I pride myself on being somewhat well versed on sales techniques. My very first job was in sales, and it’s been a constant part of everything I’ve done since, whether it has been selling an actual product, selling advice or even selling an experience. During this journey, the first thing I learned in sales was a technique referred to as call to action. Most anyone who has learned about sales or marketing should be familiar with this term. If not, here’s a simple a explanation… it’s what you to do ask for the sale. In some cases it may not be an actual sale, but rather whatever the next action you want the person to take. That action is your “sale” or target goal. Some examples:

• Buy Now…
• Checkout Here…
• Add to Cart…
• Call 1-800-BUY-HERE…
• Click Here…

Like I said, I’m well versed in sales and most sales techniques. I’ve known about call to action since I was eighteen. However, even with all this experience and know-how, after looking over some of my marketing materials, I realized even I’m not using it as well as I should. In fact, in some places, I’m not even using it all! Once I recovered from my horror, I began focusing on ways I could improve this. I came to the conclusion that if someone who has been trained in this area isn’t using the technique as well as they could be, chances are there are others that could also use a few pointers or reminders about making use of this tool. So, here are a few tips concerning the call to action:

Call to Action is Relevant No Matter What You’re Doing
When it comes to product sales and eCommerce, it’s a little more obvious where and how calls to action occur. However, in the world of blogging, it may not be as obvious. Call to actions range from asking for comments to getting people to fan or follow your social media pages. You may not even realize you’re using it for your personal life as well. Whether you’re setting up a lunch date or deciding what to do for dinner, the call to action is a crucial element to getting things done.

Forgetting To Ask Is Losing You Time & Money
If you don’t ask for what you want, chances are you’re not going to get it. This is true for every aspect of your life from business to personal. The more clear and direct you are about what the “next step” is, the higher the chance you’ll actually get there. In business, forgetting to ask for the sale or next action leaves you open to wasted time and loss of money, because you’re not leading your customer to where you want them to be. You have to double up your efforts to go back, get them interested again and then lead them to an eventual sale. If in doubt, always ask. The worst they can say is no.

Know What You Want Your Customer To Do Next
Obviously, asking for a sale or action only works if you know what action you want them to take. It’s important to consider that a person can really only focus on one thing at any given time. If you have multiple products, you’ll need to evaluate how to present them to your customers so they can hone in the one they need. This is where having a series of goals is beneficial. Come up with all the things you want a prospective customer to do when they visit your website, store, seminar, etc. Now pick the number one goal. That should be your main focus, and it should be where the main calls to action direct your customers. You can then set up secondary goals, each with their own separate calls to action in less obvious areas. It’s much easier to direct actions when you know exactly what those actions are and how important they are to your business.

Be Creative & Unique
Some calls to action will always remain essential, such as “buy now” and “click here.” However, there are quite a few ways you can make even these seem more unique and stand out. You could make large buttons, have arrows pointing to them, and use various text styles, sizes and colors. What’s really important here is not necessarily to be unique for the sake of being unique, but rather to infuse your style of branding and personality into the buying experience. If you want readers to give you more comments, ask thought-provoking or humorous questions at the end of your posts, or hold fun contests for people who comment. Want more email signups? Offer something you know your readers or customers would really benefit from for free in exchange for their email address. Need article submissions? This is another area where contests are a great motivator. People also really respond to humor and imagery, so if it makes sense with your branding and marketing, inject a little fun (or even sarcasm!) into the equation.

Make It Easy To Follow Through
Once you’ve put together your calls to action and placed them in the most responsive areas, you need to make sure it’s easy for your customer to finish the sale. Go through your sales experience and make sure you’re leading your customer all the way through the entire process. If any stage seems unclear or bulky, trim it down and offer clearer explanations. Never assume your customers know what to do.

Now that you’ve read this, examine at your business. Are you utilizing calls to action as well as you could be? Are there calls to action you have in place that you didn’t even realize were there? Feel free to share your thoughts, ideas, and discoveries in the comments below! (See there? That was a call to action!)

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During my hiatus between selling my company and deciding what I wanted to pursue, my husband and I came upon an opportunity to purchase a local retail store that we frequently visited. The old owner was having a large number of personal interferences that were negatively effecting the business. While the store was far from profitable at the time, it had a really great customer base. As hobby game store, it is mostly a community hang-out, and I knew from my online experience just how to handle communities. So we decided to branch out and “save the store.”

That was just about a year ago. We’re eleven months in, and we’ve doubled the size of the store, carry twice the amount of product, have events with over 100 people, and have created amazing relationships with other local businesses. I find myself learning from this experience in completely different ways from my online businesses. As I’m about to get ready for a huge event at our store this weekend, I thought I’d talk a little about the comparisons and similarities of retail and online businesses.

Speed & Quality of Communication Determines Rapport
In our store, we know everyone that comes in more than once. In most cases, most of our staff will know not only their name, but what game they like to play most. This creates an open atmosphere between the staff and customers. They know they can come to any of us and share any complaints or let us know about needs we may not be providing. In an online world, you don’t get the luxury of connecting with every person that visits your site. You need to rely on your web design and marketing skills to convey the message for you. If you’re lucky, your users will participate in the site via forums, comments or sending e-mail. However, since they aren’t right in front of you talking, you may be missing out on opportunities to build strong rapport if you take too long to respond. I know I’ve fallen into this bad habit at times. However, I notice a significant difference with responses from visitors when I respond as rapidly as I can. It’s very close to the rapport I can build with our retail customers.

Creativity Creates Customers
In a retail store, you constantly have to change things up and give people reasons to walk through the doors. It’s a lot different from someone clicking from an email to your website. A customer has to actually get in their car and drive to your location. You have to get really creative with events and promotions to keep these customers coming back. In our store, we provide events every single day of the week. In addition, our customers can come and just hang out and play games or chit chat. We’ve created a very similar atmosphere to what you’ll find online. You can spark your online communities in the same way. You can hold hosted chats, webinars, contests and other fun events to constantly keep your site in your visitor’s mind.

Customer Service Will Always Be #1
No matter what business I’m in, one thing remains steadfast. Customers do not respond well to bad service. The need to find ways to streamline dealing with imperfections is crucial to your success as a business. In a retail store, you’re not allowed much leeway in this area. Not only do customers want great customer service, they expect it. They want to know you really care about them. In a hobby industry with heavy online competitors, the only way to secure loyalty is through excellent customer service. An online business can get away with a little less due to various influencers such as lower prices and ordering convenience. However, imagine if you could marry the convenience of online sales with over the top customer service. To truly stand out online, search for ways where you can go the extra mile. Maybe it means responding to emails in a more timely fashion. It could mean offering a little more than what is expected. Your personal expertise could also be your “extra”.

You Still Have To Love What You Do
People always ask me how they can make money. To me, the only way you can really find true happiness and wealth is when you engage in something you feel truly passionate about. You need something more than dedication and loyalty to keep you going through tough times. It’s easy to stay excited when things are going well, but eventually you’re going to have a bad week, month and even year. It’s your passion in your field or genre that’s going to keep you going during those times.

People love being around other people who make them feel good. When you’re excited about what you’re doing, you exude happiness and it’s contagious. Whether you have an online or offline business, your customers will respond to this. You’ll be someone who attracts people and therefore more sales and relationships. A golden rule I’ve learned is this – don’t ever underestimate or underplay your passion for your company.

When you look at it, there aren’t many differences between the offline and online worlds of business. The most effective marketers are the ones that are able to combine both worlds and make something extra special for us all.

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I’ve found the funniest and revealing life lessons happen when you let the little things in life inspire you. For me, one such revelation occurred this weekend. I have four of your typical Chihuahuas. The youngest considers herself the “queen” of the house, and also happens to be the cutest of the group. When someone visits, it’s a natural first reaction to try and pet her and “make friends” with her first. She, however, takes quite the exception to this and will let the person know quite vocally and aggressively that they’ve intruded into her domain. This instantly kills her potential of being a guest’s favorite dog, and they shift their attention to one of the others.

As I was watching this interaction over and over again this weekend, I noticed a HUGE business correlation. I began thinking how many times I have been “sold” by the package, the idea of the service or even the copy, but was then completely turned off once I got to know the product or brand better. The source of my turn off has been anything from the call to action being too aggressive to the salesperson incessantly talking about something I couldn’t care less about. My revelation reminded me of how important it is for your branding and message to be cohesive and consistent throughout the entire user experience. If not, you could be dramatically losing unnecessary sales.

If It Looks Like X, It Should Walk, Talk, & Be X

When it comes down to it, your entire sales experience needs to toe the line with your personal branding message from initial interest to closing. Here are a few ways companies are failing in this area and what you can do to avoid these breaks in branding.

Putting a product to market that looks visually appealing and then is incredibly difficult to use.
This especially annoys me. I’m led to purchase through a deceptive concept that thoughtful care and consideration has been put into the design of the product, only to find that the thoughtfulness ceased after concept and design. It may get the company higher than average initial sales, but they lose out in the long run with a bad reputation for building beautiful crap. Don’t fall into this trap – put care into the thought and design of every component of your product, from instructions to FAQs. If in doubt, do the Mom-Test. If your mother can’t figure it out without your help, chances are neither can anyone else.

Letting beauty trump function.
A website could be the most breathtaking piece of art ever created, but if a visitor isn’t clear about what they are supposed to do there, they’ll eventually leave and completely forget about the site. All your effort and energy is wasted. If a person took half of that time solidifying and developing their true end result, and how to guide a user to this desired result, they’d more than double the effects of their efforts. Make sure your “art” has a purpose. Art’s true mission is to communicate something. What is your product, website or service communicating to others?

Continuing to sell, even after a sale has been made.
If you sold a customer on a product, the last thing you want to do is to keep selling them on the same product. However, all over the web are prime examples of continuous sales letters. These sales letters are created to generate intense interest and then keep you hooked as you read the ENTIRE page of sales copy. Personally, they drive me crazy. I know if I want something fairly quickly and if you have a product worth a damn, you shouldn’t need 1,000 words to explain why I need to buy it. Just tell me how much is it, how I can get it, give me a few testimonials and if possible a few visual samples of what I’ll be getting. If you’re really nice, give me a money-back guarantee so I’m not overly concerned if I don’t like it. Even better, make it easy and clear to actually buy your product. Don’t wait until the bottom of a 1,000 page letter to give me a link to click on.

Not listening or reading the signs of your customer.
Furniture and car sales people fall into this category for me. It never seems to fail that the salesperson is on auto-pilot and drones on about their family stories, how they are a great salesperson or endless facts about the product. For some people, that may be just what they needed to hear, however, an important rule of sales is to always listen and pay attention to the signals your customer is sending you. In the online world, you can practice this by paying attention to comments, emails and suggestions you receive. A weekly or even daily inspection of your stats will give you an idea of what pages or content are resonating with your viewers. This way, you can tailor the experience for your users and get more positive results.

Where have you seen a mismatch between branding and product?
What methods would you recommend or have seen that would create a more cohesive overall experience?

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