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Your Company Website and the Sales Engine

A great challenge for companies with established website traffic is to then turn those site visitors into leads, and insure those leads are dealt with in the most efficient and friendly way possible. A good company website will be a brand builder and information center, but more importantly it will work in tandem with your sales process to generate leads and help convert them to sales.

This means your company website must perform the following basic functions;

1. Generate and appeal to the right traffic – real potential customers coming to your company website.
2. Provide value to the visitor, build your credibility
3. Clearly convey your business’s points of strength or differentiators – tell the visitor why your company is not just an option but THE option.
4. Provide a compelling reason to get in touch with you – now.
5. Provide the most simple means of taking action possible.
6. Align that action (a completed web form, a call, a request for more information, the download of a white paper) with your sales process – so the new lead is immediately treated well and seriously, in a way you can trust.

I see too many company websites that either fail to generate the right traffic, fail to convert visitors into leads or fail to place the lead into an efficient sales process.

Some questions you should consider when evaluating your existing company website include;

• Are we generating enough traffic from my target demographic? How are we measuring the difference between random hits and potential customers?
• What do we give the visitor when they come to our company website? What value are we providing? Is our site just all about us, and not about the challenges my visitors want to address?
• How do we gauge their interest, even if they are not buying right now? What do we do to retain the ongoing interest of the visitor?
• What are we doing to allow the visitor to easily (and often timidly) learn more about us and our products and services?
• If the visitor converts to a lead, what is the process to ensure that we engage them immediately in a consistent, friendly manner?
• How do we track the lead and ensure our communications are consistent?
• HOW DOES OUR COMPANY WEBSITE INTEGRATE WITH OUR SALES PROCESS?
• What do we do to retain leads that don’t immediately convert?
• What are our measures of success, and how solid is our process of comparing our success measures with our actual performance?

It is a long list, but in reality a straightforward and basic set of principles that we all recognize as essential in ensuring we maximize the value of our sales tools and potential customers. Ignoring the pitfalls of your website is simply throwing money away, especially in comparison to the ease with which many improvements to your process can be implemented.

Here are some simple things that can be used as tools to improve your systems;

• Newsletter signup
• White paper download
• Specific call to action – “speak to us about X and the simple steps to improving ROI.”
• Auto-reply
• Addition of incoming leads to CRM system
• Drip campaign to incoming leads
• Improved online advertising – specific offers and landing pages, rather than general “we do X, check us out”.
• Simple – call now or live chat.

Tools such as those above can be used to ensure visitors have the maximum opportunity to stay on the radar, or register their interest, either passively or directly. By combining your website actions with your sales systems, you can also ensure that every lead is given the time and attention they deserve, in a manner that is effective and consistent. You can measure the performance of your marketing, advertising, and sales teams without burdening your operation with excessive paperwork or time impositions.

In a world where a significant percentage of your potential customers are going to visit your site as their first port of call, can you afford for your site to be nothing more than a brochure?

Speak to Republik today about a strategy and solution that suits your business and your specific business goals. We look forward to providing an efficient, cost-effective solution that keeps on performing, day after day, and helps build your sales performance.