Internet marketing is just about technology, because sales is about people buying from people.

In Australian a significant portion of “onlineâ€? sales are actually facilitated by personal interaction via email, telephone or even meetings. 

In these sales scenarios, the website’s role is to “generate sales leadsâ€?. 
The leads are passed onto a (human) sales person for following up and closing the sales.

In these cases the information flow between website and the sales person is key for maximum sales effectiveness.

Lets review some of the more common discussions and issues:

Who deals with the leads?
A classic issue is that the website leads are received by a non-sales person.
It is likely that a sales person could close more of the leads rather than a non-sales person.

Response time
The website enquiry might languish for a few hours or days before being directed to the person responsible or with time allocated to respond.  Respond to website leads promptly and enthusiastically in the same way you treat clients off-line.

People and particularly customers treat emails as near real-time communication, so no response may be interpreted as no interest. 

Don’t forget that the enquiry may have also been submitted to competitors at the same time too, so “the early bird will get the wormâ€?.

Ensure your website ‘auto-responds’ to the enquirer with a meaningful message like:
“Thank you for your enquiry. Our sales representative will be in contact shortly.â€?

Spam spam spam
The scourge of the internet, spam affects website owners in several ways:

• Are Spam filters swallowing your leads?
  Unfortunately over-enthusiastic spam prevention on your email client can block or hide your website sales leads.  Check with your IT service provider to see if they can minimise this for you.
• Website Harvesting & bombing
  Spammers ‘harvest’ email details from your website and use them in spam broadcasts.
  Sophisticated software attacks on your website can generate what appears to be a genuine sales leads.Discuss strategies to minimise your website’s exposure to these attacks with your website developer.
• Dealing with time wasters
  Much like off-line, there are people who just waste your time needlessly.
  A well structured website contact form can ensure the enquirer provides identifying information and any other criteria to allow you to immediately evaluate the worth of the lead.
   
  This will save a lot of time and angst following up bogus leads, and also increases the value of your website generated leads. 

Website Sales Budget?
Does your website have a sales target? If not why not!

Make it ‘accountable’ to generate the number of sales leads you require by incorporating it into your sales and marketing strategy. You get to keep its sales commission, but you may have to invest in it initially to get it working effectively as a sales tool.  Treat it like a sales aid and it will become one. 

Web Statistics
Accountability starts with measurement, and for websites there is no more cost-effective web analysis tool than Google Analytics.  It’s free; world class and geared to extract sales information from your website. Get it implemented on all pages in your website and start getting ‘sales reports’ for your website rather than technical gibberish.
What does a new Client cost?
Calculate your Client Acquisition Cost (CAP); that is ALL of the expenses involved in acquiring a new client; marketing advertising, cost of sales etc then divide this by the actual number of new clients you got.

Make sure you are sitting down when you do this – you may be surprised how expensive your CAP is.

Consider leads generated from the various forms of advertising your business uses and typically you will find that the CAP for website leads are a fraction of the cost of alternatives such as Yellow Pages, print media etc.

This information can then be used to allocate your marketing/advertising budget to where you get the best ROI.
You don’t get any website leads !?
If your website is not generating leads it warrants closer inspection.

Some businesses tell me their website is not a sales tool, however I argue passionately to the contrary. Every website is or has the capacity to be a sales and marketing tool.

If your website is not generating leads then something is wrong!

I recommend:

• Access and scrutinise your website’s statistics
  Insist on be given access to your website statistics
  If the stats aren’t meaningful get Google Analytics
• Are you getting visitors at all ?
  Be aware that a HIT is not a VISITOR
  VISITORS buy things; HITs happen to website servers, so count VISTORS not HITS.
   
• Are your visitors actually prospective clients?
  Interpret the keyword(s) they used to find your site
• How do visitors register interest in your offerings?
  Do you have a contact form ?
• Who receives website leads?
  Is someone accountable to follow-up these leads?
• What do they do with it ?
  Are website leads and conversions tracked in your sales reports?

I hope you find this helpful information to integrate your website into your sales processes.

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