I am writing this on Bastille Day, July 14, 2020. Hamilton is still a gleam in our eye. Meanwhile, we’re out $57.98.
Disney has our money. Amazon's Fire TV Stick has our money. We have no idea how to see Hamilton. Xfinity/Comcast hornswoggled us.
NEVER EVER do this to your prospects and customers!
Denny’s 19-Point Checklist for
A Flawless Ordering Process
1. “Always make it easy to order.” —Elsworth S. Howell, CEO Grolier Enterprises
2. The order mechanism stands between you and the sale (or donation).
3. Always ask for an order, donation or a response of some kind. Otherwise the recipient will have no reason to reply. If you receive no replies, you’ll never know whether the message or mailing ever went out or if the ad appeared in print.
Malcolm Decker on the Order Form 4. “The order form should be so simple an idiot can understand it.”
5. “Whether digital or print, give the order mechanism more time and effort per square inch than any other element of the promotion. It’s time well spent. It’s the net that secures the trout, so it can’t have any holes in it.”
6. Create the order form in conjunction with the people who do your online order processing, telephone sales, white mail and print response as well as your customer service team.
7. Give them the final vote. It must be simple, clear, direct and—if you can possibly imagine it—foolproof. Use the combined talents of your most clever people to write it, but make sure even a fool can understand it.
8. The order form should also sell.
9. But basically it has a particular job to do: It should reprise the essence of the entire sales effort in the reader’s voice. That is, the writer (salesperson) has had his say, and now the prospect (customer) responds in the first person. (“Yes, send me . . . I understand that I will receive. . . “)
9. The order form should contain absolutely nothing new. It should stand on its own feet and crystallize everything that’s gone before it. Its purpose is to speed the action and close the deal.
10. Beware of lawyers and bean counters mucking up your offer and order form with a barrage of disclaimers and footnotes in gray sans serif mouse-type causing your customers to say, “The hell with it!”
11. When asking for credit card information never use a reply postcard. Always include a BRE (pre-paid Business Reply Envelope). Credit card information on the back of a postcard can be stolen and sold all over the world within minutes.
12. Make it easy to respond and order by mail, by phone, by click-thru online or by fax—whichever is most convenient for the customer.
13. Every step of the ordering process must be checked out. For example, dial the 800 phone number in your print and online ads to make sure it’s correct everywhere it appears.
14. People hate waiting for a phone to be answered and/or an automated voice saying, “Your call is important to us. All our representatives are busy with other customers. Please stay on the line... blah, blah, blah." Make sure your phones are answered by a live, trained representative no later than the second ring.
15. If you are running a TV commercial, expect a huge spike in orders at that moment in time. Sign up a back-up inbound telemarketing company to handle the overflow. Always alert all telemarketers to the precise date and time of your schedule so telephone sales reps are standing by to handle the overflow.
16. All your telephone sales reps (TSRs) must be knowledgeable about your product or service and be able to answer all questions. It is imperative to provide customer service (or order intake) personnel with copies of sales material (brochures, print ads, infomercial, etc.), so they know what specific offer/product the caller is talking about—as well as immediate access to actual product samples — so they can answer questions knowledgably.
17. The people who represent you on the phone and online can enhance—or destroy—your reputation. Have “secret shoppers” call your 800-number and or chat lines to test the training of your reps regarding patience, knowledge and tact.
18. When you feature a web address for a reply, do not use your general home page. Instead, set up a special satellite landing page that directly relates to the specific offer.
19. If you supply the general home page, it forces the prospect to rattle around searching for the specific offer and order mechanism. At which point you’ve probably lost the order.
Takeaway to Consider
• Let me share with you a story. By the time he was 18, Curt Strohacker had owned 18 automobiles. In 1978 he invested $500 to form The Eastwood Company, a mail order catalog offering more than 2,000 tools, paints and parts for amateur and professional restorers of beloved antique cars—hundreds of models going back 50 years and more.
In the early years, Strohacker would get 30 orders a day. A decade later he was generating 1000+ orders a day. His inbound telemarketers were wildly overworked. What’s more, his telephone reps became de facto experts and consultants giving advice on every aspect of car restoration and suggesting precisely what was needed. When inbound orders spiked — say as the result of a TV commercial — bells rang throughout the building and knowledgeable executives, warehouse workers and buyers beetled down to the telephones and became TSRs. He had to do something, or customers and prospects would desert like rats and go elsewhere!
The story of Curt Strohacker creating a powerful in-house technically oriented telephone sales and fulfillment operation is fascinating. You’re invited to check it out.
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You Are Invited to Meet Denny Hatch.
At age 15, Denny Hatch—as a lowly apprentice—wrote his first news release for a Connecticut summer theater. To his astonishment it ran verbatim in The Middletown Press. He was instantly hooked on writing. After a two-year stint in the U.S. Army (1958-60), Denny had nine jobs in his first 12 years in business. He was fired from five of them and went on to save two businesses and start three others. One of his businesses—WHO’S MAILING WHAT! newsletter and archive service founded in 1984—revolutionized the science of how to measure the success of competitors’ direct mail. In the past 55 years he has been a book club director, magazine publisher, advertising copywriter/designer, editor, journalist and marketing consultant. He is the author of four published novels and seven books on business and marketing.
CONTACT Denny HatchThe St. James200 West Washington Square, #3007Philadelphia, PA 19106215-644-9526 (Rings on my desk) dennyhatch@yahoo.com
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