Even as web developers and designers produce more and more sophisticated ways of presenting clients’ products and services online, we are limited in how we can present ourselves to future clients. We can build our own websites, of course, but we’re often still limited to less sophisticated ways of showing ourselves off: resumes and portfolios that are essentially digital copies of a paper-based approach. Isn’t there a more dynamic way? This is what Coderbits claims to do. We asked founder and CEO Scott Smith to explain.

What is Coderbits?

Coderbits is a site that builds intelligent portfolios for software developers and designers. Coderbits tackles the problem of traditional resumes being inadequate at verifying the skills, traits, and knowledge software developers and designers possess.

As a director of software development, I found that using resumes for the purpose of identifying quality candidates fell short. Instead of using resumes to determine which candidates to interview, I was instead forced to hold pre-screen interviews and tests. Both actions wasted my time and that of the candidates in order to determine which candidates to call in for interviews. Sites like LinkedIn provided very little value as well being based on the same premise of resumes. The content is unverified and subjective.

As a software developer, I realized the many sites and services I utilized daily already contained the information needed to automatically build a portfolio that shows what software developers and designers know, what we’ve done, and what our interests are.

Coderbits was founded to leverage that information and empower software developers and designers to easily build a knowledge portfolio and at the same time help employers hire with confidence.

How does it work?

Building a portfolio on coderbits was designed to be simple and require as little input as possible. The Builder is where users are able to link to 60+ sites. Where available, Coderbits offers account linking via OAuth. This is the simplest and easiest way for users to link to an account. When OAuth is not available, linking is done by typing in the account username. Once the account is linked the true magic happens – aggregation.

Profile aggregation occurs when an account is first linked and then on a regular automated schedule. The process involves us going out to linked accounts, gathering up all the bits, merging them into one of many portfolio categories, calculating core skills, interests, and traits, automatically building social connections, awarding many of the 500+ badges, and finally creating a full portfolio.

Because we perform aggregation on a schedule, portfolios are always accurate and up-to-date. When things are added or removed from linked accounts, the portfolio is updated accordingly.

Work Transparently

A mantra of ours here at Coderbits is to Work Transparently. We like to promote this to encourage to people to work in this way – but what does that mean exactly? It means you should try and find ways to work that makes the work available publicly.

For example, if you are deciding which MOOC to sign up for and take courses, you would want to choose ones that make your information available on a public profile. The ideal one to choose would be the one with public profiles and public APIs so you or others can get to your information programmatically.

In this situation you are still benefiting from the service offering and allowing the work you do there to be visible as well.

Fun Facts

Being open, available, and transparent with our users has been key to building a successful service. The input and ideas we receive has proven invaluable.

The Posts feature was originally created for users to submit bugs, feedback, and get help. By usage it has morphed into a community of highly skilled and informed individuals who are willing to share knowledge through professional tips, designs, and content.

The value our users get from Coderbits goes beyond what we had originally planned:

1. Find new sites and services. We are a discovery engine for them.
2. See the public perception of your skill sets and where you need to improve.
3. Motivate yourself to do, learn, and share more.
4. Connect, find, and engage with other developers and designers.
5. Test your Twitter API integration using accounts without any followers ;)

Here are a couple of visual demonstrations of  the percentile distribution of Coderbits members by programming languages in which they specialize and online  entities in which they have a presence.

Coderbits has just emerged from beta and is now available to you. Come on over and see what you think.

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

I’m not a technical SEO person, but I understand the technicalities of SEO well enough.

Search engines use complex (and jealously guarded) mathematical formulas called algorithms to determine how sites rank, which is why no legitimate SEO firm can guarantee results. Many, however, resort to “black hat” SEO, which breaks the established rules and will eventually get your site banned from Google and the other search engines.

Search engines do not actually search the web—they search their index (i.e, database) of the web. Web pages get placed in their index by automated computer programs, called spiders or bots, which crawl the web and add pages to their index. Until these bots find and index your site, there’s no way to appear in the search results.

Obtaining top ranking in the search results requires both on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization is everything done to the individual pages of the site so that Google understands what each page is about. This starts with keyword research to determine the best converting keywords you can rank well for, given the competitiveness of your market. These keywords are then used in the title, heading, and throughout the pages of your site.

Off-page optimization involves building backlinks from other authoritative websites to improve your PageRank, which is a link analysis metric applied by Google that assigns a rank to …

Excuse me, Mr. Customer; you seem to be staring off into space. You say I lost you at “algorithms”? But I haven’t even gotten to canonicalization of URLs. Well okay, let me begin again …

Algorithms, Spiders, and Bots—Oh My!

I’m tasked with the job of teaching sales reps how to explain the complexity of SEO with simplicity; otherwise, they’ll never be able to sell it. The problem is, as technically correct as the above might be, is doesn’t answer the burning (and often unasked) question each and every prospect you encounter will have:

“How will this help me make more money?”

To answer that question in a way that a sixth-grader can understand, you must sell SEO using The Concept of Expertise. It goes something like this.

Someone who’s a recognized authority in a field tends to make more money than an amateur, wouldn’t you agree? Because an expert is more likely to be recommended by others and command higher prices, right? Can you tell me someone you consider an expert or authority in his field?

What are some of the qualifications that make this person an expert in your eyes?

• Years of experience in a field
• Recommendations from others
• Endorsements from top industry experts
• Depth, breadth, and quality of knowledge

SEO is just like that. It’s the work that goes into making your website an authority in the eyes of search engines like Google, so that they’ll “recommend” it to its users, by ranking you higher than your competition.

Just like offline expertise, SEO requires both time and work. No one becomes an expert overnight, and certainly not without working at it.

Right now, as far as Google’s concerned, your website is an amateur, so it isn’t going to recommend you. My job is to make it—and by extension, you—into an authority, so that they will. Does that make sense?

Never Answer a Question Your Prospect Isn’t Asking

That simple analogy may be all your prospect needs. But here’s where we get it wrong. We think the more we explain, the better the other person will understand.

Not so. If your prospect isn’t asking for more information, stop talking.

Sure, you could go on to explain how “years of experience” equates to the age of his website; how “recommendations from others” is like the number of inbound links from other related sites; that “endorsements from top industry experts” are quality links from other authoritative websites; and how “depth, breadth, and quality of knowledge” is comparable to the size of the website and amount of information found there. But why should you, unless he asks?

Always be prepared to explain the details. But keep in mind that you and I live and breathe this stuff; our prospects do not. The best approach is to spoon-feed them information until they’re satisfied. Confused prospects do not buy; so beware of over-explaining yourself out of a sale.

So how do you “explain SEO to a sixth grader”? What have you used that’s worked successfully? Post your experiences in the comments below.

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

Twitter finally switched off version 1.0 of their API on June 11, 2013. If your website or application is failing today, this is likely to be the reason.

Twitter announced they were scrapping the first API last year and gave us at least six months to get our code in order. The initial May 7 stoppage date was postponed but if, you’re still using it, API 1.0 REST URLs will now report “The Twitter REST API v1 is no longer active. Please migrate to API v1.1. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/overview.”

What’s Changed?

The major differences between API v1.0 and v1.1:

1. API v1.1 is SSL only.
2. JSON is now the only available data format — XML, RSS and ATOM have been retired.
3. All requests must be authenticated via OAuth.

Private Authentication for Public Data?

It’s this last point which causes the most confusion.

If your application wants to tweet on a user’s behalf, the user must provide permission. That’s understandable and was implemented in the first API. However, what if you simply want to display your own tweets on your own website? In API 1.0, you could access your timeline using a REST URL such as:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=craigbuckler

The returned data could be parsed and displayed accordingly. There are plenty of examples — I published a small Twitter widget on SitePoint in early 2011.

Even though those tweets are publicly available on Twitter.com (and could be screen-scraped), the raw data is no longer available unless your app provides authentication.

Display Decrees

It gets worse. Twitter has ruled that all applications must adhere with the Developer Display Requirements to ensure tweets and timelines are presented in a consistent manner across the web “in a way that meets the user’s expectation”.

Has anyone ever been confused when encountering a 140-character message? Not any more — Twitter logos and links must be plastered across it. Finally, don’t forget to check the guidelines frequently; you have a duty to update your application whenever Twitter says you should.

Network Commercialization

Twitter wants to take back control of an unruly system. From a commercial perspective, they’d prefer you to use the official Twitter widgets which permit them to manipulate tweets and presentation. If you insist on using an app, API 1.1 allows Twitter to shut down a service without warning or reason.

The policy could backfire. One of the reasons Twitter growth exploded was because of an open API which allowed developers to create apps and widgets which were never envisaged by the company. While they must make money to survive, closing the door will force many sites to scrap feeds which ultimately promoted Twitter. Will as many people use a more corporate and less useful service?

Twitter no longer owns the service they created; it’s owned by the users. Does Twitter have a future if they cannot understand or monetize this concept?

Has your Twitter app been affected today? Do you have the time and inclination to migrate to API 1.1? Will you switch to the official Twitter widgets? Or will you abandon some Twitter applications?

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

It’s easily my least favorite part of the job.

I’m most comfortable sitting peacefully behind my computer screen, chipping away at some delightfully frustrating snag in my otherwise perfect code, poring over my sites’ Google Analytics pages, or perhaps browsing Reddit in between addressing the various tasks my clients pay me to perform.

I have literally no desire to be sitting in an office with a business owner, discussing the reasons he or she should be interested in the web design, SEO, or server backup services I offer. I like money, sure, but I like doing the work I’m getting paid for a lot more than convincing people they should pay me for my work.

Is this a bit cliché of me? Perhaps, but I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. SEO can be a hard sell. You’re selling a service you cannot guarantee will work, and if it does work, may not be visible until several months down the road. The person you’re pitching to probably has zero context for the various concepts you’re discussing, and moreover, if you wanted to be a salesman, you wouldn’t have gotten into the web technology industry to begin with.

So what can you do to make this less-than-enjoyable experience more manageable? I can’t promise you’ll ever look forward to your sales calls, but here are a few tips to help you master the pitch.

Get Your Head in the Game

Half of sales is presence. If you are confident and excited about your services, your prospective client will be too. You have to master your mood before you make your pitch.

Focus on the exciting opportunity that has been placed before you to make money doing something you love (or at least reasonably tolerate). You could be in an office, at this exact moment, slaving away for some tyrant of a boss who only acknowledges your existence when he or she is simultaneously dismantling that existence into undignified pieces of shame and misery. You have your financial fate in your own hands, and that is something to be proud of.

If your prospective client fails to bite, no sweat; you are that much closer to pitching someone who will say yes. Solid business is about offering quality products and services while keeping costs manageable.

You’ve handled that. The sales element is simply a numbers game, and the more you pitch, the more you’ll sell.

Make a Connection

As human beings, we are hardwired to seek out connection with our fellow man. People like to connect with people. Use this to your advantage. Connect with the individual you’re pitching to on a relational, rather than business level.

Take the time to read your prospective clients. Are they the type that will be more impressed by you or by the numbers you can show them? Most businesses owners won’t be purchasing a proven SEO method, they’ll be purchasing a likeable individual who can offer them quality references, desirable timetables, and realistic results.

You don’t have to be a master conversationalist. Simply make time to demonstrate that you are interested in the person, not just the person’s business. The easiest way to do this is by asking questions. How long have you lived in the area? How do you feel about the local school system? What nearby restaurants do you recommend?

People like to talk about themselves, and they enjoy being listened to by authentic individuals. Once they like you, they will want to do business with you.

Cover Objections Before They’re Brought Up

This might be the single most effective sales technique I’ve ever learned. Determine what objections your prospective client might bring up and address them BEFORE you make your pitch.

There are plenty of weak points in the argument for having a client pay you to boost his or her search rankings. What if Google’s next algorithm change eliminates all the work I’ve just paid for? If results aren’t typically visible for two or three months, how do I know you aren’t just grabbing my money and running? Why should I pay $3,000 for you to build my website when my cousin’s friend’s older brother can make me a website for free?

These points are like a scale and the weight goes to whoever addresses them first. If your client thinks about and then brings up a point first, it has much more weight in his or her mind, and you will have a hard time recovering. If, on the other hand, you bring the objection up first, attached to an answer, that same objection will often end up as no more than a glancing consideration for your client and can actually serve to your advantage.

It Won’t Always Suck

Making a sales pitch is no different from anything else; the better you get, the more enjoyable it is. You may never be able to say that you like having sales meetings, delivering pitches, or making calls, but you can at least learn to appreciate these activities and anticipate using them to your advantage.

Become a force of confidence and excitement as you learn to get your head in the game, make a point of establishing a relational connection with your prospective clients, and finally, cover your client’s objections before they are even brought up.

This stuff still isn’t my favorite, but I promise you it gets better.

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

I have a confession to make. I think much of what’s being proclaimed by social media experts is hype. We are constantly being told “social is the new search” and that traditional ways of measuring ROI don’t apply to social media.

Unfortunately, the data doesn’t back that up. The Ecommerce Quarterly report analyzed more than 500 million online shopping experiences in Q1 of 2013 and found that social media lags behind search and email marketing in e-commerce conversions:

… social media represented just 1.55% of all e-commerce traffic to top sites, far behind search (31.43%) and trailing email (2.82%). Moreover, social media platforms overall had a conversion rate of less than three-quarters of one percent (.71%), though this number varied by network.

Yet, in spite of that, “41.7% of SMBs surveyed by BIA/Kelsey say they see Facebook most importantly as an acquisition tool.” Local search expert Mike Blumenthal calls that “a huge disconnect with reality.”

Online marketing firm Vertical Response polled its nearly 500 small business customers about their social media use and found that SMBs are spending more and more time on social media, but struggling under the added workload:

• 66 percent are spending more time on social media than a year ago
• Nearly half spend 6 or more hours a week on it; one-quarter spend up to 10 hours
• A third want to spend less time on it
• Finding good content to share was the most time-consuming aspect

Yet, four times as many SMBs say they plan on increasing their social media marketing budget than those who are decreasing. The 2012 Constant Contact Pulse Survey found that 53 percent of small business owners ranked social media as the marketing channel they need the most help with. With more and more SMBs embracing social media despite its dismal conversion rates, where does social fit into the online marketing ecosystem?

Stay tuned, because over time, it is likely that social signals will gain more weight in search ranking systems, I’d suspect. – Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land, 2010

Although the disciplines of web design, SEO, and social media marketing are diverging, the lines between owned and earned media are beginning to blur. What SMBs need to grasp is that both search and social media marketing is electronic “word-of-mouth.” When someone goes online to search for a plumber or dentist, they are asking their “friend” Google to recommend someone. Google’s algorithm does so based on a number of factors—the same factors you’d use to recommend any expert:

• Years of experience in a field (i.e., age of website)
• Recommendations from others (i.e., inbound links from related sites)
• Endorsements from top industry experts (i.e., quality of inbound links from authoritative sites)
• Depth, breadth, and quality of knowledge (i.e., size of website and amount of information it contains)

The powers that be at Google are smart enough to realize that, to remain relevant, they must begin taking social signals into account when deciding who to “recommend” to its users. That’s why simply creating a Facebook page does nothing to help your clients acquire new customers—they need activity in the form of likes, comments, shares, tweets and so forth. (Google even takes the number of fans and followers into account.)

In the offline world, when a customer shares that you’ve done a good job, it’s earned word-of-mouth. Conversely, if you do a bad job—and your customer shares the experience—you’ve earned that as well, haven’t you?

Social media activity works in the same fashion. It’s earned media. The more times content is shared, liked, re-tweeted, or commented on, the more valuable it becomes—because Google takes notice. Social media activity has the ability to turn owned media into earned media and Word-of-Mouth into World-of-Mouth. That’s huge.

So in spite of what I said earlier, I believe social media to be the biggest communication shift since Gutenberg’s printing press. But like television and radio before it, most SMBs have yet to figure out how to utilize it as a marketing channel. Into this void will surely rush the social media gurus to woo clients away from the web designer and search engine optimizer. So, will you sell social in 2013? Or will you leave it to the social marketing gurus?

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

In the first of this series I compared BigCommerce and Volusion, both hosted shopping carts, in features and pricing. In this part, I’ll find out how easy they are to set up, and how they deal with mobile commerce. Finally, I’ll have a look at their partner programs to see how interesting they are for you as a developer.

Setting up BigCommerce

I’ll start with BigCommerce, and what better way than to show you the steps in a Prezi presentation:

As you can see, BigCommerce is really easy to set up. The Quick Launch Wizard lives up to its name, but finishing all the steps doesn’t necessarily mean you’re done. That’s because a phase is marked as ‘done’ after you perform one of the specified steps. But in most cases you need to configure more options or products. You’ll probably want to add more than one product, and you might want to have multiple shipping options, for example.

The wizard is, however, a great way to show you where to configure each step, and that’s probably its intended purpose. After finishing the wizard, you’ll probably spend another 30-60 minutes configuring your shop, which is not long. It all works very intuitively, and almost every field you need to fill in has a little pointer telling you what to do.

Setting up Volusion

Now let’s see how Volusion does it, and of course they have their own Prezi too:

You can notice right away Volusion doesn’t have a handy quick start wizard as BigCommerce does. This means there’s no actual trigger for you to open your store, knowing you have configured everything that’s needed. However, the Prezi I made has the same steps that BigCommerce takes you through, so it can serve as your own quick launch wizard. There is a Quick Start, but it’s on the front-end and it’s very limited.

I am quite impressed with Volusion when it comes to configurability. You can set it up pretty much how you want it, and I only covered the basic setting up. There are many more settings than I showed you, and also more than BigCommerce has. It all just works the way you expect it to, and you really don’t need a manual (except for the tax settings). But seeing that it’s that easy, I was a bit disappointed by the way you need to turn on mobile.

There should be a big “Turn on Mobile” button or something, or at least you should find it in the theme settings. But instead it’s in the general settings, and you really have to look for it. And you can’t exclude an iPad, which often doesn’t need a mobile version, but you also don’t know if it is included (no further settings). But more on that in the next section about mobile commerce.

A big advantage of Volusion is that you can translate it into any language. Combine this with the option to use any currency (and character encoding method), and you can even use Volusion in the Netherlands (where I live), for example. And remember, they use Akamai as their CDN, which has an excellent global coverage so your customers won’t see any speed limitations. BigCommerce doesn’t have this feature, and that limits its market. You can hire someone to code it in (or do it yourself), but the whole thing could be lost in an upgrade so it’s not recommended.

As with BigCommerce, setting up your store will take you around 1 or 2 hours, not counting the time to add products.

Mobile commerce

As I mentioned in my previous articles, mobile commerce is becoming more and more important. So let’s see how both solutions compare.

BigCommerce  mobile

Dashboard

Order overview, courtesy of BigCommerce	Order detail, courtesy of BigCommerce

In the first part of this series, I established that BigCommerce doesn’t have a mobile app, but they do provide a modified mobile version of the regular dashboard. This allows you to see your order information, like awaiting payment/shipment, pre-orders etc. It’s read-only, but for those wanting to keep track while on the road this could come in handy. For full processing you need to switch to the desktop version (which can’t be done with an iPhone by the way, since you can’t switch).

Front-end

The optimized for mobile front-end is enabled by default, but in the Prezi “Setting up BigCommerce” I showed you how to enable/disable it yourself. You can opt to serve your iPad visitors the mobile theme as well (disabled by default), but I wouldn’t recommend this. Mobile themes always look a bit silly on an iPad, and the screen is large enough for the desktop version.

Visitors can enjoy the full mobile experience, from browsing to checking out (and, most of the time, payment providers have a mobile version).

Mobile homepage	Category overview	Product details
Shopping cart	Create account (or login)	Checkout

It looks great, but it has one major drawback: this is the only mobile theme you have (despite offering 100+ desktop themes). So, all of the BigCommerce hosted sites that have mobile enabled look the same. And it isn’t responsive, so it isn’t based on screen size but on browser agent. There is a way to customize your mobile theme, but that’s a work-around and it isn’t perfect.

You can develop a custom theme for your store with responsive functionality built-in – have someone do it for you. It will take some work (though there is some help from BigCommerce), so expect it to be expensive. But essentially you should be able to select from a number of mobile themes instead of one, which I believe BigCommerce should provide. For now, this isn’t the case.

Volusion mobile

Dashboard

Revenue overview	Dashboard

Volusion offers an app for you to check your sales stats on the road. Even though it’s always nice to have a quick way to check your sales, it won’t allow you to be any more productive while on the road. There’s no mobile-optimized admin, so you’re left using the desktop version. This works, but requires a lot of zooming in to make sure you select what you want.

Front-end

Volusion also has a mobile theme, which you have to turn on yourself  (this is explained in the Prezi “Setting up Volusion”). There isn’t any configuration possible, it’s just on or off with no detection of which browser agent is used. And, just like BigCommerce, the mobile theme isn’t responsive.

That’s not the worst aspect of the Volusion mobile theme. It’s the fact that the shopping cart and checkout process aren’t included. So someone can visit your mobile site, browse around and put products in their cart. But when they actually want to pay, they see the desktop version of your site.

This isn’t so bad when they are using a tablet, but on a phone this is far from convenient. This can really cost you sales, not to mention it looks unprofessional. And while these issues are the most visible ones, there’s also a whole set of limited functionality (read their FAQ).

So what they basically did was optimize the front-end so it looks mobile-optimized, and left it at that. Even though they acknowledge the importance of mobile commerce, they don’t give you the proper tools to work with. Hopefully, this is something they improve soon.

Mobile homepage	Category overview	Product details
Shopping cart (not optimized)	Checkout / create account(not optimized)

As with BigCommerce, Volusion offers only one mobile theme. But, at least you can pay for a nicer theme, although these come with a $995 price tag (you buy a new desktop theme, and receive a matching mobile theme).

Or you can edit the mobile theme code yourself, but editing Volusion templates is limited and requires a lot of patience. So, as with BigCommerce, (hiring someone for) customizing your theme can be quite expensive.

Partner options

To conclude, I will have a quick look at both their partner programs, to see how you as a developer can benefit.

Developer/solution partner program

Both providers give you the opportunity to develop apps for their platform. With BigCommerce, you will sign up as a developer for their partner program, where product sales will be your source of revenue. They assume you already have a working app/site to connect with, but you can always pitch your idea for a new app.

The same applies to Volusion, in that you become a solution partner. In both cases, you will benefit by being becoming listed in their marketplace, giving you some decent promotion. Be aware though, you are certainly not the only one and you should consider if it’s worth investing your time.

Expert program

Both BigCommerce and Volusion offer their clients a wide range of “Experts”, companies that specialize in providing assistance in certain areas like design and marketing.

BigCommerce offers experts in design, marketing, development and integration. There is no way to sign up for becoming an expert yourself. So there’s no business opportunity for you at the moment.

Volusion is accepting new Experts and has the same areas of expertise, only they use the term “Business” for their integration Experts.

As an Expert, you can list your specialities, describe what you do and indicate what your rates are. Being included in their Expert directory will cost you a monthly fee, but it presents excellent opportunities for new business. You aren’t competing with tens of companies in a given speciality, so your chances of being selected are certainly worth the effort.

Conclusion

It’s hard to select one provider over another. Even though they offer the same product, BigCommerce and Volusion use a different approach, which gives each one its own benefits.

Let’s list the pros and cons

BigCommerce

+ Integrated CMS

+ Great help in setting up (Succes Squad, Quick Launch Wizard)

+ All features included in every plan

+ Decent mobile theme

- No useful mobile dashboard

- No multi-language capabilities

- No interesting partner program

Volusion

+ Lots of features (Deal of the Day, ROI Tracking etc.)

+ Lower pricing (but limited functionality in lower priced plans)

+ Multi-language capabilities

+ Interesting partner program

- No useful mobile dashboard

- Limited mobile theme

From a customer point of view, you can’t go wrong with either of them. It depends on your requirements and budget, but if you want to do it on your own BigCommerce does give you a warmer welcome than Volusion.

As a developer, you will find Volusion more suited. They have a decent partner program, and their huge range of features gives you excellent opportunities for consulting jobs. And you can set up a Volusion store in any part of the world, which opens up a whole lot of markets.

Demo stores

Both the demo stores I set up are on an extended demo license (thank you BigCommerce and Volusion!)

BigCommerce demo store: http://sitepoint.mybigcommerce.com/ (available until June 14th)

Volusion demo store: http://v1375417.53jtz2yd4vn3.demo6.volusion.com/ (available until June 30th)

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

Last week, in Be Convincing and Win More Clients, I said that top sales people engage in three specific selling behaviors that set them apart:

1. They connect
2. They convince
3. They collaborate

Years ago, connecting was what it took to win at sales. Today, it’s the price of entry. To win, you must do more. You must both convince and collaborate.

That study, based on research conducted by RAIN Group, says that through collaboration “the buyer becomes a partner in the process, and owns moving the sale forward as much as the seller.”

What Keeps a Sale from Moving Forward?

I’ve said many times that, when selling your services, “yes” and “no” are the two best answers you can hear. Yes means you can move forward. No means you can move on. But maybe traps you between the two. And one way a sale can become relegated to that dreaded no-man’s-land is when your prospect asks for a proposal.

First of all, you should never volunteer to write a proposal as the next step in your sales process. But when your prospect requests one, it can be for any number of reasons—

1. To stall
2. To avoid
3. To compare
4. To convince
5. To confirm

—most of which, when not handled correctly, can kill a new sale.

Stall

A true stalls occurs when you engage a client too soon in the buying process. But a false stall is when a prospect masks the real reason for his hesitation. He’s either not convinced that your solution will make him money rather than cost him money; or that you’re the best choice. Either way, throwing a proposal into the mix is not likely to change that.

The best way to deal with a true stall it to avoid it in the first place, by not going too far into the sales process with clients who are not serious or not ready. A false stalls hidden behind a request for proposal is dealt with by asking hard questions that will draw out the real reason for the stall. But that only happens if you’ve successfully connected with and convinced your client. And chances are, if you’ve already done so, false stalls will not enter the picture.

Avoid

Strange as it may seem, people will go to great lengths to avoid saying “no” to your face—like agreeing to a meeting when they have no intention of buying, and hoping you won’t show up.

Not long ago, I was force to say “no” to a potential vendor. It was great product, and he took the time to explain it. What’s more, I had a great deal of admiration and respect for the man. He’d started the company from scratch and we spoke the same marketing language. It just wasn’t a good fit and, despite the disappointment in his voice, it was the most honest thing I could do. If only all prospects did the same.

Compare

Legitimate prospects may want to compare your proposal to a competitor’s. Unethical ones may plan to use it as pricing leverage against a vendor of choice, perhaps even handing it off to that vendor for ideas and inspiration. So don’t be too anxious to write one without knowing all the facts.

Convince

Your prospect may want a proposal to convince himself—or worse, another decision-maker. There’s no surer way to kill a sale that having your prospect present your idea to a spouse or business partner who wasn’t present at the first meeting.

Remember, Level Two? If you haven’t convinced all the decision-makers in a face-to-face meeting that you can achieve the results they’re after, that the return on investment is worth the risk, and that you’re the best option, what makes you think a piece of paper—or ten pieces of paper—will get the job done?

Confirm

The only reason you ought to provide a proposal is to confirm what you’ve discussed and formalize the agreement. Writing a proposal for any other reason is less likely to move the sale forward.

If you’ve truly developed a collaborative relationship with your client, then it’s as much your responsibility as his to move the process forward. Never end a meeting or agree to a proposal without also getting an agreement on the next step and what the anticipated outcome of that next step should be.

Be sure that next step is on your prospect’s calendar as well as yours. If your prospect won’t make that commitment, it means his proposal request is most likely an attempt to stall, to avoid, to compare, or to convince … rather than to confirm and commit. When this happens, consider withdrawing your agreement to provide a proposal—unless you enjoy being a provider of free information. If that’s the case, you can always switch to blogging as a full-time career.

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

After publishing my previous hosted shopping carts article, it was suggested I should also have compared BigCommerce and Volusion. I didn’t include them in that article because I already had Shopify lined up, which  presented a better alternative to Magento Go and Yahoo Small Business.

That doesn’t mean you should rule out BigCommerce and Volusion, or that I think they’re inferior. This article allows us to get an overall impression by comparing the two.

In this article, I’ll compare their features and pricing. Then in a second part, we’ll see how easy they are to set up and how well they do mobile.

At first, BigCommerce and Volusion seem very alike when it comes to features. Since both are pretty successful in their own right, there must be something that sets each one apart. Let’s dig.

Features

Let’s start by finding out if both BigCommerce and Volusion offer some of the most important hosted shopping cart features:

Noteworthy features

Each of the hosted shopping cart providers also has a noteworthy set of features that the other one doesn’t have (or doesn’t do as well).

BigCommerce

Content Management System

While Volusion allows you to edit most of your pages and templates, you can’t add new pages. BigCommerce, however, gives you a full built-in CMS, where you can even build separate pages for mobile and desktop visitors. You can make your own homepage, and are able to restrict certain pages to customers only. And you can insert You tube/Vimeo videos. It’s a really powerful editor, which couldn’t be any easier to use.

Assisted Setup

Even though this is only used once (and you might not even think you need it if you’re a developer), it’s still a nice feature. You can make an appointment with their Success Squad, where you will receive 30 minutes of assistance in setting up your store. And you can ask any questions you have right away. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and can give you a nice start if things look overwhelming.

Setup wizard

Another way of getting you start is the Quick Launch Wizard, which takes you through all the required steps from within the dashboard. And it keeps track of your progress.

Apps & integrations

Adding apps is really easy: For some popular apps you just select the appropriate category from the navigation menu, and select the apps you want to install. After installing an app, you can configure it.

Volusion doesn’t actually give you an easy way to install an app at all, but shows a list of providers with whom they cooperate. Integrating them has to be done manually. But here comes the catch: For most of its apps, BigCommerce works the same way. So even though they call it apps, it are just integrations. If they could only put their real app system to work with all of their partners, they would have a decent selling point.

But for now, it’s too limited. Shopify is the one that really gets this (read review), and both BigCommerce and Volusion could learn from them.

Or click here: http://prezi.com/o5d_xs1hvhls/bigcommerce-highlights-for-sitepointcom/

Volusion

Deal of the day

Volusion offers an interesting Deal of the Day feature, where you can display products for a limited time (with counter) for a special price. This could really increase your revenue, if you have the products for it. The only downside (to me) is that it is displayed in a separate Deal of the Day page, which is access from the store’s navigation. It would be really great if you had the choice to put it directly on your homepage, and maybe even run your own GroupOn. But still, very nice feature. Only downside: It only comes with their most expensive plans.

Live chat

You have to search for it (let me help), but part of their offering is free live chat software. You have to install it yourself, even though this really should be integrated.

ROI tracking

Volusion gives you a very powerful tool, called ROI Tracking. It allows you to easily keep track of your sales efforts, like advertising campaigns, newsletters or your affiliate program (yes, there is a built-in affiliate program!). You can read reports about the effectiveness of each of your campaigns, and it keeps track of all of your history.

Loyalty Program

Volusion allows you to run a (although basic) loyalty program, where you can reward customer based on your spending, or buy selected products. Customers save up points, which you can give a value and let customers use this to buy products. An excellent way to keep customers coming back. And as with the Deal of the Day feature, is only comes with their most expensive plans.

Or click here: http://prezi.com/ci2qum59wace/volusion-highlights-for-sitepointcom/

Bonus: Abandoned cart saver

Both BigCommerce and Volusion give you an abandoned cart saver. This gives you an insight in the shopping carts customer fill up, but which don’t come to an actual sale. Volusion allows you to send a follow-up email manually, while BigCommerce has the option to send an automated series of follow-up emails. The latter is preferred, since it doesn’t require any of your time, while still being an excellent way to ramp up sales.

And BigCommerce allows you to include a coupon code in your emails, like free shipping. BigCommerce works with emails only, while Volusion also gives you the ability to restore a cart (if lost) when a customer calls you. Both have a different approach, but the result can be very rewarding.

Conclusion

BigCommerce really stands out in helping you set up your store, while Volusion is the real feature leader of the two. But keep in mind, some of their features require very expensive plans, and sometimes a specialized provider may be a better alternative because most listed features are (still?) very basic.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, both providers have a different strategy. BigCommerce has all of it’s features included in all plans, but has a higher price. Volusion starts cheap, but limits its functionality and only gets really interesting after you whip out $35 or more a month. Let’s make a comparison for some of their plans:

Starter plans

Advanced plans

Supreme plans

Conclusion

Both offer very competitive pricing, with BigCommerce allowing a lower number of products than Volusion on each comparable plan. But it’s compensated by given access to all of it’s features right from the start, where Volusion only comes alive after signing up for their Bronze plan or higher.

And just as with Magento Go (see review), the amount of bandwidth is just too small compared to the price you’re paying, and the number of products you can offer. Both charge no transaction fees.

Summing up

Okay, that’s it for features and pricing. In the next article I will show you how these stores are set up, and how they deal with mobile.

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

The rising Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement and the consumerization of IT have left many organizations with outdated IT policies that don’t support an agile workforce by enabling them to work from anywhere, at any time, using any device.

Several debates about embracing BYOD in IT policy ended up on ‘security’ concerns. Yes, you need to protect your company’s data – but it’s no longer the case of choosing security over freedom of use. With a forward-thinking IT policy you can have both freedom and security.

Is your IT policy holding your company and your employees back from embracing BYOD? If so, use this checklist and start building an IT policy that embraces the future and protects your business.

Know Your Devices

Establish which devices you are ready to support. Do your homework on which devices meet your security standards and let users know what they can and can’t use. Find out which devices have native enterprise management tools and which ones use third-party tools.

Establish the Ground-Rules

Do users know they might get their personal data wiped if their device is compromised? If users are working from their own devices, make sure they know the risks involved. Make this clear in simple terms, before they start using the device for work.

Lock-Down Your Data

Make security measures, like having a PIN or encryption, mandatory. Undertake periodic security audits to help verify the safety of company data and assess any potential risks. Encrypt data where possible.

Vet Your Apps

Not all apps will meet your security standards. Determine which will help users in their work, without compromising company data. Set up an app lab and test them to see which ones meet your business needs. Find the right apps for you, and then recommend them to users.

Invest In Training

If you’re embracing BYOD in your IT policy, you should take the time to train users in best BYOD practice. Give them the knowledge they need to protect company data and reduce the risk of having their devices compromised. You also need to facilitate community-based support. So it’s not just about training – it’s about building a culture that makes people collaborate better.

If your company lets employees bring their own devices to the workplace, you had better develop a formal BYOD policy that understands privacy rights and access rights for both employers and employees.

In this way, BYOD will become a genuine asset that can allow your employees to reach new levels of productivity.

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

A number of years ago, I applied for a sales position. It was the first time I’d done so. As part of the application process, I had to complete an online self- assessment. Somewhere around the eighth question, it became apparent that the sole purpose of this “assessment” was to assess whether I was an extrovert or not. Questions like “How many extra-curricular activities or clubs did you belong to in high school?” made it clear that the company believed extroverts make better sales people.

If only it were that simple. According to research conducted by RAIN Group, you to win or lose at sales because of your behavior, not your personality bent. Their study revealed that top sales people engage in three specific selling behaviors that set them apart:

1. They connect
2. They convince
3. They collaborate

The people at RAIN describe these as “three levels” that ought to be applied as a combination, not separately or sequentially—but caution that those who stop at Level 1 do not find themselves in the winner’s circle nearly as often.

This poses a challenge to introverted web designers and programmers faced with the need to “sell your services.” While we do well connecting and collaborating, we’re not so comfortable with convincing. In fact, I’d say we’re so uncomfortable with it that we take collaborating much too far, by giving away too much free information and writing proposals for which the client didn’t ask—hoping that these will do the convincing for us.

Instead, we’re left wondering why the client went elsewhere.

There’s no doubt that to be an effective sales person, you must possess certain social skills. In order to win, you must be able to convince the prospect that:

1. You can achieve the results he’s after
2. The return on investment is worth it
3. The risk is acceptable
4. You are the best choice among the available options

According to the RAIN Group report, even seasoned sales people are resistant to using maximum persuasion, yet …

… in our research, the winners convinced, and convinced with gusto.

Are you focusing too much effort on collaborating and not enough on convincing? It’s time to “go for the gusto” and start convincing.

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

It makes perfect sense to you and me. If that restaurant or hair salon doesn’t have a mobile website, they’re losing customers and therefore money. Yet, surprisingly, that restaurant or salon owner can’t seem to make the connection.

When selling any type of advertising or market—be it a print ad, website, or search engine optimization—there’s an inevitable disconnect that occurs. Your prospect is unable to connect the dots and understand how what you’re selling puts more money in his pocket.

That’s because your prospect is not the end-user of what you’re selling. His customer is the one who’s going to interact with his website or advertising. So all the supposed “features and benefits” don’t benefit your prospect in the least. Hence, the disconnect.

Take a Yellow Page ad, for example. The phone directory in which that ad is placed is designed to appeal to the end-user, your customer’s customer—it’s full of information and easy-to-use. The same can be said of a website. Your customer benefits indirectly, when that consumer finds his website or print ad, and calls.

That’s why “features and benefits” don’t work when selling advertising and marketing. What needs to replace “features and benefits” is “usage and action.” How does your customer’s customer use the advertising platform and what action do they take as a result?

So going back to my Yellow Pages example, I can say the following:

• Usage: 69 percent of San Francisco Bay Area residents use the Yellow Pages.
• Action: 82 percent of Yellow Pages users contact a merchant, and 46 percent make a purchase.

In order to cross the chasm between product and profit, Yellow Page sales people have used a technique called “picturing the buyer.” That’s when you get your prospect to step out of advertiser mode and into consumer mode, by getting him to flip through the directory, view the ads inside, and imagine how his customer would look for and find him there.

Now, phone directories have been around for over 120 years, so there’s a good chance your prospect has used the Yellow Pages in his lifetime. But with digital marketing, not so much. Getting your prospect to grasp and understand how a consumer would search for a local business on a smartphone—when he’s never used one—is a challenge, to say the least. But unless you bridge that gap, you won’t succeed at selling your web marketing services.

In the same manner you’d get a potential Yellow Page advertiser “into the book,” you’ll need to demonstrate how a mobile consumer would conduct a local search for his business category on a smartphone (there’s also the added benefit of your prospect realizing his competitors’ listings appear above his).

Picturing the buyer is an effective method for getting your prospect to step into his customers’ shoes and understand how the average consumer uses technology to search for the products and services they need. Use it to help your prospect to “connect the dots” between what you’re selling and what puts money in his pocket—or else be forever frustrated with clients who “just don’t get it.”

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

In last week’s article, What’s a “Gatekeeper” and Why Do I Need to “Get Past” Them?, I outlined a strategy designed to enlist the gatekeeper’s cooperation and get you to the decision-maker. It goes like this:

Since gatekeepers can’t make marketing decisions, but they can say “no” to those selling it, give them something to which they can’t say “no”—such as more customers and increased revenue— or reveal a problem they didn’t know existed, in order to get them thinking: “Perhaps my boss needs to know about this …”

One commentator (“a gatekeeper”) said my example wouldn’t work on them—and proceeded to explain why. Yet, in reality, if I’d walked into that person’s business the day before, there’s a 60 percent chance it would have worked. Why am I so sure? Because one “Big Box” SEO company actually measured a number of different approaches to determine which was most effective. Their research revealed that this one in particular landed an appointment with the decision-maker six out of ten times.

One sure way to fail at prospecting is to believe anecdotal evidence as fact. Anecdotal evidence can come in the form of one person’s opinion—as in the example above—or as your own. Just because you think a particular approach will work or not doesn’t mean it will.

Regardless of how effective an approach is, no “technique” is 100 percent successful. Yet, we’d all like to think we’re the exception, that we’re not as readily persuaded or manipulated as the next guy (or gal). In his book, Influence: Science and Practice, psychology professor Robert Cialdini discovered there’s a huge disconnect between how people say they would react when someone was attempting to influence their behavior, and how people actually react.

For example, one control group was asked if they’d allow someone who requested to cut in front of them in line to do so simply based on their looks. Overwhelming, people denied that they’d make a decision on the other person’s attractiveness, or lack thereof.

But in a blind study using people of average looks and ones with “super model” good looks, the super models were allowed to cut far more often than the average-looking individuals. Other similar studies have shown that good-looking individuals obtained help more readily than the average-looking men and women. Clearly, the majority of people aren’t even aware of the factors that influence and persuade them. The truth is, each of us is more susceptible to being persuaded or manipulated than we’d like to believe.

People will always offer anecdotal evidence why a particular prospecting method doesn’t work. There’s even an entire industry that’s sprung up around the myth that “cold-calling is dead.” Yet, most of these voices have either a bias or an agenda. (And what better way to sell your “new and improved” prospecting sales program than to convince your audience that the “old way” no longer works.)

The only way to know what truly does and doesn’t work is by obtaining objective proof. And that requires testing your approach enough times to demonstrate whether it’s successful or not. There are many who scoff at tried-and-true sales and prospecting methods. But as one of the wiser members of SitePoint’s forums recently said, “Trivialize the value of sales at your own risk.”

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

Do you list product or service features on your site? What about benefits?

If you’re going to communicate clearly with the audience for whatever it is you offer, you’ll need to understand the difference between these two concepts. Then you’ll need to be able to define them for your product and your audience.

Without this knowledge, your landing page or promo email is likely to read as a mishmash of Interesting Things About My Product. Whether or not they hit the mark for your audience will depend on chance.

But once you get these concepts—and they’re not exactly rocket science—you’ll be able to really speak to the people you want to reach.

Feature or benefit?

When you’re looking at your own (darn fine, I’m sure) handiwork and thinking about what it offers, it can be all too easy to get carried away.

It has this! It does that! It’s better than Brand X! It’s the first Y of its kind! It’s a game changer!

But which of these are features? And which are benefits? There are some pretty easy ways to tell.

Fact versus feeling

One way you can work out if something is a feature or a benefit is to ask yourself whether it’s a fact, or it’s a feeling.

“Compatible with iOS 6″ is a fact. There’s no feeling there. It’s a feature.

“Helps you keep up with friends” speaks to a feeling. We looked at this line when we reviewed the Flickr homepage. There, it was presented as an outcome of the comment and note functionality—or features—that Flickr provides.

If you find yourself falling down the “but it does help you keep up with friends! That’s a fact too!” rabbit hole, don’t think so literally about the terms.

The word “feelings” implies an emotional component that facts don’t have. How many people are going to get emotional about iOS compatibility? Few (none?). But most of us feel good about the idea of keeping up with our friends’ adventures.

Product versus audience

Another way to work out if something’s a feature or a benefit is to ask who has it: the product or the audience? Free phone credits are a feature of a phone plan. The credits are something the product has bundled with it.

But benefits are a function of a feature’s interaction with the audience. For parents buying the plan for their kids, free phone credits might mean peace of mind: they know little Betty can always call if she needs to, so she’ll never get stuck somewhere without a way to get home.

But for Betty, free phone credits may mean she stays better connected with her friends, and doesn’t miss any important gossip as she attempts to scale the social ladder at school.

This raises an important point: benefits can meet conscious needs (staying connected with friends) or subconscious needs (social maneuvering). So it’s important to know your audience and their needs up front. This will help you work out how to pitch the benefits of your service in a way that speaks to those particular people.

Features and benefits in action

Let’s use these two approaches together to try to decipher benefits from features in the real world.

We’ll take lumosity.com as an example. Here’s their brief service description, which I found on a landing page for their service (that is, not the homepage):

Okay, so what about these three points? What’s a benefit, and what’s a feature?

I’d say the first is a benefit, because it’s something the customer has, and the statement elicits a feeling.

The second two points are features, as they’re facts related to something the product has: it’s digital, and it offers tracking.

Getting creative

Further down that landing page we can see features and benefits presented in a different way. They’ve been separated, and the benefits are presented in the words of users, as testimonials.

The business owners I work with often feel that they need testimonials as a form of social proof, and they certainly achieve that goal.

But as this example shows, some well-chosen testimonials can translate features into user-relevant benefits, almost without you having to do a thing—except, of course, choosing examples that convey the precise benefits you want to promote.

How many features? How many benefits?

Now you can immediately tell a benefit from a feature. You can make a list of features for your product or service, and quickly translate each one into a benefit to your audience.

But which should you focus on in selling your product or service: features or benefits? How can you strike the right balance?

If you own the product, or you developed it, you probably think you have a gut feel for the right answers here. But in truth, you’re probably too close to your offering to see it as objectively as you need to.

Enter: Consumer Involvement Theory. This is a theory of customer behaviour that looks at a product and assesses how involved, and how emotional or rational, customers are when they’re deciding to buy it. For the full background, this article is concise but informative.

How can CIT help us? It lets us position our products within a matrix like this one:

Involvement refers to the complexity of the purchase. Buying a subscription to the average app probably rates pretty low on the scale of involvement—unless, as with some productivity apps, for example, users think their jobs depend on making the right choice.

For lumosity, I think involvement might be low to middling.

Emotional purchases are ones that we want to feel strongly about—purchases we buy into emotionally. Informational purchases tend to be more about gathering facts to rationally make the “best” choice.

For lumosity, I think the purchase is probably about health and (mental) fitness, so while we’re going to make a rational decision based on information, there’s no doubt we have an emotional investment in the decision at some level.

So a balance would need to be struck between benefits and features to sell the service, and this is what we see on the lumosity homepage.

Put the theory to work for you

Take a minute to work out where your offering fits on the matrix. This should give you an idea of how much you need to focus on benefits, and how much on features.

You might then allocate a percentage of your message to talk of benefits, and a percentage to features. Will it be 50/50? 75/25? Once you’ve worked that out, you can roughly apply that percentage split to your word counts, page layouts, and so on, to make sure you’re communicating what you need to in the way that best suits your audience.

While you’re at it, prioritize your features and benefits on the basis of your product or service’s value proposition or USP.

Now you’ve got some nice lists of features and benefits, ordered by importance. And you know how much focus you need to give to each. The only question that’s left is: how will you present them?

As a specs list that lets users easily compare your offering against others?

As a customer or member video that shows the benefits one individual gained from your service—and inspires others to join?

Or something else? Let us know what’s most likely to suit your brand—and your audience—in the comments.

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails

In my previous article, What Every Freelancer Should Know about Prospecting for New Business, I said that selling is easy but prospecting is hard. And by far, the most intimidating aspect of prospecting is when you have to interrupt a complete stranger and attempt to get him or her to agree to meet with you. But to get to that decision-maker, there’s another, all-powerful entity you must first confront …

The Gatekeeper.

Gatekeepers can’t make marketing decisions, but they can say “no” to those selling it, because it’s their job to protect their boss. That’s why opening with “Hi, I’m from [INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE]. I’m looking for the person who handles your marketing,” is generally a bad idea. If the gatekeeper is empowered to say “no” to sales people, why would you utter a phrase that immediately labels yourself as one?

Encountering resistance is natural part of prospecting, and you won’t get far selling your services if you’re not prepared to respond to it. But you can circumvent it entirely by treating the gatekeeper like he or she is the decision-maker.

Yes, you heard right. You see, in a typical prospecting call, three things must happen. You must:

1. Get to the decision-maker
2. Say something interesting
3. Ask for the appointment

But that three-step process doesn’t have to occur in that order. Suppose you “broke” the pattern like so:

1. Say something interesting
2. Get to the decision-maker
3. Ask for the appointment

But wait a minute, John. Treating the gatekeeper like the decision-maker makes no sense. Didn’t you say the gatekeeper has no authority to say “yes” to marketing or advertising? That’s right, I did.

But they don’t have the authority to say “no” either.

Let me be more specific. They don’t have the authority to say “no” to the end result of what you’re selling. Such as more customers, increased revenue, more effective online presence.

Treating the gatekeeper as the decision-maker disturbs their complacency. You need to put this thought into his or her head: “Perhaps my boss would want to know about this …” or “We laid off five people last month. Maybe we do need to improve sales …”

Working at AT&T, before I stumbled upon this, secretaries and receptionists would tell me, “We don’t advertise in the Yellow Pages.” (I often found out later that they did.) Even if I did manage to get to a decision-maker, the most common response I’d hear was “I’m not interested” or “We’re all set.”

Sales trainers refer to these as “objections” and teach you to “overcome” them. But, in reality, these rebuttals are resistance—you know, that knee-jerk reaction most of us have when we realize we’re being solicited. By acting like the gatekeeper is the decision maker, you can get past that by leveraging the fact that they have no power to say “no” to executive-level decisions that may affect the well-being of the company. Ironically, assuming the gatekeeper has the power to say “yes” actually takes away his or her power to tell you “no.”

This is known as a pattern interrupt. That’s when you interrupt that “knee-jerk” reaction (or pattern) with which gatekeepers are accustomed to responding to sales people. If you keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting—a “knee-jerk” response:

Hi, I’m from XYZ Web Design. I’m looking for the person who handles your marketing.

Umm, yeah. We’re all set, thanks.

But interrupting the pattern yields radically different results:

I noticed something about your website and I have a concern that you might be losing business to one of your closest competitors, without even knowing it.

Umm, let me get my boss …

Now you try.

Image credit

Get Started with
Ruby on Rails

Github, Twitter and Hulu. All huge. All successful. All Rails.

Learn the web development framework of the moment with our newest book and course.

Learn Rails