Reasons to implement a corporate forum

For a prospect to move from an enquiry to an order, a conversation is required. In most sales organisations, this conversation occurs on the telephone, or over email.

Although these two mediums are convenient, they have an inherent problem with scalability. No matter how good the staff training is, when using these two mediums, salespeople are limited on the number of sales enquiries they can answer daily.



Offline conversations 

A salesperson can only respond to finite number of email requests and telephone enquiries, before they begin missing opportunities.

In addition, only a handful of customer conversations may yield a sale. So what about the conversations which did not yield a sale, or the conversations which other sales people are repeating to other customers?

Conversations via telephone and email are simply lost. There is no record of the conversation, no way to share the conversation with other customers with the same enquiry - and no way for other sales people to learn from the conversations of others.

Forums are one alternative to scale a conversations. On both email and the telephone, the conversation is with one customer. However, if a salesperson shared the advice in a forum, their investment of time would be leveraged across many prospects, both now and in the future.

More importantly, the salesperson could create a topic, allowing enthusiasts in the community to begin answering their customer's questions. These enthusiasts are not on the payroll, but are glad to help and watch the community grow.

Like a motivated employee, they show signs of taking ownership.

Conversations are integral to the sales cycle. By no means can sales or marketing cease having them. Answering questions and suggesting solutions, is proven to generate sales.

However, it is a medium to reduce cost of sales and reliance on expensive traditional media over time.



Online conversations and forums

In many respects, a forum is like an open source CRM system, where we allow the customers and users to maintain content and their profile data.

1. Timely response. With a forum, a question can be posted 24/7, with the likelihood someone from the community will try to answer it before a salesperson does.


2. Record every conversation. Record, refine, and develop the conversation to improve online sales.


3. Provide answers once. On email, you find yourself writing answers to the same question. Once posted in the forum, you can refer to it again and again. If the issue is large enough, and grows, you can consolidate the content in an article, or host an event.


4. Get immediate feedback. It is easy to start discussion topics around the community, or products for sale. Invite discussions and ideas from the community.


5. Answer fewer sales inquiries. Allow mavens (know-it-alls) from the community to contribute and reduce the workload of sales people


6. Watch trends develop. Be guided by the conversation - as you would if your customers were in a room talking. This can direct articles to be written, products to be ordered, events to be organised.


7. Improve search rankings. A common complaint of many marketers is "No one can find my site". Be found before your competitors.

Introducing a forum is part of business strategy. It is a new sales channel - a bold departure from tradition.



Marketing a forum

Over time, more prospects will discover the forum through search engines, as the volume and frequency of postings increase.

To make it work short term, marketing needs to incentivise existing customers to join the forum. And salespeople day-by-day, hour-by-hour, build traffic by posting answers in the forum, and migrating conversations away from phone and email.

Here are few simple steps to begin building a critical mass of posters.

1. Mass email inviting customers to join the forum, and announcing forum benefits.


2. On voice mail, hold messages, email sign offs, promote the forum as a place to post questions and get quick answers.


3. Use search marketing to draw traffic to a forum, instead of the corporate site.

Which businesses benefit most from a forum?

Despite the bad press forums have received in recent times, a strong business case supports their commercial use. Like all new initiatives, there are bound to be pros and cons.

Businesses which can benefit most from a forum are focusing on online sales. By placing the conversation next to the cash register, marketers are one step closer to making the sale.

From the customer's perspective, the combined e-commerce and forum makes the conversation more valuable. This is because they can make a purchase decision, and immediately act on this decision.

It is no more convenience than a consumer walking into a store, talking for half an hour to a salesperson, and then buying a product.

Strangely, the forums attracting the most online traffic are not tied to businesses selling online. They are run by independent operators, who make money by serving advertising.