Thinking Like a Manufacturer
Imagine the following: You just built a beautiful product showroom at your factory. It has displays to show off your products to best advantage and employees specially trained to understand customer needs and help them find the right product. You provide a list of locations where visitors to the showroom can buy your products because you don’t want to compete with your channel partners. You place ads in magazines, on TV, and on billboards to attract customers to your new showroom. And they come, a trickle at first, then in hordes. They love your showroom. They love your products. You feel great. Your new marketing effort is a huge success!
Only, at the end of the quarter sales are barely any higher. What happened!
It’s easy to explain. You got people interested in your products, then left them on their own to figure out how to buy them. You fell victim to the all too easy trap of thinking like a manufacturer. “What’s wrong with that?”, I hear you thinking. “After all, I am a manufacturer.” Yes, but in situations where you are dealing directly with end users, you can’t afford to think like a manufacturer. You have to think like a retailer!
Thinking Like a Retailer
Retailers really are very simple to understand: ‘Sell more stuff!’ Your stuff, your competition’s stuff, anybody’s stuff. Maximize Sales, they just want to sell more. So they make it as easy as possible for customers to buy.
Walk into a major supermarket or chain store. The odds are good that if you have been in another store from that chain, you can find your way around. Products are grouped by the way buyers expect to find them. New items or products on “special” are on the end caps, readily visible. Overhead signs tell you where you are and where to go. Prices are clearly visible. Checkout counters are highly visible and conveniently placed near the exits.
Your showroom did part of the job. It generated demand by educating potential buyers about your products. It even did that part better than the typical retailer, since you know your own products better than any retailer could. But you missed the most important ingredient: You didn’t make it easy to buy. You sent potential buyers off with a list of retailers, but along the way most of them changed their minds. They got distracted by another product, they store was out of stock, or maybe they just plain forgot. Whatever the reason, the person that left your showroom intending to buy your product ended up not buying. You didn’t capitalize on the buying impulse, and you lost a sale!
So what do you do? Well, let’s start by taking a look at your web site… YOUR FACTORY’S SHOWROOM!
To be Continued…
