Challenges of being in web sales and how to overcome them.
When I first joined the LevelTen Design team in the fall of 2007, I came with a little bit of online marketing experience. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to start fine-tuning our clients’ pay-per-click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns for maximize ROI as well as maybe sell a few web applications along the way. However, with some experience and prior knowledge I was faced with one hurdle to jump. The company I had worked for previously dealt mostly with B2C clients and mostly web development applications. LevelTen Design on the other hand has a much greater mix of B2B clients as well as online marketing clients - and highly technical savvy ones at that. The good news is the principles are roughly the same. Do what you already do best which is constantly prospect, stand out from your competitors and follow up with your clients, plus add a few steps. Develop highly targeted keyword lists, remember content is king, so write clearly and in layman's terms for everyone to understand and make sure the design of your landing pages is cohesive to optimization and for goodness sake make sure your tracking ALL of this! Document,document, document! With more complex service and markets you must continually educated yourself on what and how business that is relevant to the online marketplace is changing. B2B marketers are instead faced with marketing complex concepts such as WAN optimization services, global market saturation, outsourcing, corporate data loss prevention, and software build solutions to name a few. Getting into the mind of this potential customer requires extra effort and brain power BUT it can be done. Web development is quite unique in the sense that there are so many things that go into a solution that your are providing for your customer. From look and feel, usability measures, functionality,building effective landing pages,managing campaigns,designing back end solutions to generating qualified leads and opportunities, each piece of the project must be put together daintily and tested for efficiency. Some clients want the WOW factor and some want a well oiled machine that will produce results more then esthetics's. Some want both. Its very important to remember that Listening to what the client wants and conveying to them and your team exactly what is entailed in producing those results as well as creating solutions that are even more in tune to the results that the client is needing. Follow up, I learned early in my career that the Fortune is in the Follow up! Not every project might be right for your company. Sometimes it's better to pass then get involved with a project that has a high permeability of going south. ROI should be measurable, time lines should be executed and completed within the time frame and remember, offering solutions for Web Application and online marketing initiative is NOT about being an order taker, its about being a solution provider. Some sales cycles are longer then others, the bigger the project, effectively the longer the sales cycle. At the end of the day, results is all that matters!
