Website Owners: How Will YOU Build Sales?

Making more sales on your website may be as simple as
choosing. Assuming you have a good product, and a market
exists for your product, all you need is to add sales and
marketing expertise to your webbusiness.

You have 3 options. Which will you choose?

1. Hire a full-time Sales and Marketing Director

Description: He or she understands how to attract and keep
customers. Manages budgets and people, sets goals and
evaluates performance. Many times must "sell" strategies
and tactics to decision makers, who may have strong but
wrong-headed opinions.

Pros: Knows how to build sales. Can have industry-specific
experience and contacts, which may give your firm an
advantage. The best will have extensive online sales
marketing experience.

Cons: A huge investment, which makes this option only
available to larger firms. Many times an otherwise
experienced sales marketer must play catch-up to learn
about tools and tactics that work on the web.

Cost: It varies by experience and where your business is
located. According to Salary.com, a sales and marketing
director position can command $96,000/year in Chicago,
$107,000/year in Boston and $103,000/year in San Diego.

2. Hire a online sales specialist.

Description: These sales consultants have built up
web-specific selling expertise. He or she knows what
sends online shoppers clicking away from a website and
is fully versed in attracting potential customers and
converting them into buyers. Can develop a sales and
marketing plan, prepare budgets, implement the plan and
other tasks.

Pros: Should be able to tell you how to get the most impact
for your money. Knowledgeable about techniques that will
get the best results. Will first determine what needs to
be done, then is connected to the copywriters, webdesigners,
search engine specialists and tools that can help.

Cons: You may find a "one size fits all" solution provider.
For example, he may really only be experienced in search
engine placement and unaware of other tactics that would
work especially well for your particular business.

Cost: Prices vary. You can get a website sales tuneup
starting at a few hundred dollars and up. Some consultants
work on advance against percentage of increased sales.

3. Do-it-yourself with the help of an book

Description: The two top-sellers are the ebook Make Your
Site Sale by Ken Evoy, and the 2-binder set, The Internet
Marketing Course by Corey Rudl. There are also books
available focused on search engines positioning,
copywriting, traffic-building and more. A list of links
to these resources is available at
http://www.jawdrop.com/resources.html .

Pros: Inexpensive and fast access to information from
people who are succeeding at selling online. Many times
these books contain specific info and lots of examples.

Cons: Many people who BUY books don't READ them. If they
read the materials completely, the next challenge is
implementation and accurate evaluation of the results.
For example, a website owner may try a pay-per-click ad.
If it fails, he may think "pay-per-clicks don't work",
when an expert may see that it was the ad itself that
failed, or that particular pay-per-click did not work.

Cost: $25 - $397.

To get sales expertise, you can spend $25 up to over a
hundred thousand dollars. With such a huge range in
price, it seems like getting sales help would be a
no-brainer, but that's not the case.

What is the best way to build sales for YOUR website?
It depends.

Do you have time for the learning curve of doing it
yourself? How expensive is the learning curve in terms
of out-of-pocket and opportunities lost in the meantime?
If your website a side-business out of your spare room, you
will probably choose differently than a business striving
to meet payroll.

Sales help for your business website is out there. Reach
out and get some now.