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Do You Think, "What Does The Internet Have To Do With My Business?" »

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You’ll be pleased to know that you’re not alone in thinking that the Internet has nothing to do with your business.

After all you don’t get any sales from your web site. You even write a blog and nothing happens there.

So you may be asking why you should be investing anything into the Internet.

Let me give you a couple of good reasons.

The first is that the Baby Boomers, and I count myself amongst them, are used to using the Internet to search and buy things now.  The second is that there’s a new generation coming through. No not Generation ‘X’, Generation ‘Y’ and they are completely into electronic communication. I was on a video conference call this afternoon and people were using Twitter and the conference call to make comments about the video, the presenter,each other and the content.

What does that mean to “normal” making and servicing businesses?

Let me make a few predictions:

Yellow Pages Advertising Is Going To Die Out

Yellow Pages is going to go out of business or be bought out. How can a book compete with the ease of an Internet search engine? Especially as we’re all moving to using a phone over the Internet. In addition you need to look at multiple books if you live in a city.  It’s become too cumbersome.

So what does your business do without a Yellow Pages entry?

Deliver Great Service Or You’re Dead!

Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and all the other social networking sites have the power to either recommend you to the high heavens and everyone in their network or they can lay into you for a poor service or product. You need to manage your reputatation. If you don’t know what’s being said online what are you going to do to prevent it, rescue it or respond to it?

No Web Presence Is Like Not Having Cable or Satellite TV Now

In the West, even the poorest people have cable or satellite TV. In a similar way everyone now has a mobile phone. That’s why BT is removing more and more phone boxes - they’re hardly ever used anymore.

With no web presence, with no reputation management you’re in severe danger of being the buggy whip of your industry. And for those who don’t know the buggy whip became obsolete because the car was bought by everyone. The car was bought by the very wealthy initially and then its price came down until the mass market could afford it. And that left the buggy whip manufacturers with no market.

Don’t be a buggy whip business, you need to look into the Internet before it’s too late.

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Do You Know Einstein’s Definition Of Insanity? »

Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein said “ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

When you apply this to business you can see how much sense it makes.

I’ve coached company owners who keep doing what they’ve always done. And often the reason they continue to do the same thing is fear.

Fear that if they stop doing what they’re doing the sales they have will slip away.

One client I worked with had always cold called prospects. He’d always called them and he expected his sales team to do the same. It was hard work and the amount of sales they had was pathetic. And yet it was a good quality business.

I asked whether they had any other strategy for getting sales. I was met with a blank look and he said we do get some referrals.

When I asked what they did to encourage referrals I was told they did nothing.

After I’d gone into detail in their business it was obvious that they had a service that other companies could offer to their own clients. They’d never even tried direct mail, email or any form of advertising, other than a bad Yellow Pages ad.

If each of those different strategies could provide targeted leads for sales. The sales people wouldn’t need to make so many cold calls and could spend more time converting sales. Thus increasing sales, using sales people more effectively and having less stress from the regular cycle of frantic calls followed by sales visits when few cold calls were made.

However, the owner refused to try any new strategy to get new sales. He wanted to continue with the one he knew and felt comfortable with. He knew what he’d get and yet by not testing other approaches he was simply making life hard for himself and his sales team. And he lived on a profits knife edge, any drop in sales had the power to take him into the red within a couple of months.

Was he insane?

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