I made a new friend in Robert Griggs today.

Who is he?

He’s the beautiful man to the right here who wrote me:
• a simple note on
• my simple chat that gave me
• a simple way
• to simply make more money.

His simple request? Can I see the stuff before I buy it?

Customer feedback for profit

I’ve written over and over again about the benefits of live chat.

A few Medical Marcom readers have tried it, told me they didn’t see enough traffic, and dropped it. (To be honest, with my newfound love affair with Drip, I haven’t had my chat on as often as before.)

But today I had a real problem.

I sent a message to my 350,000-member Medical Devices Group with an offer: For just $59 this week, you can get the three-hour replay and 108 slides David Amor and Jon Speer presented at my last 10x Medical Device Conference. Next week the price will be $89.

I got some sales (I use Wufoo, for now, and have PayPal as the payment processor) but I also got some emails from would-be customers who couldn’t enter their credit card information.

The form was broken.

Thanos from Greece: “Hello I can not complete the payment for the slides. I can not find the “submit” button. I used two different browsers and still no success. If you could please help me, it would be great.”

Ram from UK: “I am trying to purchase the FDA Guide at $59 but after I put my name in there is a line I cannot see properly and it goes no further. Help required. Thank you.”

This unattended-for-45-minutes error probably cost me $500 in lost profit.

Note: Every single one of these emails came from the “Email me” tab I have on my site. Not one from my “Contact” page. (How is your contact page doing with completed forms?)

With Matt (you’ll meet him) and the oft-mentioned Martyn working their day jobs, and me incapable of fixing, I turned on my live chat to intercept the frustrated customers.

And then I remembered why I love chat so much.

When Alicia wrote me, “Hello, yes, i would like to purchase the presentation and keep getting an error message,” I provided an alternative payment method. She got her materials, I got my $59.

And then Robert showed up. ♥

For all the promotions I’ve ever done and all the chats I’ve ever had, no one ever asked me for a sample of the content before buying.

He wanted to watch a few minutes. So first I thought, how can I just show him a few minutes and not the whole thing? Do I have to make a separate video and upload it? Do I have time for this right now? Where’s Lucia?

None of these questions would help the customer in front of me, but I immediately saw the value in it.

(10:21:42) Joe With whom am I speaking?
(10:22:11) Visitor Hi Joe, my name is Robert Griggs and I reside in the UK
(10:22:29) Joe You know what, Robert, that’s a great idea, a teaser.
(10:22:42) Joe Tell you what.
(10:22:51) Joe We’ll work on the honor system.
(10:23:11) Visitor I am sure it will help promote the presentation
(10:23:17) Joe I’ll give you full access to everything. If you agree it’s as valuable as I’ve promoted, come back here and pay?
(10:23:19) Joe Fair?
(10:24:19) Visitor That will be fair as long as it is easy for me to make payment
(10:24:35) Joe yes, it’s credit card based
(10:24:55) Joe That’s a really really good idea you had. As a marketer, I should have thought of it myself! So again, thank you!!

In that one live chat exchange,
• I satisfied a customer
• I made $59
• I got an idea I used the same day

AND I LIFTED MY CONVERSION RATE BY 63.4%

I actually gasped aloud when I saw the result.

Go, check it out for yourself on my MedicalDevicesGroup.net.

I’ll talk about the Wistia video on that page and the process next week.

Unless something shiny distracts me before then.

Fast Round

• I subscribed to Derek’s video log. He’s brash but he makes a lot of good points. Often. He just committed to publishing a video every single day. Wow.
  

• Shopping for a logo design. I was exploring concepts on the InterWebs when I found “Essential Tips in Logo Design” (not a must-read) and stumbled upon “Hidden meaning words as image calligrams.” It was so clever I had to share it.

Thank you for joining me on The Journey.

See you next week – or sooner – if you choose to reply to this email (or find me on chat!),