Diary of a DMS Guy

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

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This quote - attributed to Lewis Carrol - is actually a paraphrase of an exchange between Alice and the Cat in "Alice in Wonderland"

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I was having a discussion with a prospective dealer recently, and this phrase jumped into my mind.

We were discussing his web site. Whilst we have our Web Solutions business unit, my primary discussion for the day was actually his Dealer Management System. I had been demonstrating the interface between a web site and our Navigator 360 CRM and noted that he didn't have an "Enquire on this Vehicle" button on his web page.

This lead to him asking a question - "How would you improve our web-site?"

For many, this would be taken as an invitation to start "selling" the virtues of our offering in this area. However, I hope that I'm not one of the many.

For me, it's important that we deliver solutions that fulfil requirements. This is a fundamental part of our sales process - identify what people want, not what we want to sell them!

Questions, Questions, Questions!

I asked a few questions, which I needed the answer to in order to make any recommendations of what we could do with his website.

"Why do you have a website?"

"Who are your visitors ? "

"What do you want them to do?"

It was very clear immediately, that my prospect had never considered these issues.

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Any road....

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This was a perfect example of the "any roads" situation at work. Without an idea of what you want to achieve, any solution will achieve it!

I explained further to help lead....

Well, is your website there to sell products and services directly ?  Or maybe give information so that prospects can decide whether they want to talk to you ?  or gain a contact maybe?

We discussed items such as "customer journeys", "calls to action" and also how a web site is just part of the total customer journey.

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But I didn't offer an answer to his question.

Not because I didn't have an answer. I have many different answers - however, at this stage, it's important that the prospect knows exactly what he wants before I advise what he *needs*.

I continued my journey through the Navigator solution, and I'm sure we will revisit his Web site, once he's had a chance to think about what his needs are.

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This is how we work!
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We know we aren't all things to everybody. We have solutions that *can* solve hundreds of different issues and can benefit different businesses in different ways. If you ever have an introductory meeting with us, don't expect a eulogy of how our products can help you ! Expect a conversation about you, what your business needs and where it is going. Only then can we focus on how and if we can help you .