The Tech Perspective: Your Website as an Extra Sales Person
You've heard us talk about the importance of having a strong, responsive website to represent your business online. Having a "home base" in the digital space helps potential customers effectively navigate online to find your business outside of the traditional brick and mortar. Understanding that your website functions as an additonal store front is one of the easiest analogies to think about when considering its importance to your business. But have you ever considered that your website could act as an additional sales representative for you?
Re-framing the way you look at your website can help you unlock some key functions that enable it to start generating real revenue for you. When considering your website as an additional sales person, take in to account these distinct advantages to effectively measure the return on your investment.
A 24/7 Champion for your Brand
Imagine a sales person that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and takes no breaks or vacation days. Your website is built to inform, and moreover to sell so that you can make the most money possible. Having an active website not only guarantees that people will find you, but it also means that people can end up buying from you at any time they find convenient. Being restricted to the traditional 9-5 hours limits a lot of businesses. Having a website allows the sales to continue to flow in with no limitations.
Cost-Effective
You have your traditional sales team, that works tirelessly to sell and promote for you. What if you added an additional team member that not only helped the rest of your sales team inform potential customers, but that worked on generating revenue for a fraction of the cost of an additional sales person? Having a website work in unison with your sales team helps empower them by providing much more information about your company that doesn't register at first glance. It also serves as an additional portal for sales if you're equipped with e-commerce. And the best part? It's an investment that's easy to justify. As soon as your sales cover the costs of the website, the extra money being brought in because of it becomes straight profit for you.
Provides More In Depth Information Right Away - No Training Required
One of the biggest challenges to hiring a new sales rep? The time you have to spend acclimating that person to your brand, and having them learn the ins and outs of your business. There are so many moving parts that make your business unique, and the services and products all require time to fully understand and position in the right way. How can you get all the information working for you right away? A well organized, UX (user experience) optimized website. The information is front and center, and all the details about your business are laid out in an intuitive way. By no means does this replace your sales team, but again enhances and empowers them by giving them a solid resource to refer back to. There's no period where you have to undergo training because the information is laid out immediately. It adds to the cost-effectiveness of a website, while also providing a good complementary resource for your sales team.
Covers Multiple Departments at Once
Sales, Marketing, Management, & Support all work in unison to make your business hum along on a day to day basis. All serve distinct and important functions, and exist in harmony to make your business successful. But what if you were able to cover all of those bases at once? What if you were able to complement your great team with a resource that worked in synergy with each department, and had a role to play in each? Enter your website, where you could easily solve potential client's upfront concerns and pain points that weigh down your traditional staff. Not only do you take some pressure off of your team, you also empower them by giving them a solid reference point for customers to look back to, and instill expertise about each department that might not have been common knowledge beforehand. A website is able to cover most of your bases by laying a basic foundation for each department, and then the brick and mortar team handle the rest.
Integrates With Other Channels to Give Customers a Better Overall Picture
In thinking about your website as an salesperson, there are additional selling points that don't necessarily make it into each client meeting; namely your business culture and personality. There's a reason why your business is unique, and the majority of the time it's the people that make you successful, and the stories that the normal person doesn't get to see on a day to day basis. Your social channels provide a unique opportunity to give an inside look into the lighter side of your organization, and the personality that makes a prospective customer want to work with you. Having a strong website that integrates with social media allows you to develop additional touch points for your eventual sale, and helps solidify that relationship with the customer. When they see a more approachable side to your business, you'll have a solid foundation for trust in future interactions.
While we'll always tout the impact of a great business website, spinning the perspective of it's value allows you to see it in a new light, and hopefully unlock some of the potential we see. The end goal is to always make you the most successful version of yourself, so we constantly look to leverage your digital options to work best for your business.
