Managers need to learning to ask the right questions

Learn to ask the right questions

by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com

This article was heard on the radio program "The Computer Report," which is broadcast live on WCAP in Lowell, Mass., and is syndicated on WBNW in Boston and WPLM in Plymouth, Mass.

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Do you want to start doing business on the Internet or improve your existing online business? If so, your first task should be to learn enough about Internet business to know what to ask.

Typically you'll go to in-house experts or specialized service companies, tell them what you want, and get exactly what you asked for. But often that turns out to be the beginning, not the end of your troubles. Sooner or later, you discover that what you asked for isn't really what you need or costs far more than an alternative approach that you never would have imagined.

Answers are easy to come by. It's asking the right questions that is hard.

You aren't alone. Internet business has grown so quickly that it has led to the proliferation of specialties. You can turn to different service companies for Internet access, email, Web hosting, Web page design, electronic store services, and a wide variety of Internet marketing specialties, like "search engine optimization." Each might do an excellent job within its own sphere, but the pieces need to make sense working together, and need to be designed with your business goals in mind. You want a Web site that attracts and serves potential customers, rather than one that wins design awards.

To succeed, you don't need to become an expert in everything, but you do need to know enough so you can ask the right questions.

You need to familiarize yourself with a wide range of interrelated opportunities, some of which you may never have heard of, but that could give a boost to your business. That means not just reading a few books, but also getting some hands-on experience so the answers make sense to you, and also so you can properly evaluate the potential costs and benefits.

You don't need to learn about every aspect of ecommerce. You do need an appreciation for factors and opportunities that are interrelated. For instance, Web design is often handled by a different department from marketing or by an outside service company. But design affects whether and how well search engines can index your pages, which can have a major impact on the traffic to your site and the kind of marketing expense it will take to meet your business goals. And while advanced design techniques may require advanced training and artistic/creative talent, everything you need to know to understand search engine requirements is very simple, and can be done by anyone who can type, just using Word. Here marketing managers with a little hands-on experience in creating Web pages and some basic knowledge of how search engines work are in a much better position to make sure their companies' design efforts support business and marketing goals. Similarly, experience in reading and posting comments in newsgroups and email discussion groups can give you a feeling for the immediacy and candor of the dialogue there, what kinds of postings these audiences appreciate and what quickly stirs their wrath. Soon, you should develop an appreciation for the risks and possible benefits of using such unofficial channels to try to spread word about new products and services.

Likewise, managers responsible for ecommerce success should get hands on experience buying and selling stuff from their attics at auction sites, like eBay. There they can gain an appreciation for person-to-person online interaction and the effect of your reputation on customer demand and the prices you can command. There, too, you can learn the power of simple tools -- like email -- for finding out what customers really want and why. You can complete your sales simply and effectively by email, learning that ecommerce is not dependent on automated transaction solutions. And you also can gain an appreciation for time-consuming tasks like record keeping and fulfillment, and give some thought to how such tasks can be simplified and organized. With such experience, you can learn a lot about the personal dynamics of the Internet and the logistical challenges facing any ebusiness. Having a feel for what it takes to conduct business manually can give you a better appreciation for the potential costs of automation in lost customer interraction as well as in dollars spent. And that insight can then lead you to ask good questions about how to maintain customer contact and learn from customers, while serving them well, and filling their unique needs in an automated environment.

Hands-on experience for managers? Even managers at large companies? Yes. Definitely. The Internet business environment differs radicallly and in unexpected ways from the traditional business environment. It involves unexpected risks and opportunities. And to make effective decisions, you need an appreciation of the range of choices and the implications, which can only come from direct experience. You don't need to become an expert, but you do need to know enough to ask the right questions when talking to your experts.

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