If you are a business owner or a Sales Director then you know EXACTLY what I mean when I talk about a salesperson that you had working for you who looked the part, said all the right things but did NOT actually DO THE BUSINESS.
What do you do with them?
Well, the first thing you do is start agonising over them. What are we going to do with George or Jane? What’s the issue? Why don’t they bring in the deals? Can we fix them? Are they a lost cause? Should we just cut our losses and get rid?
When I was in IT companies it was actually a pretty big deal to get rid of a salesperson. We used to talk about it being a loss of £50-100K if we got it wrong hiring a salesperson. Of course on the other hand there was an ongoing loss taking place if they weren’t bringing in enough business to cover themselves and more.
Actually, when you break it down, there are only a few reasons why they don’t make it: Not enough ACTIVITY, Not enough (SALES) SKILLS, Not enough KNOWLEDGE, Not enough DESIRE – being some of the top ones.
How do you find out where the problem is ???? You ANALYSE the data.
If it’s ACTIVITY it will show in things like number of phone calls, meetings, proposals etc If it’s in SKILLS or KNOWLEDGE then it will show in lack of CONVERSIONS. If it’s in DESIRE – you will probably know already – but you could do tests to back up your gut feel and experience.
Eventually you will work out whether that sharp suited , smooth talking salesperson has to go or will stay.
Now, you see lots of sharp suited, smooth talking websites and Internet Presences around; slick looking websites that say all the right things …..
I don’t care for them much …
They cost a lot to build. They cost a lot to maintain. My question is, ‘What’s the Return? How many Visitors, Leads and Orders are YOU actually bringing in? – you flash piece of software you!’
To me a website is just like a salesperson (actually it is an ‘always on’ salesperson) and I have no time for a salesperson that just sits there looking good and saying all the right things.
Just like when I ran sales teams and sales forces I have ways of finding out (analysing) how virtual salespeople are performing and I also can tell whether it is an ACTIVITY issue (not enough traffic ) or a CONVERSION issue (it’s the same thing).
Either I will show you how to fix it or I will tell you how it needs to change.
The only thing you have to do is to realise that your website is just like a salesperson ……
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