With online sales hitting a record £320 million this week the importance of the Web as a sales channel was starkly underlined. Yet many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fail to grasp how to sell online, potentially risking their competitiveness, according to one prominent sales trainer.

Sean McPheat is the founder and managing director of Warwickshire-based MTD Sales Training, which employs 30 sales trainers nationwide and has delivered training to more than 650 companies and 10,000 staff in its six-year history. NMK spoke to Sean for his advice to businesses looking to enhance the effectiveness of their websites to increase sales.

Which industries do you think have the best and worst sales techniques online and why?

In my opinion 90 per cent of the sites out there are not set up to sell. They are either designed by web designers or are designed to look good when the objective should be to sell. A company website should be designed by marketers and sales people and the designers should carry out the work.

What are the key hurdles SMEs need to overcome when approaching the Internet?

Having a clear strategy as to what role they want the Internet to play. They get overwhelmed with all of the information out there and hence they do nothing or very little. Another big challenge is the best way to generate targeted traffic to their website. 

SMEs need to think about what they want their visitors to do when they come to their website. What is the most wanted response? And then design the site around that.

One issue marketing managers face is which technique is best for them – blogging, behavioural targeting, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) and so forth – how do you advise companies as to what’s best for them?

It depends on what products and services you offer but I would start with Google Adwords. With this you can put a couple of hundred pounds into driving some traffic to your website by bidding on relevant keywords and then analyse where the traffic is going using Google Analytics, then refine your site and modify it. Long term, you should have a strategy for all for all of the techniques. With Adwords you can get instant traffic and you can turn it on and off like a tap. You’ll get targeted traffic and it is the easiest way to determine how well you have set up the site.

You need to be willing to test and refine all of the time. It’s the only way to win on the Internet.

What’s the most impactful way to market online overall?

It’s to have an overall strategy. Use pay-per-click, blogging, social media, SEO, have numerous ways to bring in traffic. Nothing trumps SEO. I’ve got several number one rankings in Google and Yahoo for a lot of keywords and it generates thousands of hits for my sites

What advice do you give clients around using new and social media as a route to market? How useful have you found it yourself?

Social media should be part of your marketing mix. It’s not the answer but it is part of the answer. You should start to network online via social media sites and build up a contact database. But you must go to these sites to give and not just to take. It’s all about helping each other. If you can provide real value then your reputation will soon spread and you’ll get more visitors from these connections.