The Shopping Cart Junkie

When I was going to college, I took a night job as a telemarketer. I worked hard to develop a good pitch, and to engage my prospects in pleasant conversation. I guessed that this would be an effective method for selling over the telephone, and I was right.

In the cubicle next to me was a big, loud and obnoxious fellow by the name of Jim. Jim incorporated his offensive and pushy personality right into his sales technique. I would often listen in absolute horror as Jim would outright demand that his prospect make a purchase, and refused to take no as an answer. I found myself wondering when they would fire Jim.

A couple of weeks into this job, I found out an amazing thing.

Jim, with all of his rudeness, obnoxiousness and offensiveness, was selling just as much as me.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and the conclusion I’ve come to is that Jim’s technique appealed to some people, and my technique also appealed to a certain number of people. Jim made sells to the people who his techniques appealed to, and so did I. The people who bought from me would most likely not buy from Jim, and vice-versa.

That being the case, my job, as a sales person, is to find those people who are receptive to my personality and style. These are my people. I speak their language and will be most effective trying to sell to them.

In order to find them, I have to search through a sufficient number of people.

It’s all in the numbers.

Let’s apply this to our online sales effort.

Let’s suppose that I set up an online store to sell widgets. Being an intelligent person who is committed to success, I set up a 123 eCart storefront. I put in some time to make the store attractive, add articles and content, and display my widgets in a very attractive and enticing way.

A certain percentage of the people who visit my website will like what I’ve done with the site, and will be receptive to the notion of buying from me. Let’s arbitrarily say that this number is 20%. Of those who are receptive, I’m able to actually persuade half of them to make a sale.

This tells me that out of 100 people who visit my widget store, 10 of those people will purchase widgets. If I want to sale 100 widgets a day, I need to get 1000 visitors to my store each day. It’s all in the numbers. If only ten people visit, I’ll only sell one widget. This is what we call a conversion rate. If you’re talking to an Internet Marketing guru, and they ask what your conversion rate is, In this case you would answer that it’s ten percent.

There are ways to increase your conversion rate, and we’ll get into that a little later, but for now, I just want you to realize that with even a poor conversion rate, if you get sufficient numbers of people to your store front, you’ll still make sales.

That’s why it’s extremely important to promote your site as much as possible, and important to rank well in the search engines.

123 eCart will help you to do well in the search engines, because we’ve built features into the software which produce stores that typically show up higher in search results. The higher you show up in the search engines, the more traffic you’ll get. The more traffic - the more sales. It’s that easy.

Getting visitors to your website is one thing, getting them to purchase something is altogether different.

The most important thing you can do to is to develop a trust relationship with your visitors.

Before I, as a prospective customer, will fork over my credit card number to you, I need to have a reasonable belief that you are a legitimate and trustworthy business.

Let me ask you a trick question:

What is the best way to get people to trust you?

The answer, of course, is to be trustworthy.

This actually eludes many people, but it’s really a no brainer. If I want people to believe that I’m an honest and ethical businessman…it would be a great start to actually be the honest and ethical person which I’m trying to portray.

Most people are really pretty bright, and won’t be fooled for long about who and what they are really dealing with. You might make a few big scores through dishonesty, but it’s not the way to build a lasting business.

Now, of course, if you are a legitimate and trustworthy business, you need to show it. There are a few ways to do this online.

A really simple way to do this is to put your street address and telephone number on the site. Crooks very seldom give you their address or phone number, but legitimate business people do, and folks know this.

Another thing you can do is to let the visitor get to know you. It’s not all about the product. Unless you are amazon.com or walmart.com, you’re visitor won’t have a clue who you are. Tell them. Use your About Us page, or your home page to let them get to know you a bit.

Another way to inspire trust is to write some articles about your area of expertise. This let’s you establish yourself as an expert in your field. People trust experts.

Yet another way to inspire confidence is through testimonials or product reviews.

123 eCart has both an article manager module and a product reviews module to help you implement these methods and gain the trust of your visitors. Trust means sales, and sales means money.

I watched a movie last night, which reminded me of a few things which I tend to forget sometimes.

Before I get into the movie, I’d like to ask you something.

What is your reason for being in business? What is your overriding goal?

For me, the answer can vary from day to day. Some days my reason is to make enough money to support my family. Some days my reason is to serve other people, some days it’s simply because it’s warmer and drier than the back deck of a fishing boat.

In the move “Facing the Giants”, the football coach at a Christian high school deals with the frustration of coaching a perpetually losing team. Parents, players and fellow coaches begin to point a finger in his direction, citing his poor coaching as the cause of the losses.

In fear, and in frustration, the coach turns to The Lord. After a period of soul searching, the coach calls the team together, and asks them what they think the purpose of the football team is. One of the players suggests that winning football games is the purpose of the team. The coach explains that the real purpose of the team is to honor Jesus. The coaches and players were to honor Jesus by giving him their all, and leave the results up to Him. If they won, they would praise God, if they lost, they would also praise God. What was most important was to honor God in their effort.

This movie was a good reminder to me, that evry day needs to be about honoring and serving God. I can’t concern myself with the wins and losses, but must praise Him in either. The win isn’t nearly so important as the way I serve Him and my fellows.

Over two thousand years ago, Jesus told us to seek first the Kingdom of God, and that all of our needs would be taken care of.

That, is a really incredible promise, and flies in the face of conventional business wisdom.

However, most businesses fail within the first five years, so some unconventional wisdom might be just the ticket.

Incidentally, the coach in the movie ended up taking his team to the state championships that year.

Here’s to facing the giants!