Let’s imagine something together. There is an upcoming expo in a nearby city that your organization needs to be at. Now by “needs”, I mean that there is a significant opportunity to move the needle in your marketing efforts. You decide that your organization is going to have a presence, but you don’t know exactly what the scope of that presence should be yet.
You could send your top salesperson, pulling her or him (or even yourself) off of other responsibilities in order to make the event a success. The opportunity is worth it, and you’re willing to put those resources in the right place for the right reasons. This certainly seems like the right reason.
Anything worth doing, is worth doing well. Right?
Your other option is to send a flyer. Now I’m not talking about aviation here, I’m talking about a brochure. I’m talking about a pamphlet. It’s filled with all of the same information that your salesperson can recite when appropriate, and anyone who is interested can take the flyer home with them. Plus, the flyer can travel to the expo in a box via FedEx, while the salesperson… yeah, not so much.
You’re a professional. If this were your organization, what choice would you make in this scenario?
If you want to make an appearance, send a flyer. If you want to make an impact, send a person.
This feels like a no-brainer to me. An exceptional salesperson will outperform a flyer, every… single… time. So if another expo comes up the next quarter, it would be wise to send the sales rep again. And if another one is scheduled for the next month after that, you’ll know what to do.
But what if the opportunities start to run into each other and overlap? What if there is a different expo happening every day? What if there is another similarly amazing opportunity happening at the same time? Unless we start to make some giant leaps in the realm of human cloning, it’s going to be difficult to scale the impact of your exceptional salesperson.
Your Website Can Scale Your Sales Efforts.
Let’s be honest, some companies have a website because they know that they “should” have one. It’s the digital equivalent of eating your vegetables. So you throw together a nice website, which basically functions as a digital brochure, and your work is done. Right? Wrong.
A top-notch salesperson can be the difference between a company that simply turns a profit and one that practically explodes with growth and new opportunities. I would argue that an effective website can function in much the same way. And the best part about having a high-performing website? It never sleeps.
One huge similarity between an effective salesperson and an effective website is that they both have to eat. While most leaders have no problem providing a per diem for their salespeople attending an expo, many businesses fail to appropriately nourish their website. Your website also needs to be fed with relevant, up to date content in order to thrive. There are several different aspects of a website that can set it apart from competition, and achieve your organization’s goals.
If your salesperson was struggling to meet his or her goals, you’d probably schedule a performance evaluation. Exceptional leaders maintain regular contact with their sales force and can spot impediments to their success before they become an issue. Your website will benefit from that same level of regular contact and evaluation.
Just like a salesperson, your website should have defined goals and an effective way to measure those goals. Does yours?
Andrew is going to follow up on this next week with some of the ways in which we measure our website engagement. We regularly diagnose our website’s effectiveness, and we can do the same for you. See you next week.