When I first started learning about selling online, my first reaction was, “How boring!”  After all, I had many years of outside sales and marketing experience. I had the “I can always do one more cold call” mentality to build up a business. My impression of selling online was of a person sitting passively, looking blankly at a screen waiting, hoping, willing someone to visit their site, let alone click and covert to a sale.

Boy, was I wrong.

Online sales is challenging in a much different way. While I used brochures and written materials when I was in outside sales, it was really me and extra services that I could offer in conjunction with my product lines that closed the deal. I hardly ever depended on the written word.

Online, the written word is the key to success.

There are some similarities between outside sales and online sales. In online sales, you use quality writing with SEO techniques to draw clients to your site. Then, you work on building a partnership between you and your customers by providing information that your customers need. This is similar to some of the “extras” that I used to provide to my clientele when I was in outside sales.

The difference is that I usually presented this information piecemeal manner over a longer period of time when I was in outside sales rather than upfront on a website. Of course, it is not a bad idea to add new material to your website to keep it “fresh,” just like I brought in new information to my clients as needed.

And, if the purpose of your website is to create leads for your business, you can still use all of the “traditional” sales techniques to work with and close your accounts.

Then, why is it that traditional sales reps can close at a higher rate than online sales?  Prospecting in both outside sales and online sales both include a lot of chaff.  However, online sales has more in common with direct marketing than outside sales.

A good outside sales representative will semi-qualify a potential account before making the first call. In addition, an outside sales representative has other means of qualifying a customer before making that first call, such physically checking out the potential customer’s facility, something an online marketer cannot do. This is one of the reasons that outside sales representatives have a higher closing rate.

In addition, outside sales representatives do not wait for customers to contact them.  While reps hope that someone will call them first after leaving a brochure or card at the receptionist’s desk, reps do not count on it. Outside sales representatives actively pursue accounts until the accounts go cold.

Stated clearly, the customer is more in control of the sales process, at least initially, than with online sales.  For example, if your objective is to get someone to sign up for your newsletter and a potential customer chooses not to at that point, you have no way of responding to their immediate objections except with your copy.

This leads to the biggest reason that I think that outsides sales close at a higher rate than online sales. It is much easier to say “no” to a machine than to a person, particularly if that person is sitting in front of you. And, most successful outside sales people take that “no” as being just for today or this month, but not forever, something a computer cannot do at this point. 

What does this mean for an online marketer? 

It all goes back to the written word.

Since we don’t have the technology today to enable a computer to have a discussion with a potential client, you have to anticipate objections and address them in your materials. Having well written sales copy is a must.

In addition, put a little of “you” into your websites. Many websites that I visit all have the same type of bland information about the company, those who are working to make the company successful, and the company’s product lines. These websites lack the excitement that surely exists within the companies that could help differentiate the sites from their competitors.

While online sales and outside sales pursue different means to bring in customers initially, the objectives are the same: to close and to maintain their clientele.  Both online and outside sales are dynamic and challenging.

Neither of them is boring.