Revenue Journal®

I am your customer. I have a Problem. I am looking for the Best Solution to my Problem. You sell the Best Solution, but I don't know that yet.

I go to Google. I type in a phrase describing my Problem, or perhaps a phrase describing my imagined Best Solution. I may remember hearing something specific about the Best Solution - such as a company name, a product name, or even a model number. I know that the more specific I am, the faster I will find my Best Solution, and the faster I can buy the thing, and then go on to do all the other things I have do to today.

The search results appear. I scan the listings quickly. If it looks like my Best Solution is right near the top of the left-hand search results, I don't bother to look at the paid ads on the right. If my Best Solution isn't obviously on top, I scroll down the page a ways. Not too far, but far enough to see if anything obvious jumps out at me.

[Does your website appear in these results? The ones that appear when the customer types HIS FIRST search phrase into Google?]

I've been a Verizon customer for years. I stayed "loyal" for a long time, partly because switching carriers is such a pain. But I also stuck around because their service was reliable and their customer service people were helpful.

But, I'm not loyal anymore. I'm leaving.

Why? For the stupidest reason: They won't let me pay them. Yep, that's right.

Imagine you are in a physical store. You've just put an item into your cart. As you do so, a store clerk comes along and grips your head with his hands and turns your head so that you are forced to stare at your cart.

"Look in your cart. See what you've bought? So far, you've bought one container of sour cream."

You murmur in agreement, amazed that this is happening.

He releases his hands from your face, takes your cart from you, wheels it to the front entrance of the store, and walks away. You are offended, but you still need to keep shopping, so you take your cart from the front of the store and go to the produce department. You put another item in your shopping cart.

Almost like magic, there's that clerk again.

People who run companies tend to obsess about getting leads in the door. They are petrified that they won't be able to keep the pipeline full of leads. Before the web, their efforts were focused on PR, advertising, and sales tools. Now they focus their efforts and their resources on search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and so on.

They also assume they have to convince their prospects to buy their product. So all their marketing copy - online and off - is designed to convince someone to buy.

The problem is, the way people are buying now, they are mostly convinced by the time they get to your website. A large percentage of today's buyers have already decided what they want, and all they want you to do is answer a few remaining questions that aren't answered on the web, to make sure that your product will perform well in their specific situation.

I ran across this recently when placing an online recruiting ad for a client. His company is in the Bay Area (San Francisco area) and I was placing the listing on BAJobs.com.

I admit it. I'm proud to have identified the question that ALL software buyers ask as they are trying to decide if they want to buy some software: "What's going to happen to me after I buy?" Actually, this question is asked by ALL buyers for ALL products, but it's especially acute with software buyers because the post-purchase experience can be so traumatic - and so far from the promised and hoped-for experience.

Janet, an ex-programmer who is no slouch when it comes to technology, is a trusted vendor and someone I respect. She has a DSL connection to the Internet. This is what happened to her in her recent quest to purchase Adobe Photoshop.

There's a joke - you've probably heard one of the many versions of it - that I think of as the "demo" joke. My favorite version is the one starring Bill Gates:

Bill Gates died and found himself standing in front of St. Peter, who was sizing him up.

"Okay, what the Hell," said Bill. "Let's try down below first."

John Smith is a typical customer in the market for a fairly high-end product, one that requires a salesperson to finalize the deal. He has done his research on the web - he's spent hours, in fact, researching. Now he has a couple of questions for the salesperson to answer. Otherwise, he is ready to buy. He decides that the best way to get the answers he needs is to go to an industry tradeshow.

I've been interviewing "John Smiths" for a client, and one of them described what happened next, using these words:

"I had to defend my wallet and my family against The Pitch."

He was there with his wife, and as he was trying to get answers to his questions, the salesperson kept trying to close the sale.

From the customer's perspective, this is irritating. Sleazy. Totally inappropriate. You're just asking someone questions, and the whole time, they keep trying to sneak around to the side of you and grab your wallet out of your back pocket.

The better your content, the more you will sell.

A pretty simple concept to grasp, especially when we think of the buying process from the buyer's point of view. Most people who are buying something for the first time go straight to Google. They type in the search phrase they think will give them the right result, refine it if needed, and then start drilling down - mostly on the sites that come up "above the fold" on the screen. We all know this.

And yet, as I work with clients to improve content, and as I see content from the buyer's point of view, I am dismayed by how un-seriously managers take their own content.

A lot of entrepreneurs obsess over their search engine marketing and Adwords campaigns, to make sure that they are within view when someone goes searching for their type of product. Nothing wrong with that, but given the bandwidth of the typical business owner, there's a tendency to focus on lead generation at the expense of conversion.

Business owners have come to know that the web can be used to answer questions that buyers and customers have. The more questions you answer on your website, the less money you have to invest in people answering those questions, one at a time. This is not a difficult concept to understand.

Unfortunately, grasping it and succeeding at it are miles apart. One thing we see standing in the way is a tendency to believe that "a good search function" on the site will somehow substitute for poor navigational organization. Not true.

It took a while before the Web really changed the way people bought things, but it has happened. Now people go to the Web first and research the heck out of a subject before they buy.

They scrutinize, analyze, and agonize. They Google and re-Google, fine-tuning their search term until they start getting the desired results. They know exactly what they want and they keep searching until they finally find it, then compare their options, read the reviews, and consider the price and the functions. Once they are satisfied they have found the right product and are comfortable with the company selling it, they place an order.

I'm sorry to say that, over and over, I am finding business owners struggling to make sales because their marketers - in-house or outside - are trying to use yesterday's marketing and selling methods on today's buyers, who have definitely moved on.

Buyers have specific questions. If you're not giving them specific answers, you're not going to capture those sales. All technology aside, this is the biggest difference between "old" marketing thinking and "new" marketing thinking.

The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

I've mentioned before that I buy a lot of software online. Recently I undertook an extensive search for software I could use to efficiently build outlines for books and other large, complex documents, because the outlining function in Word is pitiful and slows...the...creative...flow...to...a...crawl, and has a klutzy expand/contract outline function.

I must have looked at 25 programs, and trialed at least 10. For all of you out there selling software online, I have some very specific advice for you, from a buyer's point of view.

Every CEO and entrepreneur has a need for both graphic and website designers. Too bad there are so few good ones out there.

Sure, there are people who say they are designers. And they do, in fact, churn out work for clients. But I'd estimate that only one out of 200 actually know how to solve design problems, have truly satisfied clients, and consistently turn out good, solid work.

What's the problem? It goes back to something a CEO once said to me, about ten years ago. "No one is teaching kids how to think." He was right. Being a good designer means you follow a well-tested process. You gather all the input you need, you prioritize it and analyze it, and then you come up with solutions that meet the requirements.

There will be tradeoffs; the design process always involves a delicate balance between all of the various goals, resources, form, and function. But the best designers do a masterful job of meeting all the requirements while creating something pleasing and functional.

Instead of learning how to make these tradeoffs, young designers are taught to imitate established designers or to follow their own creative whim. It is easier to teach someone to imitate or to do whatever he/she wants than it is to actually teach the student to think - or be of service.

The result is always something inappropriate for the client. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs and CEOs are frustrated with the designs that come back to them, after they think they've provided the information the designer needed.