More than ever, it seems that everyone is “buying” online. From the online-only retailers to the online-only retailers selling to consumers, the number of companies that are trying to capitalize on the “online” as a means of growth has drastically increased.
The problem is that online retailers are often out of touch with the demands of their customers, and they are often out of touch with the demands of the consumers themselves. When you buy a product online, you are buying from a company that has been built up for years to be able to sell the product to you. The last thing you want to do is go back and sell to the people who just bought the product.
Sure, you get it. You do. But it’s not the same. The first thing you should be doing is getting in touch with the people who are in charge of your business. Then you can have real conversations with them about what your ideal customer wants and how you should be able to give that to them. If you want to sell to that business in the first place, you’ll need to build relationships with them, and that is only possible by talking to those people.
You’re probably wondering, “Why aren’t the salespeople talking to their customers?” The reality is that salespeople who are too busy trying to sell to the people who just bought the product will have a hard time building the relationships with their customers that they need to sell to them at the right time. Instead, they will sell to the people who are in charge of their business.
Well, we cant talk about the marketing mix, because we are not in charge of it! Thats why we are the consumers.
I hear this question a lot, and its one of those things that is very hard to answer. What I can say is that the sales force needs to spend a lot more time talking to their customers. They need to understand what the customer wants, and they need to be able to articulate that to the customer.
Sure, you are the consumer. In the end, they are the ones who spend money. But you can also say that you are the one who needs to understand what the customer needs. The sales force who wants to increase their ROI (return on investment) to the customer need to understand what they are selling and how it can help their business.
The importance of understanding what a customer wants can be seen when looking at the rise of the online marketplace. In the 1990s and 2000s, with the dawn of the online shopping era, the customer was always the customer. They were the target of the sales force, not the brand. Today the online shopping market is now much more of the brand, so the sales force needs to be able to talk to the customer about their wants and needs. And I am not just talking about online shopping…
If the customer wants a product, they will go to a website and get it. If they want to buy a new car, they will go to a website and buy it. If they want to buy a pair of shoes, they will go to a website and do it. They will buy online because it is easier for them to get what they want from a website.
So while it’s true that these online sales force jobs are still predominantly sales personnel, the online shopping experience is changing in ways that are more customer centric than sales-oriented. You can think of it as the “customer is king” movement. The customer wants as much as they can get from their website.
