A potential customer may spend considerable time researching your business before they ever fill out a form, make a call, or speak to someone from your team.
They are trying to understand what you do, whether you work with businesses like theirs, whether you understand their problem, and whether you are worth a conversation.
Your sales team may never hear most of those questions, but your website does. That makes your website an important part of the sales process, especially when a prospect is still deciding whether your business is worth contacting.
The website can answer the questions sales hears every day
Think about the questions your salespeople answer repeatedly.
What exactly do you do? Who do you work with? How do you approach this problem? What does the process look like? How long does it take? Have you done something similar before?
Your website can answer many of these questions before the first conversation.
Clear service pages, relevant case studies, examples, process explanations, and useful FAQs can give prospects the context they need to understand what you do and whether it fits their situation. It changes the conversation when they eventually speak to someone.
We have had prospects arrive at a first call already familiar with our process, our case studies, and the types of businesses we work with. Those conversations move differently from ones where the prospect is still deciding whether to trust us with 5 minutes of their time. The website made that difference.
The salesperson can spend less time explaining the basics and more time understanding the prospect’s specific situation, discussing their needs and determining whether there is a genuine fit.
A website should help a prospect become more confident
A prospect needs enough information to understand how you think, how you work, and why your experience is relevant to their situation.
The strongest websites answer the questions a good salesperson would naturally answer in an early conversation and provide enough evidence for a prospect to continue exploring the relationship.
That is why I think businesses should view their websites through the eyes of the sales team.
3 questions to reflect on
- Review your main service pages. Could a prospect understand your value before speaking to someone?
- List the questions your sales team answers repeatedly. How many of them does your website answer clearly?
- Find the page a prospect most likely visits before contacting you. Does it answer the question that would make them confident enough to reach out?
Your website does not have to do the salesperson’s job. It should help the salesperson start with a better-informed customer and a more meaningful conversation.
If this raised a question about how your website supports your sales process, we are happy to take a look.
