Stop what you’re doing and concentrate. You shouldn’t read this article with your feet up on your desk, cradling your morning coffee. Nor should you read it before 8 am or after 4 pm. And don’t even think of skimming it.
You need to concentrate.
Why?
Because the ideas I am going to present in this article are guaranteed to increase your sales. That’s right. I absolutely guarantee it. Terms and conditions may apply.
The ideas that I’m about to go into aren’t revolutionary. No-one will write books about the Dave Collins theory of Customers’ Eyes. Nevertheless, these ideas are not only critically important, but overlooked by companies on a regular basis.
Have a quick look at the first few paragraphs of this article. I guarantee that my words had the desired effect and caught your attention. I know, there I go with my guarantees again.
But my point is that I am 100% confident that they worked.
- You’re probably a software developer, and you’re most probably interested in making more money by increasing your sales.
- You wouldn’t be reading this far along unless my tantalising words served their purpose.
Being able to see the world through the eyes of your customers is one of the most fundamental skills of sales and marketing.
If you can get into their minds, see and understand their needs and speak their language, you’ll have them reaching for their credit cards before you can shout the word gotcha.
I assume I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. But never overlook an important fact. The web not only makes reaching the world and selling your software a lot easier, but also changes the balance of your marketplace.
The customer has truly become king. The fact that they found your website means that they have probably found your competitors too, meaning that they call the shots.
Competition is great for the market, but doesn’t half put the squeeze on the companies selling their products and services.
Unless you’re lucky enough to be in a very cozy niche market segment, complete with high demand and low/no competition, then chances are that there is more supply than demand. You have to work to sell your wares.
So understanding who your customers are, where they come from, what they are looking for and why is of vital importance.
Nowadays, so the theory goes, the typical consumer takes less than three seconds to decide whether or not to purchase. Personally I’m in awe of these typical people. It can sometimes take me weeks or even months.
But I’d also hazard a guess that online, that tiny sliver of time gets cut down even further. Clicking back on your browser takes a lot less effort than walking out of a store, and in some ways there are far more compelling reasons to walk away. Think fraud, payment risks, the many unknowns, delivery delays and so on. Selling online is a tough business.
So if we push aside the theories, what does this mean to you?
Well, unless you’re phenomenally wealthy, incredibly bored or both, then chances are that you yourself don’t purchase the moment something catches your eye. If you do, please click the following URL and enjoy yourself:http://www.softwarepromotions.com/overview/
But for the rest of us very quickly weigh up a number of different factors before deciding whether or not to purchase, and this unfortunately includes your customers.
So how do you turn the sceptic into a customer in those precious three seconds? With five variables:
Benefits. Value. Pricing. Empathy. Clarity.
I know, BVPEC doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But I’m not going for clever and cute here. I’m trying to help increase your sales.
Benefits.
I’ve stated this so often that I can actually lower my heart rate just by repeating the word too many times.
But the fact remains that benefits sell over features. Always. You know it. I know it. But to some extent we are all guilty of making the mistake.
Developers love features. They tend to get very excited, and while they’re telling you about them they occasionally get quite red faced and shiny eyed. Scary.
Customers get freaked out by features. We don’t like them, they sound intimidating, and they do nothing to make us smile. But we love benefits. Save time, save money, use more for less. Lovely. Music to our ears.
Value.
Tangible benefits communicate value to your customers. We love it, and as software developers, you need to understand this.
I have an Outlook add-in that looks out for the words attach, attachment or attachments in my outgoing emails. If there isn’t an attached file, a little window appears and asks me if I meant to attach one.
It’s absolutely inspired. And it’s dirt cheap. But most importantly of all it stops me looking stupid, and saves me and my clients time by avoiding the “I think you forgot to attach the file” exchange.
If you have any other plugins that stop me looking stupid let me know. I need all the help I can get.
On the subject of help, do you think that this newsletter is worth $50?
If so, please go to the following URL to make the payment:
https://usd.swreg.org/cgi-bin/b.cgi?s=783&p=783SIXstd&v=10&d=00&q=1
If you do, be sure to state your name, company and URL so that I can thank you in next month’s issue.
I suspect there’ll be no takers. Why?
(a) You don’t have to pay. And you know it.
(b) There isn’t enough value to make doing so worthwhile.
(c) Where are the benefits to you?
By all means prove me wrong. I’m usually right, so it would be nice to be proved wrong every now and then. And at least you’ll get a kick out of it, and thereby knock theory (c) on the head. How am I doing?
Pricing.
The product’s price is of course linked to its value. But as long as I (a) see the value and (b) think the price is reasonable, then I’m probably hooked.
This further reinforces the importance of communicating benefits. If I don’t realise the benefits, then even $0.10 is too high.
Empathy.
Understand me. Understand my needs. Understand what itch is causing me to seek the solution that you offer. And speak the language that I speak in. Your customers are hungry. Find out what they want to eat.
Clarity.
If your website and sales pitch aren’t crystal clear then you’ll lose sales.
A convoluted diatribe may massage your ego, but clarity always prevails. If your sales pitch is only set to tickle the needs of the average genius, then you’ll probably exclude most of your visitors. If, however, they’re aimed at the average person in the street, then everyone will understand what you sell. Even the geniuses.
Push the benefits. Demonstrate value. Price reasonably. Empathise and understand. And keep it clear.
More sales? Be seen, be sold.
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SELLING ABROAD, WHEREVER YOU ARE:
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. What the well-known saying neglected to clarify was this: On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a French/German/Japanese/Bolivian dog, until you sink your foreign teeth into their ankle. As much as we may like the idea of the Internet being the last great equalizer, the truth is that we never leave our own identities and expectations behind. And to a large extent, these expectations are tied to our culture and language. When they’re not met, we get frustrated and angry, and the chance of our spending money decreases significantly.
In the US, there is a tendency to think that foreign is simply a synonym for non-American. However, this is not the case – look it up if you don’t believe me! Everyone’s a foreigner outside their own country, and thanks to the Internet we can now spend hours outside our cultural comfort zone whenever we choose to. Most of the time, that isn’t a problem – but the fun starts when we want to spend money.
There’s enough material to write an entire book on this subject, but because the main purpose of this article is to get you thinking about this issue I’ll stick to nine practical ways in which you can avoid annoying potential customers.
- If you sell real, tangible products, make it very clear where you do and don’t ship to – right from the very beginning, rather than making your visitors hunt through the fine print only to be told they’re not wanted. Telling visitors you’re only selling to the US/UK/Australia is the polite thing to do, and means that there won’t be disappointed would-be-customers wanting to strangle you in every corner of the world.
- If you hope to sell outside your own cultural sphere, avoid slang, local metaphors and “inside” terms or jokes on your website. Don’t confuse/annoy visitors by using sports terms such as “ballpark figure”, “playing hardball” or “having a good innings”, because as clear as you think they are, they’re not universal. At all.
- Similarly, anyone wanting to sell abroad would be wise to avoid graphics with symbols or gestures. You might think the “thumbs up” sign is universally positive, but in many Middle Eastern and South American countries it’s actually incredibly rude. Trust me, you don’t want to know why.
- Flags aren’t always the best way to signal a link to a French/Spanish/German part of your website, at least not if you’re hoping to sell beyond the borders of those particular countries. French, for example, is also spoken in Canada, Morocco, Senegal and Lebanon, but these countries might not appreciate being bundled together under one, foreign flag. Using the actual names of the languages – Français, Deutsch, Español – is often a better, safer option.
- Don’t force your ideas or expectations on your visitors – people are more flexible than IP addresses, and you should be too. If someone in Germany is using the English version of your site, it’s probably for a very good reason. Don’t send them emails in German, and don’t keep redirecting them to the German site. Not only German people live in Germany!
- Don’t assume that what works well on your US website will be just as effective for all native English speakers. Your compatriots may respond well to the suggestion that they should buy something to “support their country”, but this is likely to put a lot of Canadians off. Many Americans love clear, simple explanations and illustrations, but your arrogant British visitors will hate being “preached” or talked down to.
- If you’re not in the US but you’re hoping to sell to a lot of Americans, you have to work hard and do your research to meet their expectations and their standards. As an example, some surveys have found that US users react negatively if their country isn’t the default option in a drop-down list of countries.
- If you create separate pages or sections of your site for other languages, make sure you have them checked by a native speaker. Don’t rely on translation software combined with vague memories of high school French – at best you’ll entertain, at worst you’ll offend. There’s more to cultural differences than replacing one word with another.
- Finally, basic but well worth repeating: let visitors be flexible about the way the enter their address. Zip codes don’t exist outside the USA, and neither do states – make sure your customers can enter their own versions, or leave those fields blank.
Naturally, these rules don’t apply every single time or with every single customer. I’m sure there are people reading this who are thinking “Well, I’m from Senegal and I don’t mind clicking on French flags” or “I’m Canadian and I think American patriotism is perfectly charming!”. Good for you – but that doesn’t change the fact that some people may feel very differently.
Also, if you’re a small business it goes without saying that you can’t set up a separate website for every language you want to sell to. Neither can you hope to set up a friendly, patriotic American site, a neutral, funny-accent Canadian version, and a smug, superior British one. What you can do, however, is be aware of these issues, and make conscious informed decisions how you want to handle them. Selling in the dark is never a good idea – and when there’s a whole world of foreign “dogs” out there, it can become downright dangerous. After all, some of them might have rabies.
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ON A LIGHTER NOTE:
Disclaimer: Please don’t take this too seriously. Venting is good for the soul, and tolerance is a skill worth acquiring.
I solicit feedback from all the articles I write. And I’m actually one of those people who really does appreciate constructive criticism. Especially when it’s complimentary.
However, there’s one particular type of email that I get on a fairly regular basis that I’m not so fond of. Let me give you a couple of real-life samples.
The polite flavour:
“Well, since you asked for it:
apostrophes, hyphens and common spelling mistakes
You missed the trailing comma:
apostrophes, hyphens, and common spelling mistakes
one, two, and three
You also use the word are before a company name, instead of is: CompanyXYZ is launching a new product.”
Note, by the way, the serious lack of capitalisation/capitalization and full stops/periods. Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
The not quite so polite flavour:
“You guys suck. Why the **** would I pay someone who can’t even spell Optimize to “optimise” my website???”
For the record, I am British. While I do make as many typos as anyone else, my British spelling is not a mistake. On one of our pages on Search Engine Optimisation, we even say the following:
Please note! We are based in the UK and use British English. If you think we’ve spelled ‘optimisation’ incorrectly, click here for the US version of this page.
So please have a little mercy on me. I think that “our” version of English has actually been around a little longer, but let’s live and let live. You say color and I say colour. Let’s call the whole thing quits?
The Competitive Edge newsletter is a monthly in-depth look at the issues faced by independent software developers today.
If you’d like to comment on any of the information within the newsletter, please email Dave Collins directly atdave@softwarepromotions.com.
Common Sense Disclaimer: The advice, views, experiences, opinions and other information shared in the Competitive Edge newsletter are researched to the best of our ability. At the time of publication, we believe them to be correct.
SoftwarePromotions can not and will not guarantee that any of the information here is accurate, and/or will work for your company. In plain English, use this information at your own risk.
All information herein is offered “as is” and without warranty of any kind.
To the greatest extent allowed by law, SoftwarePromotions, nor its employees nor contributors, are not responsible for any loss, injury, or damage, direct or consequential, resulting from your choosing to use any of the information and/or advice presented here.
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