One of the biggest benefits of the web to consumers and business has been the ability to track down and review far more service providers than would have been possible in the past. This is something we take for granted now, but it’s not that many years since our only option was to find a suppliers directory and start hitting the phone to request literature in the post.
Now we routinely investigate far more potential suppliers; we do it more quickly; and we get far more information about each. In 1993, if you received a telephone enquiry from a prospect, it was likely that they might only be calling one or two suppliers, and mainly those whose name was familiar. You knew who you were likely to be up against, if anybody at all. Twenty years on, a prospect might look at five or ten suppliers in quite considerable depth, including relatively unknown ones who are making their presence known effectively, before contacting any one of them. The key to receiving the sales enquiry now is clarity on your website, and in particular, getting over the message why the prospect should use you and not your competitors. It’s possible that can be done simply by laying out your technical advantages, but it’s more likely that you need to sell the organisation. I don’t think many company websites do this well, even after all this time.
Look at your own website as a prospect, and your competitors, then ask yourself: why my company and not the others?