Just 3 months after the bombings of September 11 I was enlisted into the army.  I didn’t join because of the terrorist attacks (my paperwork was lodged months before) but the gravity of the occasion wasn’t lost on me.

When a fresh recruit first lands at Basic Training the camp staff seem to have nothing better to do than make the lives of recruits hell.  Aside from the yelling and abuse there’s also a raft of practical jokes going around every day.  The first time my platoon went to learn rifle shooting I remember all the rifles had little paper tags stuck to them with a message that read “point end towards enemy.” Suffering under the abuse of the instructors, I’m pretty sure the recruits would have to think pretty carefully before deciding who that enemy was.  But the point is this: your most potent weapon always needs to be pointed towards the enemy.

But this story can be related to the workplace.  Internal politics and sniping just isn’t productive; it’s kind of like shooting your own platoon.  Decided what your weapon is and get your team to create a protective harbor and then defend.  And attack when possible.  Of course internal squabbling isn’ the only thing reducing your company’s productivity.  Think about what you’re doing, what you’re selling, who the enemy is.  Most internet companies are selling something, and more often that not they have some competitor.  Sit down and set yourself some goals.  Are we taking chunks out of our competitors armor?  If not, why not?  Come up with a plan and then re-evaluate after a month.

If you have a good product or service there’s really no excuse for not beating your enemy.  Pointy end towards enemy, fire, check, adjust.

If you break it down to a basic level, we’re in the business of selling things on the internet. It’s not a very poetic mantra and it isn’t really a well-worded mission statement, but it is what it is. Obviously we try very hard to make our customers happy. If our customers are happy they will visit us again, visit us more regularly and maybe even buy more from us. But it’s not all about the money. We strive to have ongoing partner relationships with our customers, and we try to give back as much as we can.

When we officially launch 2Large2Email next month we expect to be able to give our foundation subscribers a pretty respectful “thank you” package. It’s worth it for a long-term relationship. People who are good enough to buy from our Electronic Software Delivery stores (such as ZoneAlarmStore) have the option to go on our about-once-a-month special subscriber offers list which gives away free stuff and discounts each month. Even if these subscribers never give us another dollar, we’re happy to continue sending them the offers as a thank you. But hey, if they decide to buy something else from us then we won’t say no!

Developing an ongoing customer relationship is definitely worthwhile - for the customer and the vendor. It doesn’t have to be expensive but it does have to give the customer a reason to be part of the relationship. Simply receiving bulk emails with crappy offers will soon be considered spam, and the relationship will come to a speedy end.

So many people think they need to re-invent the wheel when it comes to marketing. Always with the next big thing, the bang, the schwizzle, the bling, the blam… the yawn. Sure, there are some pretty exciting new ways of doing things but often people put all this time and effort into fantastic new marketing gimmicks only for them to fail because they’re too complicated, or too stupid.

But I stumbled across a new promotion from Australia’s largest ISP and phone company just now, in a business journal. In a bid to increase its share of the broadband pie, Telstra has copied one of its most successful phone promos and transplanted it straight into the mobile broadband realm. Where customers can get a “free” phone handset if they sign up to a cell plan, they can now get a free laptop with a contracted mobile broadband plan. Uhh, it’s pretty simple!

The customer has to win, of course, when these plans are rolled out, otherwise they won’t succeed. But let’s face it, the concept has worked brilliantly for years with phones so why not laptops? It’s something customers are both familiar and comfortable with, and after 36 months they can trade in and get something new.

I hate to say it, but a big ISP has impressed me (albeit with their pragmatism and common-sense).

I’ve been a salesperson pretty much all of my life. At school I would sell confectionery and drinks to the other kids, earning enough money to supplement my pocket money. Through my college years I worked as a salesperson at my local electrical goods retailer. After graduation my first full-time job was as a software sales representative, and I haven’t really stopped selling since.

Over the years I have used and refined a concept called “The Triplicate of Choice” which is a great way to present pricing options to customers so that the cost of the product doesn’t become an objection which might jeopardize the sale. It’s not a gimmick, or a trick but it does lead the customer to make a decision to pick the product that suits them the best. The problem is, I have no way of replicating this model into the online world because it requires some interaction, and I can’t figure out how to transfer that successfully into the online realm. I’ll detail the model below, and keep working on a way to make it applicable for selling things on the internet.

A word of warning: there’s a lot of generalization that occurs here so bear with me. It’s not an exact science, but it works most of the time. For this example we’ll pretend we’re selling watches, and we have three models:

CP-100 which costs $500, CP-200 at $800 and the deluxe CP-350 which is $1000.

The first thing you have to do is figure out what the customer currently has. I’m just going to summarize the questions here, you can figure out how you want to word them in real life

1) “So Mary, what kind of watch do you currently have?” (determine what she has)

2) “And what do you like most about the Rolex that you have?” (if she likes something, remind her that the model you want to sell her has those points too, if applicable)

3) “Anything you don’t like about the Rolex?” (obviously if your model circumvents or has fixed these issues, mention them)

3a) I almost forgot this bit: “And Mary, the watch is for you, so are you going to be the one making the final decision on the model?” (got to make sure you’re not presenting to the wrong person)

And this is where is gets tricky - you have to know your models and pricing well.

4) Have three models to present which will suit Mary. Start with the model with the least features, then present the medium product and finally the deluxe model.

It doesn’t matter which model your potential customer picks here, it is, afterall, their decision. Let’s just say Mary has picked the CP-100. Invariably Mary will ask how much the CP-100 costs. At this point you have to be sharp and present the options correctly. I say something like “ah, well before I can tell you that Mary, I have to ask a few questions.” Typically the customer will play along, because if you’ve involved them well enough they won’t mind the interaction.

5) Now we know the CP-100 is $500 (as above). Here’s how I present the prices:

* “Mary we get a whole lot of different people inquire about our watches. Many people come in and tell me they’re prepared to spend about $600 on a nice new watch.” (note, $600 is 20% more than my target price)

* “Of course there are some fortunate people who come into the store with a little bit more money and are prepared to spend around the $750 mark on a watch.” (the second price should be 50% more than the target price)

* “And then we get people who are on a limited budget and want a rock-bottom price with no extras and they’re prepared to pay about $500 for a watch.” (this is where you quote your target price)

GENERALLY the customer will choose the middle option - 20% over the target price.

The next bit is quite rewarding because the customer is always happy:

6) “Mary, you mentioned that the model you liked best was the CP-100 and that if you decided to buy a watch you would probably fit into the range of spending approximately $600 on a watch, didn’t you? Well, I’m happy to say that the CP-100 is, in fact, only $500.”

So there you go. That’s the triplicate of choice in qualifying a customer for a price. Closing the sale is different story, but you can see how the steps (if practiced) can lead the customer to make their own decision. And when the customer chooses their own product they are more likely to become emotionally attached and be happy with the sale.

Already people are wondering why we chose the name “Strong Arm Tactics” for our blog. So, I figure we owe an explanation. We’re the little guys. We like to support other little guys, and we’re not exactly huge fans of those massive software companies that roar and beat their chests and drive little companies out of business.

That said, let me tell you a little about our company. Our parent company is called Manaccom, which is a small cap stock listed on the German and Australian stock exchanges. Manaccom has traditionally been a software publisher focused on delivering boxed software to retail outlets. In 2007 Manaccom and another company merged. This other company, Jumbo Corporation, has been in the e-commerce business since before broadband was invented. Currently they do some cool stuff in the online space selling lottery tickets and running a nifty little affiliates program (Jumbo Affiliates) and a cool rewards site (Jumbo Rewards).

Our little division doesn’t actually fit into any of the departments above, but kind of works side-by-side. Our group is nominally called Sellerbyte and we started off with a network of online stores mainly selling software. ZoneAlarmStore is one of our flagship software stores and it incorporates our unique selling point - the shopping cart. Most of our development time has gone into making the shopping cart the easiest to use online payment system around. Go ahead and visit ZoneAlarmStore and go through the motions of buying a software download. Of course you don’t need to actually buy it, just have a look. I’d love your feedback about its ease of use.

So there’s the first part of what Sellerbyte does. The other focus of our business is to build online tools to make the life of small business people easy. Our first product 2Large2Email is billed as the simple way to send large files. No more bounced emails, no more FedEx, no more having to get the tech guys to setup an FTP server (that you can’t use anyway). Just a plain vanilla, even-my-mother-can-use-it way of sending those large files that you really want Mary Jones to have today. It’ll be up and running in July and we’ll be asking for a monthly subscription for people who want to use the product. Although, I should point out that we have a dozen premium accounts to give to people who would like to test it out and answer a few questions about performance and ease of use.

We’ll be releasing other products soon too, all designed to make operating a small business easier, more efficient and sometimes even fun. So stay tuned and drop by every now and again. We’ll be blogging about what’s new on the web, tips about how to run a business efficiently (yep, that’s my background) and cool developer tricks. Nige our Web Chef will comment on the tech stuff, Ben our Web Marketing Guru will write the about-once-a-week article on marketing (when he can drag himself away from his SEOing) and because I really am not a technical person I’ll make observations about business.

Oh yeah, and that brings me back to why we called this space Strong Arm Tactics. It’s basically the antithesis of our business ideology. We’re the little guy working for the little guy, battling against the megatron companies of the world, just trying to eek out our little market niche. Why not help us?