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Our companies are nothing but the collection of action every one of our employees take. What beliefs do your employees have about the organizations goals and vision? In Alan Stein, Jr. new book Raise Your Game he quotes a famous Inc. magazine survey that first asked executives what percentage of their employees could name the company’s three top priorities. The executives guess 64%. When the researchers conducted the survey of the employees, the actual number was a sadly, only 2%.…

First, I would like to apologize for not blogging here and sharing with you. It isn’t because I have stopped writing or haven’t been busy with our new startup, speaking and clients but I have been writing elsewhere. A few of the things I have written lately include: Separate Pieces Lead to Poor Experiences – on the IBM Commerce Blog Mindfulness As a Conversion Rate Optimization Tool – on the SalesForce blog Keys to Success for Online Retailers: Experts Weigh In…

Checklist for scent

I’ve shared my Conversion Trinity concept with countless numbers of people interested in improving their click-through (CTR) and conversion rates. The key is in identifying the relevance for the audience and clearly articulating the value to that audience of your offering. This is not a trivial task. So I was a bit skeptical that crowdsourcing to a network of copywriters could bring people these kinds of quality ads. Crowdsourcing Ad Writing, huh? Last May, I was first introduced to a company called BoostCTR. I…

Everyone’s using the “r” word or worse to describe our economy. Just a month or two ago, online marketers were whispering the word for fear of contagion. Now it’s spoken out in the open. We all seem to sense that we’re in a recession or that one’s stalking us and tapping on our shoulder. There is no question that customers’ wallets are going to be tighter. Some sites are experiencing slight sales declines; others are prepping for the recession by…

In expanding the question about relational-transactional purchasing by asking the question of WHAT makes people buy, a fellow deep thinker from the Wizard Academy shared that we should also add in the essential “reporter” questions: I’d lump them into four categories: Who … Why … What … When-Where-How. Who, Why & What are big driving issues, while you can lump the other three (When, Where, How) together as the sort of mechanics of purchasing. WHO we are (or think we are and desire to be) deeply influences WHAT…

Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, shares a brilliant insight from one of his fastest growing retail clients today in his Monday Morning Memo: I asked, “How is traffic trending? Are we ahead of last year?” “Roy, I don’t measure traffic.” “You’re kidding.” “Last week one of my salespeople made 63 sales presentations and closed only 24 of them. That tells me 39 people bought somewhere else. And right now they’re telling all their friends why they bought where they did. They’re…

For Sale! Prices Slashed!! Marked Down!!! People have used many of the same tactics for centuries to focus potential customers on the value they’d receive if they were to buy now. But here is a question for you: Would your customers rather a product be marked down from $203 to $192, or would they prefer a markdown from $199 to $188? Either way you slice it, they get an $11 price reduction. For you, it changes your final price from…