“Can you imagine any sales team being motivated to sell more or perfect their art if there is no incentive or bonus for them to deliver more sales?
This is the case with 90%+ of SME Ecommerce Trading Teams I deal with ... They are neither recognised as a sales team or see themselves as a sales team. This has a huge negative impact on Ecommerce Trading Performance to the detriment of business owners.”
It should strike everyone as completely self-evident that ecommerce is not a technology problem — it is a business problem.
Why is that statement self-evident? It is self-evident because successful ecommerce companies are all using different types of ecommerce technology. It is not the technical platform or even the market in which companies operate that define ecommerce success — it is what they do with the technology and the companies’ mind-set that creates success.
Success in Ecommerce
Pretty much everyone agrees that business success means achieving a large turnover and profits. There are not too many businesses that are small and don’t make profits that anyone remembers — right? So how could ecommerce success be anything different?
Success in ecommerce also means achieving a large turnover and profits. Actually defining this objective as the primary goal in ecommerce is the first step that companies need to make.
When the sales goal is defined, then you need to pick a team that can deliver the results. It continues to amaze me that, in 2018, companies are still allowing technical people to dictate strategy and to influence the direction of ecommerce operations! These people have no place in the ecommerce trading pit — their job is to be the technicians that should be instructed by the trading team.
When a company does not have defined sales goals, when it has technical people doing sales jobs (a total recipe for disaster), when it offers no rewards or incentives for their teams hitting targets, when it has no reporting based on sales and cost of sales — how can they expect to reach their online potential?
All successful ecommerce businesses in my view are simply relentless trading machines that are sales-focussed and that incentivise their people to deliver sales results.
Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation in ecommerce is about common sense. It is about setting up an ecommerce structure that is all about sales and the cost of sales. It is about setting up a trading team with a sales mind-set and rewarding them for sales success. It is about motivating and aligning a team to deliver sales and to think in a sales-orientated way.
If you do one thing this quarter to improve your ecommerce outlook — forget technology for once — set up your reporting and staff reward structures based on sales results. This gets your staff thinking about sales first and is a big step in the right direction.
This bonus incentivisation is an investment in your own business success.
