What skills does your best salesperson possess?
Always Be Closing. It’s the classic sales mantra, but the reality of sales is more complicated than ABC. There’s a whole lot more to it than passing business cards around at networking events. The most competent sales leaders share a few highly prized skills:
- Making sales (It’s in the name, so we can’t just skip it.)
- Supporting customers
- Managing relationships
- Identifying new business pipelines
- Refining marketing strategies
That’s a tall order for a small sales team, but your salespeople don’t have to do it alone. Let’s take a look at how your small business website can function as one of the most valuable members of your sales team.
A well-designed website attracts and converts more qualified sales leads.
A well-designed business website expands your sales territory to everywhere, all the time. And it’s not just e-commerce sites that get a sales boost from websites. According to Google, more than 8 in 10 consumers research online before making a purchase. A customer-centric business website provides the product or service information that your target audience is seeking. Really customer-centric sites eliminate the need to comparison shop altogether. Customers know immediately that they’re in the right place, and that gives them confidence to buy.
It can assist customers before, during, or after a purchase.
The work of a sales rep doesn’t end at the sale. It’s easier and cheaper to keep a satisfied customer than convert a new one, so your sales team needs to support customers across the buyer journey. An intuitive business website maximizes the customer experience from their initial research to their return for more. A library of video tutorials, for example, can support customers while also piquing the curiosity of prospects. Chat features can engage with customers around the clock using AI to repond to frequent customer needs.
A modern website design can even manage customer relationships and accounts.
Modern websites are designed to meet the expectations of multiple users and to manage various types of accounts. Web analytics allow you to personalize customer visits. You can up-sell and cross-sell products and services that customers really want, for example. You can vary service options to meet the needs of unique buyer personas. You can cultivate relationships and make customers feel at home on your site using fun features like loyalty programs.
It can provide insights into business development opportunities.
In addition to managing the customer base you have, your website analytics offer valuable data on business opportunities you haven’t tapped yet. You can track your best referrers and deep dive into what they have in common – or how they’re unique. Then, use that data to track down more prospective referrers with the same characteristics as your refined target audience. Tracking inbound and outbound links can also point to new pipelines for business growth in terms of potentially valuable business collaborations and cross-promotions.
And it’s a platform for defining and refining your marketing strategy.
No small business website is complete without a high level content marketing strategy informed by buyer personas and web analytics. From landing pages to blog posts, every element of your site carries the message of your brand. As you gain more customer information from your website, you can continually refine that message to speak directly to your target market in the words and images that they’re going to instantly understand.
Ready to put your website to work? Book a Call with me at Emery Designs today.
Is your small business website pulling its weight right now? Is it converting visitors to customers? Is it giving users a tailored, seamless experience? Is it providing insights that drive your marketing strategy? If not, it’s high time you upgrade to a more modern, usable website capable of supporting your customers and your sales team. Ready to make your website work? Get in touch with me at Emery Designs today.
