Live long and prosper are the wishes of every business owner who desires to continue on the road of entrepreneurship. To the Trekie that salutation brings along its own set of memories that mix the days past alongside the limitless possibilities of a tech flourishing future.
I found myself recently thinking of the past and how it has affected our future and how we do business. Life and business have totally changed and are constantly evolving and catching up to the impossible. That iPad we use today was similarly imagined and used in Star Trek: the Next Generation TV series in 1987. It’s truly amazing to see how far we have come in 30 years and that the development speed of inventions is increasing. We have gone from a big chunky car phone with its own battery backpack to a watch that is more powerful & intuitive than many desktop computers in just 20 years. Remember that Star Trek replicator that would materialize your desired item in front of you instantly? Today we call this a 3D printer, which can print a created object right from your computer. World health organizations are already experimenting on developing organs that will be printed or materialized from these printers. The door has already swung wide open for new industries and new types of services that businesses will be able to tap into. Our world is now becoming our fictional future.
As the world changes we need to grab a hold of these changes. To live long and prosper in business means that we need to evolve our thinking and gravitate towards future concepts. Our online presence is going to be more popular and this will just continue to increase. Our fridges, phones, watches, TV’s, vehicles, books, thermostats and smoke detectors are all connecting us online. We are interacting with each other more frequently online versus in person. In business, we need to analyze our online presence and ask ourselves, are we just being visible or are we actually connecting?
Many of us are still caught in the past. Our websites, social media accounts, and other platforms are basically just a brochure of what we offer. We need to drastically change and reinvent our sales process. Retail consumers want less personal interaction over the phone and in person. They are more educated and want all the facts presented and many of them want their own custom shopping experiences available at their fingers 24/7.
We need to be capturing our leads online and investing back into our online presence. Many of us used to spend thousands a month on phone book advertising trying to be the biggest ad. Our consumers are finding us online now. We need to transfer that budget back into our website and other platforms; pushing up our ranking on Google and other search engines, allowing us to be found and leads to flow in.
The once sacred retail mall is also feeling the push to online sales and less in store retail environments. Malls used to be a great place to chill for teens that spend 30+ billion a year in North America. Now these teens are hanging out online. Stores like American Eagle, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Aéropostale are not attracting the same crowds as they once did. Aéropostale is projected to close up to 175 of its namesake shops plus 125 of its kids’ stores in malls. American Eagle is expected to close up to 150 stores over the next three years. People are still shopping and buying just in a different way. While malls stumble, mobile shopping is expected to grow 800% through 2015.
It’s vital for our website to become our biggest sales team member, not a just a tool that helps our physical salespeople. It can no longer be a stagnant company bio, it needs to be changing, captivating, powerful and most of all ready to accept a sale. If a consumer is visiting our website to find out about us, why wouldn’t they want the opportunity to buy right then? It would not make logical sense for us to ask them to come back another day to purchase. We need to put aside our fear of e-commerce and allow our customers to buy whenever they want. It’s time for us to really think outside this box we have lived in and actually create a limitless environment that will expand our reach and offer long-term possibilities. Who says a plumber can’t sell his services and products online, or a why a landscaper can’t offer custom maintenance packages that are sold electronically. A senior looking for a handyman could hire a contractor that would offer banks of hours to be purchased through an app on a mobile device. Why can’t you offer your services online and begin to reach across the borders of local market place. Many consumers may not live near you but they may buy for someone near you. The localized shopping experience is rapidly becoming extinct, our competition is not just the guy who set up shop beside us, it’s also the guy who lives across the globe and is shipping to our clients for free, or has formed a profit sharing partnership with our neighbour.
We should be using our websites every hour of the day, following up with leads, taking orders, producing new content, developing resources, watching metrics, and setting goals. What we have devoted into our physical business needs to be transferred into our online business. Training, advertising, visual appeal, uniqueness, accessibility, atmosphere, branding, intuitiveness, and culture all need to be present in our online identity. We will never live long and prosper until our virtual business has become our actual business.