Every Company Has A Salesforce
If you sell a product or service, then you have a business sales force. This is everyone from your formal sales force to the receptionist who does the intake for new business. They are employees who get paid – maybe between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. Let’s assume it’s $50,000 for the purpose of the point I want to make.
People need a place to sit and work, and they require certain benefits – sick days, vacation, and health insurance among other things.
Although they work hard, your salespeople are probably on the job for around eight hours a day, and not much on weekends. Sometimes they get the flu. You’ll get about nine months of work from an individual in any given year.
Your website, on the other hand, works for you 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.
It doesn’t get sick and it doesn’t need benefits. As a worst-case scenario, it’s probably out of commission for five days in a year for maintenance and downtime.
Your ” Virtual Employee” is worth $200,000
To get the FTE, or full-time equivalent, from your employees, you’d need three people working for nine months for a total of $150,000 – and another $50,000 for shift work for the other three months.
That’s how we got to 200K.
What is a website supposed to do?
If you’ve ever gotten estimates for building your website, you’ve probably heard everything from $5,000 to $20,000. The variance depends on whether you have an e-commerce site or just a site with basic information.
In the case of an e-commerce site, the sales you make off of your website are a direct sales transaction. Your website made the sale.
In the instance of a site that provides information about your product or service, you want to show how those products and services will provide value to potential customers – and drive your sales that way.
Pictures of your staff or other extraneous content are fine, but your website’s main function should be about generating leads or cash – if your goal is to make money.
If the website is not doing one or both of those things, well then, it is time to get a new website.
