An Internet Model That Works
The dot-coms may be dropping like flies, but the Internet can still turbocharge a traditional company's sales. CEO Norm Brodsky offers six advantages to making a concerted effort online.
Published May 2001
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The dot-coms may be dropping like flies, but the Internet is still an extremely effective sales tool -- especially for non-Internet businesses
We've heard a lot in recent years about new Internet-based business models, and I've been skeptical about most of them. I've long argued that the vast majority of people shouldn't start an Internet business except as an adjunct to an existing non-Internet business. (See " Bubble.com," April 1999.)
That said, there's no question that the Internet can be an enormously powerful sales tool for many traditional businesses. In fact, in some cases it can completely transform the role of the salesperson.
Take my friends Bobby and Helene Stone and their son, Steven, whom you may recall from previous articles. (See " How to Succeed in Business in Four Easy Steps," July 1995, and " The First Salesperson," December 1998.) They have a computer-supplies company, Data-Link Associates, which they operate out of Bobby and Helene's home on Long Island.
Bobby and Steven are the salespeople, and in the beginning they both went about their work the old-fashioned way: prospecting for customers over the phone, setting up appointments, making sales calls, and so on. Then, in 1997, the Stones got an offer of a free Web site and one month's free hosting, provided they'd agree to pay $25 a month for the service thereafter. They accepted the offer and posted their product list on the site. Within a few days they had enough new sales to cover the cost of the site for an entire year.
The Stones were happy to have the additional business, but they didn't really discover the selling potential of the Internet until the following year, when Bobby put up a new Web site (in addition to the original one) and began educating himself in the fine points of Web-based marketing. He focused most of his attention on the search engines, looking for techniques to attract customers to his site by getting it listed among the top choices for the products he wanted to sell. Thus, for example, he figured out how to make sure that Data-Link would come up first when somebody logged on to Google.com and searched for, say, DLT bar-code labels.
As Bobby and Steven improved their Internet selling skills, the company's sales took off, increasing 50% in 1998 and almost doubling -- to $1.4 million -- in 1999. Last year they increased again, to $1.5 million. Meanwhile, 95% to 98% of Data-Link's new business is coming from the Internet.
What's most interesting about all that is the effect that the Internet has had on Bobby and Steven as salespeople -- what they do, how they do it, and the consequences of their actions for their company. I can see at least six critical changes that have occurred as a direct result of their move to selling online.
More leverage with prospective customers. Instead of going out to find customers, Bobby and Steven now work on figuring out how to let customers find them. That change has important repercussions. For one thing, it fundamentally alters the relationship between the salesperson and the sales prospect. As the salesperson, you're no longer the one pestering prospects with phone calls; now you're the person answering their questions. That gives you a significant psychological advantage. You can close more sales as a result.
More time for selling. Bobby can hardly remember the last time he got in his car to go on a sales call. Steven hasn't done any cold calling in at least a year. I'm a great believer in the benefits of cold calling, but there's no question that it takes a lot of time. You can spend hours locating decision makers, setting up appointments, traveling to meetings, and so on. By cutting out all those activities, Bobby and Steven have more time to follow up on leads generated by the Web site -- answering queries, closing sales, writing up orders. There's also more time to study sales data and identify trends. Are certain products getting hot? Should the company run a special on something? Does the Web site need to be modified?
Cheaper, faster, easier access to customers. Data-Link's new customers are Internet users by definition, and so, it turns out, are most of the old ones. After putting up the Web site, the Stones discovered that a majority of their regulars liked using it, too. As a result, Bobby and Steven can reach almost their entire customer base faster and less expensively than before. They used to have to spend time and money sending out brochures, doing fax mailings, and trying to reach people by phone during office hours. Now customers can check the Web site to see what's in the brochure or to find out about specials. As for direct customer communication, Bobby and Steven can do a lot of it by E-mail at any hour of the day or night.
