Online sales are becoming a huge part of our society. Salespeople used to travel around to houses and try to sell things to customers, but now most of that has moved online, at least for cheaper consumer products. It is interesting to look at the similarities and differences between a sales call and online selling. There are a surprising number of similarities and interesting ways that businesses have adapted to keep the same tactics used in a sales call, but have it done online.
Starting with the first aspect of the sales conversation, you need to get to know your customers, and they need to get to know you. An about page is a great way to do this. There can be a variety of information on this page about the company, mission, employees, and more.
Social media is another huge way that businesses connect with customers and get to know them. It is a great tool to promotion a business, but there also are ways to interact with customers with things like responding to comments, doing giveaways, and asking questions in posts. This is more like building general rapport with customers, and it is not as specified as a sales conversation, but it still can help.
With getting to know your customers and the problems they are having, many companies have email, phone, chat, and other forms of contact set up for customer service. It is important to be there for customers and help them in any way possible. Another interesting thing to look into is surveys. These can help you understand exactly what the customer is having problems with or is looking for, and provide a product to help them. For example, some coffee companies have developed surveys to see what kind of coffee a person likes, then recommend a product that they have in their inventory. This is the part of the sales conversation where the salesperson is digging for the pain and thinking about how to solve a problem for the customer. Again, it is not usually as good as a real salesperson could do in a sales conversation, but it works well for an online format.
It is important to analyze problems carefully to know how to best solve it. Whether this is over email or on an automated survey, it needs to provide great value to the customer and make them want to work with the company. You can also analyze questions and problems as a whole. If people are continuously having the same problem or wanting a specific solution, that may be an opportunity to expand or promote a certain product, or maybe make a web page devoted to information about that.
Read part two of this blog to keep learning about how online and in person selling relate.
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