diagnosis without examination is malpractice
As a young lad selling sign machines to retailers in the Midwest, I had the President of a small town department store in West Virginia say my posting title to me just before he hung up. The moment before, I was saying how a good signing program, using effective selling copy, would increase his sales and that he needed to buy a Printasign machine today. He asked if I had ever walked through his store. I said no, I had never walked through his store…
I had never talked to anyone about his store and I had not even visited his town. I was telling him what to do with no knowledge of his business. I had not done my homework, and rightly so, he had no time for me…
That man taught me a very valuable lesson about consultive selling. If you do not spend time understanding how a business is run, what challenges they face and where they want to go…how can you really help them? As dad used to say, “You better ask people questions before you start talking because God gave you one mouth and two ears to be used in that proportion.”
How effective your website strategy works is directly related to how well you understand what makes your business unique and important to clients. It is more than what you do; it is how and why you do it and why that is good for your target audience. We would recommend not having a website if this is not clear to your organization. A bad website will cost you in the long run. Spend a little time examining the mission of your organization at this exact moment in time before your join the World Wide Web. It only takes a couple of hours and is worth it at so many levels.
It begins by understanding your organization’s passion. How do you want to “service” your target audience? What is your
- A practical mission statement of what you do everyday
- A practical vision of what you will celebrate in the future when you achieve a special goal
- The core values that you operate by, even on the day you go out of business
Your mission must be discussed and understood by the entire organization.
The words you choose to describe your mission will be the language you use in your website and marketing information, to describe what you do, who you do it for and how you will serve them. A clearly communicated mission builds trust and understanding about how you will make people safer, smarter, happier and/or more productive.
A good mission is the connection between what your employees do and why clients choose you. Besides being a critical element of a web strategy, it will also help your organization operate more smoothly by setting a direction and reducing the number of crises daily.
PS Several years latter I returned to that store after doing my homework sold him a Printasign machine. I returned years later he upgraded his sign shop to a PACC electronic sign machine
admin on April 24th 2007 in Web Strategy