by John Carroll

Are you feeling threatened by the explosive growth of the Internet? Traditional selling and marketing methods are facing new challenges daily relative to the benefits of electronic commerce. Considering the impact this medium is having on the marketplace, there must be some very enticing things about how business is done in this electronic world.

Let’s look at some characteristics of the Internet and the World Wide Web and what lessons they hold for those of us who still sell person-to-person, face-to-face or over the telephone:

1. Launch before it’s perfect – One of the great strengths of the Internet is that projects and web sites are works in progress. That means that a presence on the worldwide web with 75 percent of what you eventually will offer is better than no presence at all. "Fix it as you go" is the prevailing wisdom, with those who fix the fastest winning more of the opportunities with the surfing, visiting and buying public.

In your selling, if you wait until everything is just right, you’ll sell very little, if anything. You might think that your customer service is less than adequate, that your shipping is slow, that your response time on quotes is fair at best. Go sell something anyway. You won’t fix what’s wrong with your operation by not selling what you sell. It’s often the peak selling periods that make improved sales support the top priority. Press the issue by selling so much that the problem itself is extremely obvious. Besides, when you’re leading in sales production, you have a bit more influence and people tend to listen to you.

2. Innovate continuously - Technology moves faster than most of us can truly imagine. I recently spoke at a sales meeting and showed a palm-sized computer that, with a single attachment, turns into a digital camera. My point hit home when I mentioned that the item was more than three years old and had become old technology.

Selling is a creative endeavor. Those who don’t believe that are probably looking up at the leaders in their respective organizations and industries. If you’re not constantly looking for newer, better, faster ways to identify, find and interview new prospects and more effective ways to sell to them, you’re beaten before you start. Ask yourself the question again and again, "How can I double my sales?" Challenge everything creative in you to find dozens of answers to that question and begin to implement some of those answers. Try it and you’ll find incredible power in your own innovative abilities.

3. Create alliances – These are easy to find on the Web. Simply look for links from one site to another and you find some very innovative, electronic alliances. Many companies and individuals will simply exchange links to encourage their visitors to get acquainted with key business partners offering complementary products and services.

You need all the selling allies you can get to hit your sales targets. It’s valuable to use the creative juices mentioned above to consider and seek out those with whom you can align your business and create a mutual benefit. Strategic alliances among non-competitors in the industrial distribution industry, for example, have won favorable response from the marketplace, simply because someone asked the question, "Why don’t we partner with these people and increase our value to our common customers?" You can likely do the same. You simply have to look for the opportunity or make one.

4. Link customers to other resources – Would you like the latest weather forecast for your trip to Philly this week? You can find it on thousands of web sites whose owners believe you appreciate the convenience of a variety of relevant information on a single site. And since you can link into such information while keeping a visitor at your site, you now have the best possible situation. You offer information outside of your realm of expertise and you do it while you entertain and inform your electronic visitor.

You’ll win more sales and enrich more relationships by putting your customers and prospects in touch with the resources they need to reach their objectives. The return often comes in the long term, when people know you put their interests first. It comes in many forms, including referrals, additional business and positive word-of-mouth recommendations to others who need what you offer.

5. Move constantly – Things that stay the same on the Web are the electronic brochures whose owners hardly understand and consistently underestimate the value of the medium’s interactive nature. Constant improvements, additions and changes to e-commerce offerings make sites worth revisiting on a regular basis.

What makes your sales offer worth reviewing on a regular basis? What makes interacting with you worth someone’s time once a week, once a month or even once a year? What is truly dynamic about what you sell and how you sell it? If it’s the same old stuff, then it should be no surprise when key customers or prospects no longer have time to see you. Freshen it, change it, give it a new face, package it better or combine it with another offer. Remain static in your approach and watch as you become the Willy Loman of your generation.

6. Simplify for your customer – The fastest way to create a fan club on the Internet is to simplify a process. When you can shorten the learning curve, reduce the number of clicks, ease the strain of a new technology by electronic means, you make instant fans of those who are still struggling to catch up with last year’s (or the last several years’) new techniques.

How can you simplify your offering? Find a way to put your presentation in laymen’s terms, particularly if you sell something highly technical. Take the time to illustrate something you’ve never been able to illustrate before, because seeing can enhance understanding. Remove a step or two from your customer’s buying process to reduce her/his cost of acquisition. Any of these things, in an increasingly complex world, will strengthen and improve relationships with those who buy from you.

7. Make it safe to do business with you – The rapid rise of business conducted online comes largely from the value of the secure server. Customers can give a credit card number knowing with confidence that it will be used only for that one-time, specific purpose.

What do you do to make it safe for your prospects to do business with you? Guarantees are still as valuable as ever. Everyone has been burned at one time or another. If that bitter memory is floating around in your prospect’s mind, what do you offer to address and eliminate the concern? Make it easier to do business with you simply by guaranteeing what you sell and standing behind it with a money-back guarantee. If you can’t add some sort of guarantee, you need to work on your offering.

8. Respond instantly – The auto-responder feature online is the cat’s meow to those who want to know that their question or message has been received and is getting attention. If you buy anything at amazon.com or simply ask a question, you get an immediate response showing that your message has been received and the approximate time you can expect a reply.

How’s your response time to questions or inquiries from customers and prospects? My mentor in the consulting and speaking professions makes it a strict policy to return phone calls within 90 minutes. If your attitude is, "I’ll get to them when I get to them," they may not be there when you try. Decide on a reasonable response time, announce it to your customers and prospects and live by it. It’s one of those little things that means a great deal to those who are counting on you. And it impresses the socks off those who are communicating with you for the first time.

9. Make it fun – The nature of the Internet allows for both serious and not-so-serious approaches to business. I’ve watched my daughter take great pleasure in visiting www.pbs.org as she showed me both games and information pages. It seems that you can take business very seriously online and still have an opportunity to lighten up a bit in illustrating your product or service.

Are you able to make your product or service offering fun for your prospects? When it’s all work and no play, you miss a tremendous opportunity to build rapport. What is it about your product that lends itself to a laugh or two? How can you dress up what you sell to put a smile on your customer’s face? When you can laugh at yourself and your product, you help your customer do the same. This is more than telling a joke or two when you say hello. Find ways to make it more fun while putting your prospect at ease. There’s nothing like a quick laugh to reduce tension and help build trust as you begin your selling process.

10. Involve others in your efforts – If you own a web site, you probably know that amazon.com will pay you a modest commission by linking your site and leading your visitors to buy from their site. With the thousands of sites doing that already, amazon.com has many, many ways to invite people to buy from them.

In selling, you want the octopus effect, where you have so many tentacles out there that you catch more opportunities than your competitor. How do you involve others? Simple methods include finder’s fees and shared commissions. Others can involve sending referrals to those who refer business to you. Look at non-competitors whose markets and customer profiles are very similar to yours. How can you involve them in promoting or communicating your offering to their warm market? Simply provide reasonable value to the referring party.

Use these lessons from high-tech selling online and you’ll be successful regardless of the marketing or sales technology which will be introduced tomorrow.

John Carroll is President/CEO of Unlimited Performance, a Mt. Pleasant, SC, firm focused on organizational and individual performance improvement. Brian Tracy International, a worldwide network of consultants, has recognized him for sales excellence. Contact him at 1-800-672-4277 toll-free, email at jcarroll@uperform.com, fax at (843) 881-6746.

© 1999 John Carroll All rights reserved.