By my reckoning there are six steps (or phases) in a sale. I know that many folks talk about “The Four Steps To A Sale.” I like to consider the full range of six. Yes, these can be broken down even further. But for me these fit the bill.

Below are the six steps to a sale:

1. Need
2. Awareness
3. Consideration/Research
4. Decision
5. Purchase
6. Post Purchase Valuation

1 Need

The first step in the sale is a need. There is always a need first. Even in those mythical sales of snow to an Eskimo there was a need. The need was not for snow. But there was a need for something. You can’t make a sale without the interest of your customer. And, you can’t get the interest of a customer unless it is of personal interest to them — in a way they understand. That type of interest comes from need.

2 Awareness

This is not awareness in general, although that might be nice, this is awareness of the possibility of a solution to the need. Walking around with a need is one thing. Walking around with a need and stumbling upon the prospect of handling that need is something all together different.

What if the need is for this gosh darn abscessed tooth to stop hurting. Well, believe it life will be much different the moment that individual learns of the existence of something known as a dentist.

So part of the sales process is communicating the existence of a solution to a need. Yelling the word “dentist” will not really get the point across. It would be better to put the word into context so that the connection between dentist and the blissful release from pounding, agonizing tooth pain was made.

3 Consideration/Research

After the customer is made aware that there is the possibility of solutions to a need, they may go into the consideration and research phase of the sale. This is the time when they find out what options they have, weigh the pluses and minuses of the different options, get advice, seek opinions, you know — do research and consider.

4 Decision

At some point in the process of consideration and research the customer makes the decision to buy. A little alarm goes off in their head and they transition from thinking about maybe perhaps getting ready to possibly buy to “yeah, let’s get this.”

5 Purchase

Now we get to the part that sales people like, the purchase. Something that some sales people forget to do is “ask for the sale.” What I mean by that is the following: when you can tell that your customer has made the decision to buy speak up and ask for the sale. “Will that be Visa or Master Card?” “Will you be taking that with your or shall we have it delivered?”

6 Post Purchase Valuation

Some folks like to think that the sale is over when the customer walks out the door with the item. This is far from the truth. After the purchase there is the part where the customer figures out whether this was a huge mistake or the greatest purchase they ever made. If they figure it was a huge mistake, they may attempt to return the item. If they figure it was the best purchase they ever made, they may tell their friends and family to go buy one too. This is where word of mouth advertising comes from — from happy customers, not upset folks that regret the day they heard about the product.

What to do about the above steps

Each of these steps offer unique opportunity for a sales person to move the process along — influence, help, and guidance can be offered at each step. Just ascertaining which phase a customer is in when you speak with them can help you orient yourself.

For the moment, just start by acknowledging the six steps (or phases) to a sale exist. Then start paying attention. Once you know something exists, you’d be surprised how much you can figure out on your own.

When I say “good” I am not referring to moral or virtuous. “Good” in this context is more related to functional. Take a look at the list below of characteristics that define a good goal.

• Specific.  
• Realistic.
• Challenging.
• Measurable. 

Specific

If a goal is too general it soon becomes un-realistic and non-measurable. “I want to bring about world peace” is a nice goal but it is not a good goal. It is too general, not specific enough. Start with something a bit more specific. “I want to make the local high school a safe place for learning.” This is not as grand a goal. But it is realistic and measurable.

Realistic

Make the goal something that you can actually see yourself (or anyone) accomplishing. “I want to walk on the moon bare-butt naked” is not very realistic. If the goal is too far from possible you will quickly forgive yourself from not making serious efforts and dismiss the goal.

Challenging

When considering challenge, there should be short term challenge in addition to long term challenge. I’ll give you an example. Years and years ago I set myself the goal of filling a bound notebook with zeros. In case you are wondering, I wasn’t on drugs — leastwise not at the time. The goal was specific (I knew exactly which notebook I had in mind). The goal was realistic (The notebook had 350 pages and I could easily fill three pages in a sitting.) And the goal was challenging — in the long run. It was a challenge to sit myself down a couple times a day to make zeros in this notebook. So there was a long term challenge. But, this thing became a total drag after just a few days. Then somewhere along the line I introduced a secondary goal of making the zeros the best zeros I could make. Now I had a long term challenge. But more importantly I also had a short term challenge. Each minute I worked at the notebook I was challenging myself to make the zero I was working on the best zero I could make.

I find it important to have a short term challenge as well.

Measurable

If you can’t tell whether you are accomplishing the goal then its not much of a goal. It could still be something you do. But as a goal it will suck. A goal really does imply some kind of yard stick to measure progress and success.  Is it absolutely necessary? Can you have a goal that can not be measured? Yes, you can have a goal that can not be measured. This is not the Department of Fascist Oversight of Goals.

However, be aware of the fact that a goal that can be measured will just function better. Remember “good” is not a measure of moral or virtuous. “Good” in this context is a measure of functionality. There are many goals that we adopt which are not “good” goals.

Take for example the goal “To lead a virtuous life.” or “To be a good person.” As goals these fail in almost every category. However, they are goals worth having.

If you find yourself with goals that are worth having but that don’t happen to be “good” goals in the functional sense, all you need to do is make sub-goals. Make goals that serve the higher goals.

Recently I was asked by a new client “Why should I have a website?”

This is a good question. But it is not the whole question. To really get at the issue one needs to address all of the following (together and separately)

• What can a website do?
• What is it I do?
• What can a website do for me?
• Is the benefit worth the cost/risk?

One of the things I do is wash my car every week or two. Can my website do this for me? No, not directly. So let’s ignore that type of answers when working with the question “What is it I do?”

Another thing I do is try to keep my clients up-to-date on what I’m doing and future presentations they might find of interest. This sounds like something that a website can do. In fact, you could probably name a half dozen ways in which different websites accomplish this exact type of service. So, this looks like a fruitful direction. Even though I would really like some help in getting the car washed — it just happens to be that websites are better at communication than using soap and water, websites don’t have opposable thumbs.

Below is a sample list of what a website can do.

• Advertising — stand alone or as an extension of other campaigns (radio, tv, press, etc)
• Announcements
• Answer common questions for you
• Art Exhibit — show your art in a public forum
• Appointments — let folks schedule service calls and/or meetings
• Biography — inform people about yourself
• Bookmarks — store your book marks in a public, or semi-private, or private ventue.
• Branding — increase public awareness and identification of you and/or your service and/or product
• Build credibility
• Collaborate with others — on a book project or other venture
• Community — establish a virtual community to interact with others
• Consolidate — bring related but desparate content under one roof to highlight the connection.
• Contact Information
• Coordinate activities — some of the original flash gatherings were communicated through website.
• Customer Service
• Demo tape — let people listen to your music
• Diary — many blogs are of this exact sort
• Direct Sales – generate money through direct sales
• E-Commerce — take credit card information directly
• Educate — students, customers, friends, family, and potential customers
• Forum — provide a place for people to meet and talk on a certain issue
• Gather customers
• Generate Contacts
• Globalization — sell outside your area of direct contact
• Image — enhance company’s image
• Information — present information such as “Warning Signs of a Stroke”
• Links — publishing a list of related links
• Map – provide directions to your location
• News — deliver news/information on topics
• Point of Presence — establish an internet presence
• Portal
• Position yourself in marketplace
• Product fact sheets
• Profile – Give folks an impression/feel for you
• Prospect for new clients
• Provide a service
• Public Relations — offer company information and public impression
• Publishing — either self-publishing or for others
• Qualify prospects
• Referrals — direct folks to distributors and retailers of your product
• Research
• Review
• RFP — request of proposals
• Sales — a website can support each of the main phases of a sales process.
• Schedule Events
• Sell a product
• Soap Box — websites can provide a place to rant and spew forth with one’s opinions
• Tell your story
• Trademark — A website can be used with trademark office to demonstrate useage.

The above list is fairly complete, yet still a partial list. Every day someone finds a new way to carry what they are doing in life onto the web through one website or another.

Even though we have the above sample list of what a website can do for you, it is still your task to go directly to the source (yourself) and answer the question: “What is it I do?” along with the companion question “Can I get a website to do that for me?”

Your alternative to performing this bit of homework is to let some snake oil salesman dangle promises of what a website can do for you in front of your eyes until there is a “hit”. After which you will find yourself suddenly motivated to get a website to do exactly that.

You should never go grocery shopping hungry. You should never enter into a conversation about getting a website until you know what you would like it to do. A webmaster might know html and css a heck of a lot better than you. But, you know your business.

Come to a meeting with your webmaster as an equal. The way to do that is for you to know your business and what you want. The webmaster has the job of knowing his business. And you have the job of knowing your business.

Given a “wish list” of what you would like your website to do, I could tell you pretty quickly what the cost and projected benefit will be. Armed with this information you will be in a great position to make decisions about how you would like to start your website, and your first milestones of functionality.

In my blog SEO: Must #1 Get It Right I used a graphic illustrating a google search. I’ve pasted the same graphic here for your easy reference.

The google search was on the word morphotony. In that blog I promised to give a little history on this little adventure of mine. So here it is.

One day the band started a hunt for a name. “Hey let’s get together and play some music” was a bit too long for fliers and other marketing materials. So we began a hunt for a name.

One of the names we thought (momentarily) about was morphotony. I did a google search on the word. There were zero results. It is hard to come up with zero results in a google search. Even if you type a random array of characters into a search you will come up with some pages that contain the character string.

With billions and billions of web pages there is bound to be someone, somewhere, that somehow at sometime use just about every character string — except for morphotony. There were zero results.

I found this very bizarre. So given that apparently no one on the planet had ever written morphotony into a single sentence (on purpose, by accident, or as a typo) it seemed only fitting that I should start a website — morphotony.com.

So now I have morphotony.com and periodically I make dribbles and drabs of effort to get the word into usage. If you want to get in the act, just use the word on your page. Create a username of morphotony on your favorite gaming forum. Create a youtube video and somehow work the word morphotony into the title. Just use the word here and there.

Just think you can be one of the few pages showing up when some non-existent users does a non-likely search for a word they have never seen nor heard of.

Now that’s an opportunity.

The title of you web page is found in the <head> of the document HTML.

The <head> contains several important fields of importance to your SEO. The one we are speaking about today is the <title>.

The title will appear at the top left of the browser — typically next to the program icon. In Microsoft Windows that is the blue bar at the top of program windows. Most users never see this area of the screen. They are busy concentrating on the content found in the body of the page.

 Another place the title will appear is on tab headers — if the browser allows for tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing is where you can open several pages at the same time — each one in its own tab. When this occurrs the first part of each page’s title appears as the identifying text in the page’s tab.

In the image above, you can see the at the top left the title of the web page I have open at the moment (my Blogger Create Post window). Then near the bottom of the graphic you can see two tabs. One of the tabs (to the left) is for this same page. The tab next to it is my Blogger Dashboard. This is how it looks in Firefox 3.6 on WinXP. The details will vary in different browsers — but the general idea should remain the same.

Another place the title will appear is on toolbar icons typically found at the bottom of the screen when you have multiple programs running — provided you are using a standard windows installation. This will look different in Mac and Linux. But still, in a multi-tasking environment the title of your web page will be used in some fashion to label the icon leading back to the application showing your page.

For SEO purposes the most important place that your title will appear is in search results. Here is the big duh of SEO. Whenever a user does a search engine search the results include your title.

Above are the google search results for “morphotony” — meaning “to become bored with change  ( See “Morphotony A Little Of The Story” for a little history on this little adventure.)

If you study the above image a little, you can see that in google’s search results the title is used for the link text, and is the top of the listing.

I ask you: does the search results page contain just one result or many? It contains many of course. So when your page appears in the search engine results you are competing with every other result appearing on the same page. Hence, your title needs to give the user enough information so that he or she can determine whether or not your page is a better match for the content they are looking for.

Please note, (turn up your attention) I did not say that your title needs to help attract the user to your web page. Rather, I said your title needs to help the user determine if your pages is the one they are looking for.

Herein lies a major difference in attitude and headset. One headset is: “I am doing my best to trick, hoodwink, and generally bamboozle readers into coming to my pages.” Another headset is: “I have content that will be of interest to the right audience — if only they can find it — hence I need to do my best to quickly and efficiently let that audience know what I have so they can decide if they wish to visit my pages.”

Very different approaches. Even if you are desperate for traffic — I mean really, really desperate for the traffic — you still need to use the second approach.

The true secret to SEO is to provide good content, then manipulate things such as title so that people can quickly and efficiently find your content — provided it is what they are looking for.

And, because some uses for the title will truncate the title after a few characters make sure that the beginning of the title contains some of the uniqueness.

This is not a complaint — just an observation about the nature of blogging.

As a public posting, the blog is available to anyone that manages to find it. Hence, everyone has the opportunity to read the blog. This means there is a total blending of potential audiences. If you want to say something that you’d rather your parents not overhear, then you will need to disable their browser function, implant a worm that prevents certain website urls from being loaded, or install Net Nanny on their computer without telling them. Otherwise they are among the most likely candidates to actually read whatever mixture of alphabet characters you are typing into the “New Post” window.

Old girl friends and boy friends could be reading your blog. As well as friends from work (that weren’t supposed to know about the ahem… er… hobby. Your children, distant relatives, friends of friends, strangers from any and every part of the world. Basically everyone. Not everyone individually. Everyone all at once.

Since everyone is reading the same blog you can’t tell the tale a little different depending upon the audience. You can’t use the politically correct version at church, the risque version with the boys in the locker room, the well enunciated grammatically correct version for the management team at work, the “honey you know I would never do that” for the misses. It is all the same version for everyone.

You can’t blog about winning the lottery when you are still playing duck and hide from the neighbor down the street that lent you the money you don’t want to pay back just yet.

You can’t talk about the great golf score when the only reason you could get away from the weekend yard work was a little white lie about being totally disabled and needing to soak in the sports sauna at the gym.

It is the same version for everyone.

However, you don’t really know who specifically is reading any particular blog. Granted, you can count your followers. But you don’t know if they happen to read a specific blog. So, you can’t rely upon them having read anything in particular.

In practical terms that would mean that if you post an invite to a lawn party in your blog, you will still need to personally invite everyone you actually want to make sure know about the event. It’s worse than email. With email you have no guarantee but you do have a vague notion that the content made it to their inbox (except for the ever present spam box and internet glitches). With a blog you don’t even have the imaginary certainty that the content made it to their inbox. They may or may not have even glanced at the page — let alone actually have read it.

So, in a strange way, even though may people can read the blog it is no one at all — at least no one in particular.

The only folks that you can know have read the blog are those that comment. And since a mircoscopic percentage of readers actually comment that means in general you can’t know, which means in general you are typing to no one at all.

I have developed a simulation of this designed to give a peek into the dynamics of this for anyone curious about the inner effects this type of communication.

I invite psychologists and anyone studying social dynamics to try this out.

Blogging Simulation 101

Set up a room with standard lecture seating.

Have each individual present take a turn telling a joke or story. The joke or story should be two or three minutes long.

As they tell their joke everyone in the audience is sitting with a cloth bag over their head. This should allow them to see out, but not display their expression — or even whether or not the eyes are open. The members of the audience say nothing, do nothing, make no action that would reveal whether they are listening or not. They could be listening or totally ignoring the speaker.

After each person has taken a turn then discuss the results.

Report back if you dare.

After you have worked out (to your satisfaction) exactly what it is you want your website to accomplish, then how do you tell if it is working? Or, in other words, how will you measure success?

Let’s suppose that what you really want from your website is to increase sales and find new sales leads.

If you have set a goal for your website to increase sales, then you must implement some method of tracking sales coming from the website.

If you have set a goal for your website to find new sales leads, then you must implement some method of knowing the source of sales leads.

Basically, you need analytics. If you know that you were getting 20 sales a day prior to adding the new product catalog and now you are getting 30 sales a day, then you can demonstrate an increase of 50%.

If you know that marketing was receiving 50 inquiries a week before the website and now they are receiving 150 inquiries a week, then you have 300% increase in new leads.

If you have no method of tracking sales or of counting new sales leads, then you have no method of determining changes in stats.

This seems very obvious. But until you sit down to actualize the process it may escape your notice that the  current invoicing system doesn’t have a data field for source. Or, you may not discover that it will become necessary to expand your reporting software to sort on sales source. And, it is not that impossible to imagine   your sales people don’t even collect information about where new leads are coming from. They could be so happy to have a new lead they don’t even bother with “where did you hear about us.”

All of the above you most likely are very familiar with, and should not need to be told. The part that may have escaped your attention is the importance of going through this process as early in the website design as possible. The reason is: your webmaster may need to revise the structure of the site to facilitate tracking of your goals.

Heard that expression before?

Lately that’s been my experience — except in addition to be the “caught” I’m also the “rock” and the “hard place.”

I can hear the knowing chuckle of a few forest monks wafting through the air. [Note to self: haven’t used waft in a decade or so, better look it up.] [Subsequent note: yep it means what we thought — to float or be carried, esp. through the air. Ah, the wonders of dictionary.com]

As always the trick is in the attitude. Can’t change the being caught between a rock and a hard place. Don’t really have control over that. But I do have a choice in attitude I adopt.

That is a question that should be asked by every website owner — maybe not in that form. But it still needs to be asked. Other versions of this question could be:

• Why Do You Want A Website?
• What do you want your website to do for you?
• What do  you think a website can do for you?
• How will you measure success of your website?
• What changes in your life (or business) do you expect after getting a website?
• If you don’t do this website how will that change your situation?

The above questions are more or less the same. However, like the five blind men feeling an elephant — each question will give a different perspective on the same animal. In this case that animal is the expectations you have for your website.

Those expectations can be reasonable or they can be totally unreasonable. That is not the point. Before you can even begin to assess the appropriateness of an expectation you really need to know what the expectations are.

These expectations for your website are very important. If you can confess to your web designer what it is you want the website to do you will make life and the development of your website so much easier.

Armed with knowledge of your expectations the web designer might suggest splitting your proposed website into two or more smaller websites. How could this be? Well, let’s suppose your expectations for your website are to establish better customer relations, support your sales staff in their marketing campaigns and explore your family genealogy.

An odd combination of expectations for a single website. But very valid expectations for two or more websites. One website could be created devoted to the family genealogy. Another website could be created to handle the customer support with a sub-domain devoted to sales staff support. Or, perhaps you could benefit from three separate websites — two public domains and one running on an intranet devoted to staff issues.

Each of the above goals (or expectations) were equally valid. However, it could be very difficult to design one website to do all of the above. Thrusting personal and family topics into a business website is just a bad idea — unless of course you are in the business of genealogy. The language and topic appropriate to a frank and open discussion with your sales staff might be a little off-putting to your customers. Or, perhaps not. Depending on the nature of your business, you could very easily use public communications to sales staff as a back-door method of speaking to customers about topics that might be more difficult straight on.

There is no single solution. However, until you confess your expectations for your website it is very difficult to even start the process of getting down to it.

Those you watching the past two weeks may have noticed the appearance then sudden disappearance of several blogs on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Well, they are not gone. I’ve started a new blog: made-easy-seo.blogspot.com

Click on over there if you’d like to find the missing SEO blogs that were here, and several new ones besides.