Ann Taylor, the women’s clothing retailer, was looking to experience some revenue uplift from its online channel while decreasing administration costs through an e-commerce system upgrade. Greg Miller and his EasyAsk team, (a year-and-a-half into the sales cycle), were being undermined by a cheaper competitor. From the buyer’s perspective, both companies had similar dynamic search and navigation systems – except one was cheaper. In reality, EasyAsk had a differentiating merchandising and analytics benefit that easily warranted the extra expense.
Greg used a number play to explain how EasyAsk understood Ann Taylor’s business challenges. Greg asked, “What do 10, 5, and 1 have in common?” Ten (10) e-mails currently needed, plus five (5) people to make one (1) change.
For contrast, Greg shared a success story of one of EasyAsk’s customers using another Number Play: 34, 18, .3. Their conversion rate is now up 34%, with an 18% increase in order size, taking only .3 (1/3) person to do the effort.
In the past, we would leave a demo or presentation meeting with some open items. This time, the last thing the CTO said was, “This is great, I don’t think we’ll have any problem implementing.”
Greg concludes, “The difference? This time it was all about them. We had set the bar so high that our competitors were now chasing us.”
The Messaging Feed 