petri parvinen: amsterdam design for conversion

”Digital Handshakes”

E-selling as adaptive personal selling and human touch

© Petri Parvinen, Ph.D.Professor of Sales ManagementAalto School of Economics, Finland

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• Innovation selling• Interaction psychology online

• Channel optimization• Value-based selling

E-selling?

• Interactive but challenged by “the digital”

• Initiated

• Targeted

• Personified and personalized

• Aims at and capable of closing

vs. retail

vs. e-retail

vs. e-marketing

vs. general e-commerce

E-selling as digitalized adaptive sellingH

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Business“Win the deal"

Customer relationship “Deepen the friendship”

Expert sales

Sales based onbeing a buddy

Consultativesales

Directingsales

© Mercuri International© Mercuri International

Social skills > sociability

• Sociability increasing fast!– 21st century people resemble 60s narcissists (Keltikangas-

Järvinen, 2012)

• Sociability > social skills = problem– Aversion towards increasing sociability

• In selling, social skills more important than sociability – Social skills can be taught, sociability is innate– Sociable sellers = individualists, please the customer, irritate

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A wider array of sales influence tactics needs to be available online in the future

”Only for you my friend”

“The one in your hand is the cool one, the one over there on the shelf is the basic one”

“We’re closing for the weekend in 5 minutes, what’s it going to be?”

“Sergei, you know how this works.. Do you read me?”

“We only have this one, since it is useless to carry bad ones”

“I’ll give you 30% off, but when your son grows up, you buy the next bicycle from me then, ok?”

“If you want to catch bass, this is the best lure for these waters. Period. Do you want it?”

“I’m here for you if you make a mistake”

+ The Future of Pricing = “Individualistic”

• Costs θ of the weighted randomized probability matching algorithm are 291.88, giving a profit of 88.2% of Φmax. Costs of batch estimation are 364.37, 85.3% of Φmax.

• WPRM significantly outperforms batch, t = −5.338, p < 0.001.

• Additionally, the costs of WPRM decrease over increasing market size M

batch estimationWRPM

+ B2B Lead automation also uses profiling

http://coremotives.com

Pearson Correlation: –0.194. The correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. Sig. 0.000.

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Relationship Between Number of Members and Generated Sales (Lindholm

et al. 2011)

Number of Members Generated Sales Linear Trend Line

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E-selling as human touch?

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vs.

Implementing human touch: The importance of the spatiotemporal locus

• Immersion = driver of success

• Immediacy the greatest challenge

• Hybrid work descriptions emerging

E.g. Authority endorsement can’t afford not to make the celeb look cool..

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500 000+ hits on Youtube

Delicate balance between executability and content: Case Konebox

• Repliques -

• Voice +

• Face ++

• Common sense +

• Sense of reality +

• Unexpectedness - -

• Data: +970

purchases in 30 days

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Is the solution really avatars..?

5.5.2011(c) Symbioosi Partners Oy

It’s looking pretty hedonic…

+ The human touch of communities can backfire!(4.475 clients over 52 Months) (Lindholm et. al 2011)

Engagement at service level Engagement for individuals

How to attack hedonists online? (Pöyry 2011)

• Design metrics for identifying a hedonist in your clientele• Hedonists need to be targeted – unlike utilitarians• Encourage information sharing gives hedonists away• Rich media• Hedonic browsing experiences created by sales people

(don’t leave it to marketers!)• Prevent ’reveling’ from backfiring

Human touch and hedonic engagement?Case: tailored travel @ matkapaikka.fi

Case poker affiliates: Laziness is the fastest growing trend

Petri Parvinen

petri.parvinen@aalto.fi

+358 50 312 0905