How To Lose Sales and Alienate People!
The single most important factor in having a successful business is what? Revenue! Making sales! If you’re not selling your product or service then you’re not making sales. If you’re not making sales, then you’re losing them. I would venture to guess that many, many businesses fail because they didn’t get enough sales. I know, big risk taker over here.
But here’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Since bad sales usually go on for quite a while before ultimately bringing a business to its’ knees, someone in the company must have known about this failure in production. This just begs the question, why does it continue?
Some managers prefer to do nothing and await the inevitable while others put in the work to identify and resolve critical problems within the company.
Your Search Marketing Kung Fu is Weak!
There are an awful lot of websites out there and if you’re not ranking where you need to be for those key search terms you rely on, you’re going to receive a lot less exposure and a lot fewer chances to convert customers. Since you’re not ranking well in Search Engines, your web pages probably aren’t all that relevant to your topic to begin with which can present a real problem for your visitors in terms of finding what they need.
If your website is having problems getting enough traffic to stay afloat, put some effort into it or consider outsourcing. Search Marketing is important to the visibility of a website, and visibility is everything.
Don’t Kill The Bunny
Is your Sales and Customer Service force good? Are they trained? Tolerant? Patient? Understanding? If your staff is composed of complainy, arrogant or self-centered agents, then you’re simply going to lose out on missed opportunities for sales. Be there for your customer, be understanding to their needs. Be knowledgeable about the products and services you provide, and be informative on the process. Reassure your customers, instill a sense of trust.
Being as accessible as possible is important in any industry or medium. Especially in Ecommerce, the ability to contact a technical support, sales or customer service representative is paramount. Display that phone number on every page of your website. Start a forum related to your products so that customers have a community to go to for answers. If you’re not using online chat for Ecommerce, then you should at least check it out to see how it can take the load off of phone calls and provide a new dynamic to assisting customers with difficult-to-find documentation or other web pages.
Just Face It. Your Products Suck.
If your staff kicks ass and you’re landing at the top of every search engine results page then you may have to consider the worst case. Your products just aren’t that great. Maybe it seemed a lot better on paper, maybe the market dropped out from under you. Maybe it’s just not the right time. Go back to the drawing board and improve the product or service you’ve got or find an in somewhere else.
The deeper you dig into your data and the behavior of your staff, the more you will find that can be fixed. If you want to stay in business, seriously consider fixing the problems in your business. Customers are a fickle bunch and they’re not going to wait around for you to drag yourself into the arena when there’s plenty of other companies working to win their trust, and their revenue.
