Are You Missing Sales Opportunities?

Buyers are going goo goo for Lady Gaga! In fact, recently, Amazon.com ran a promotion for the popular pop singer, Lady Gaga. However, the company was not prepared for the wave of consumer response, as customers bombarded the online retailer with interest. The company has actually had to re-release the promotion to accommodate the number of customers whose purchase was backlogged due to the barrage of hits.

According to a recently released article on the Wall Street Journal about this business blooper, “The promotion is part of Amazon’s strategy to win customers from Apple Inc.’s iTunes store, which controls the vast majority of the digital-music market. Amazon offered the Lady Gaga album as part of its daily deal for its online music store. It is losing money on the album, which has a wholesale price of about $9, but hopes to draw more business with such popular deals.”

This is a critical mistake that all businesses can learn from. Imagine that in your business, you have spent significant dollars on your marketing and sales promotions to win buyers. You have invested in advertising, a fancy website, and even profit-losing discounts like Amazon’s, in order to get calls coming in and people walking through your doors. You’ve done all this, and then – WHAT?!?!? Your operation is not prepared to handle the business?

I see this type of mistake happen all the time, and your company does not have to be a victim of a blooper like this. The critical factor is your staff’s ability to carry the torch of your marketing dollars through the sales process. Whether your next business step is an online purchase transaction, or an appointment confirmation, you must ensure that your company is ready to smoothly handle the business that your marketing dollars are generating.

Don’t miss out on sales opportunities from being unprepared! With proper training, your front line staff can learn efficient and effective communication and operation skills for driving your prospects to sales, and for keeping those customers once you have buy-in.

Reference: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303654804576347690026027506.html#ixzz1Nn5NMu7P