Are you committing Digital Sales Suicide by Pouncing on Readers?
I love reading blogs don’t you? Getting insight into people, products, services and points of view. Terrific stuff.
This blog is written as a cry for help to anyone who puts blogs out as I believe that from my own point of view and those I have asked, that there is a practice going on that is making us readers switch off, and worse click out of your blogs.
Let me explain further, we have all been into shops where within seconds of stepping over the threshold an eager beaver pounces on you with the immortal line “Can I help you?” We of course freeze up or get bolshie and throw back our trusted line “No thanks, just looking.” And then we walk out. Well in the digital space this is started to happen in a similar way and it is really irritating.
You see you find yourself browsing the social media pages, landing on different news stories and blogs and you click upon a blog that you like the sound of. ‘My top 5 this’ or ‘the 20 reasons why you should do that’ etc. You click on in and just like the shop with the eager beaver, a little chat window pops up, “Hi, thanks for visiting our blog, how can we help you today?” Now of course we could type in “nothing thanks, just looking” however the reality is that we feel like we are being sold something, or pushed into something and that stops the creative inquisitive nature of you stopping to read and leaves you feeling pounced upon, so guess what? We click off of the site.
The danger of this is that we readers are going to miss something really valuable that you have written, and worse you could have lost a sale and a customer. It is far better for the chat window to appear after a period of time, e.g. the average time it takes for a reader to the blog, in the same way, as there is an average time that you wait before approaching a customer in a shop. We do this so that the reader or customer gets acclimatized and familiar with the shop or blog, in the blogs case, how long is, does it look interesting on first scan etc. Don’t pounce!
If you have this function, don’t be so eager to engage, it comes across as far too pushy or salesy and that is not welcome. As a sales person and sales trainer, it is important to engage I get that, just don’t be to quick to pounce. It could cost you more that you know.
Thanks for reading!
