Post Type: Training
Whether you're a large or small company, and no matter what the industry, it's always the people that make the difference. There are certainly buying scenarios where you don't need a human (e.g. I don't need help from a person to buy a book or shower curtain from Amazon), but for many types of commercial transactions we’re still unable to easily find and interact with web-based humans in a way that is additive to the buying process. This is a major shortcoming of the Web and a huge problem for 80% of commercial businesses who sell their wares to humans (and mostly still through offline transactions). Buyers today start most of their pre-purchase due diligence on the Web, yet organizations are lacking the right type of technology to expose their customer-facing sales reps to the digital side of their products and services. And, the latency this creates is costly.
At Salesfolks we began with a fundamental concept that even in the digital world, particularly with considered value and/or potentially life-long services (unique, expensive, complex goods and services), customers buy from people they like and trust [read Covey's The Speed of Trust]. Being intimately involved in the business of how sales personnel interact with web-based customers, we've become more convinced than ever that the future of business on the web has two distinct pathways: 1) purchasing/sales process automation, 2) real-time, human-enabled sales interactions. As we look ahead to the future of online sales, we also see a tomorrow where real, live people are available with an authentic, human touch. Internally here was call this “Live Selling” and we think it has the potential to make sales happen faster.
Developing a platform for Live Selling (like Salesfolks) means real humans need to be associated with keywords and metadata, product SKUs, service types, and geographical coordinates to be matched with customers in real-time buying scenarios. Digital processes, concierge levels of web-based services, and transitional technology between online engagement and offline interactions (the so-called online-to-offline or O2O opportunity). Employing this technology can help both buyers (consumers) and businesses alike in speeding along access to information and ultimately making timely buying decisions. Human augmentation is an accelerant, not an inhibitor.
The vision for a Live Selling platform is that it delivers authentic, face-to-face engagement and it has smart memory so that relationships can be as short as a one-time interaction or lasting many years and making it incredibly easy for the buyer to re-establish the relationship at any point in the future (continuity). To facilitate trusted, human-to-human commercial transactions on the Internet requires new thinking about technology. We need capabilities that enable businesses to inject an instant human presence into an otherwise de-humanized, aSocial online business environment. We need technology that is an intuitive extension of the natural, human inclination for meaningful personal interaction in an online business transaction.
What we have learned is that there is a predictable decay rate in lead opportunity. Simply put, your ability to respond very quickly to a prospect opportunity – say in less than 5 minutes for example – will dramatically increase the future likelihood of conversion. The inverse of that is also true. If it takes your business hours or days to respond to the customer, your chance of conversion declines steadily (like dropping off a cliff).
So, with Live Selling the premise is that it helps you quickly respond to customer opportunities and build trust. The result is a bevy of benefits including: higher lead capture rates, better customer satisfaction levels, faster time-to-sale, and improved overall conversion-to-sale ratios. Those who combat latency are rewarded with capturing more customers, sooner.