for, the more they get nervous - wouldn’t
you? Ask yourself if you really have to ask. How are you
going to use the info? If you ask for my phone number, I
can only guess you’re going to start calling me. Why
else would you ask (except in an order form, of course)?
Can you find out what you need to know by analyzing your
site logs? And remember, the more you ask for, the more
you not only raise their doubts and risk scaring them
away, but the more you also delay them from doing what
they want to do and what you want them to do. Buy. So
if you have to ask for info, take a tip from Sergeant
Friday, “Just the facts, ma'am.”
Oh …
and do everything else right, too!
1
Jupiter Communications
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