23 February 2010
Duncan Lovett from Flair Consultancy considers the common misconception that the Internet won't fit into a business model.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I've heard people say "the internet's not for us". Not just the small business owners, I mean company directors of companies that turn over millions of pounds.

I can understand why a lot of smaller companies may shy away from creating a website. But the directors mentioned above are heads of distribution companies.

The problem is that many people fail to realise that the web is actually another revenue stream to harness, even if they just use it to focus on their existing customers.

Four years ago I finally convinced the last PLC I worked for to develop their website into a full B2B ecommerce site, to push to their top 500 customers. They reluctantly agreed to put my resources into the development of that site. Among the objections I had to combat were statements such as “our customers won’t want to order online” and “our reps won’t like this”.

It took a further year of waiting for the site to be approved and go live. Yet, even with the reluctance, the company went from doing a meager £70 a week through their original online catalogue to pushing 20% of their turnover through the website.

They soon moved the next 500 highest value customers over to the resource. Now, every account holder has access to the online ordering facility.

This suddenly changes the way the company works. All these orders that were originally being taken by reps are being placed over the internet. That frees up the majority of the sales staff to now concentrate on proactively bringing in new business.

What about the impact on their customers? Surprisingly to the distribution company, not one out of the 1000 existing customers that were initially moved onto the online ordering system complained. The general consensus was more of a relief that they didn’t have to take 30 minutes out of their day to sit down with a rep to place a regular order.

So, if you think that the Internet isn’t for you and your company, think again. It’s not a case of you may be missing an opportunity, you ARE missing an opportunity. If you sell a product, you should take advantage of the internet as another revenue stream.