Read the entire article to understand what people are telling you they want for their future relationships ….
Ok, I have to get this off my chest. WTF is wrong with people! Everyone knows that the key to success in business is good marketing and understanding that marketing. It’s shocking to me to follow some of our FittleBug Clients on FaceBook and other online sources. Over the last 10 years, we have tried to help business owners know that there is a HUGE market for their services in the Digital (Internet) space. They shake their heads as if to agree, yet when it comes time to market, they seem to forget what FittleBug can do for them. So they post Facebook content or before and after images and then tell people to call them at XYZ phone number. Have they forgotten that with FaceBook and any other Internet marketing source, they are a click away from the holy grail – Conversion (a prospect to a client). Don’t make that road difficult for your market. If you are running a promotion then for “God Sake” create a Promotion Code and place it online in your Facebook post so all they have to do is click and put in that Code and process the order (all while never leaving their laptop). Getting someone to take action on something that requires a change of approach for them greatly diminishes the odds of action being taken. You don’t see airline or hotel ads pointing people to their phone number do you? Water and most of the human thought process will always take the path of least resistance. Don’t make it difficult for them to love you.
It’s almost an insult to make people leave one medium of choice and go to another just to work with you. But I hear a lot – Oh, but I believe my people are so much more capable of up-selling our services and I don’t want to lose the sale. We have had 10+ years to see if this is generally true and although for some, maybe, but for the average person – that’s bullshi#. People will up-sell themselves if given the opportunity and time. One recent client challenged me on that statement, so I compared their average “call in sale handled by a Customer Service Person” to a 3 year FittleBug client average self-booked sale through FittleBug. The results: FittleBug client had a higher average over the CS oriented client over the same 3 year period, but of course quality and ability to run a business play a big role.
Now lets talk about ROI. Whether you pay your human help by the hour or commission or something in between, they still can’t touch the ROI of the digital process like FittleBug Just think about it – If you pay your staff or outside staff to place your orders (and the average still isn’t as efficient as FittleBug), and they work 8 hours a day lets say at $12/hour… they will cost you around $2880 per month. OK fine, I will give you the fact that today people still call in about 50% of the time for orders and divi the rest of the options among the other sources like FittleBug. But looking at the ROI on an individual per client cost basis – Tools like FittleBug are more cost efficient – HANDS DOWN.
Finally let’s look at the future and what studies are telling us about client wants and needs. Earlier I mentioned when asked how consumers secure service providers today, the results were 50% Phone. What I haven’t mentioned is that when given a choice to all options they would prefer online booking aabout 70% over other options…
Work ON your Business as well as IN your Business