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Jay-Paul Thibault - 11 years of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plus 7 years of Pay Per Click Marketing PPC
Jay-Paul Thibault started a successful dot-com in the late 90's, having always been attracted to sales and the art of selling. His first business had to do with sales, while in college he worked for MBNA selling credit cards and was continually at the top of his sales team while working there.
He has developed his skills through a combination of learning how to run a business and work with the customer by his dad, and enriched his sales knowledge with all of the courses he has taken having to do with teamwork, leadership and perseverance. From the beginning his attitude was one of the customer's needs always came first. He knew that one of the most important things to have is the art of listening, that it is an art because of the effort and practice that goes into it as well as how rare it is when you find a sales person that is able to do it efficiently.
His business originated by a chance meeting in 1997 at Williams-Sonoma in Atlanta. While working there, he worked there part time out of college so he could get the discount; he met his future business partner. They spoke of the internet, its potential and why it was going to be such a great opportunity in the coming years.
In the fall of '98 they founded a company called Web Marketing Ventures (WMV) and began to develop a business plan. The core plan they came up with was simple: The company would focus on a low transaction quantity with a high average transaction. The site would use extensive photographs of the products (this was significant at the time because most culinary retailers were not using photos). When a line was carried the entire line would be offered (A variation of Long Tail Methodology six years before the term was first coined). All items on the website would be kept in stock. There are many more but he said we needed to stop here.
So, these rules were laid out and through the years they made small modifications to the model but never deviated from it in a drastic manner. Because it was just the two of them and the initial inventory consisted of a pallets worth of cookware Jay-Paul felt that the company needed to project that it was much larger. This was done with a few quick fixes. WMV would use a toll-free number (not yet being done on the web, most companies at the time did not even have a phone listed). WMV would have phone coverage 24/7. WMV would offer free shipping on all orders no matter the price (this too was not yet being done). And they would get the product shipped out quickly; if this was not possible then the customer would be contacted within 24 hours with an ETA.
These four policies were all easily doable except for the 24/7 phone coverage. Jay-Paul Thibault took this challenge on by taking the calls out of his home (the business grew in the basement for nine months before the inventory became too large and the neighbors began to look at him strangely when 18-wheelers pulled up to his house with pallets of cookware). Whenever the phone rang Jay-Paul was within two rings of the phone and usually just a few steps from the computer. While driving he forwarded the toll-free number to his cell and came up for a reason as to why he could not take an order at that time. This went on for the first few years of the business. Although several employees had been hired it was still Jay-Paul's choice to forward the calls every night and take care of the customer service and additional development in the off hours.
The warehouse was one of the most unglamorous, non-air-conditioned (in Atlanta this is saying something), roof leaking, mosquito infested, but inexpensive place available for the first 2 years after moving the operation out of his house. For the first 14 months Jay-Paul and his partner went without a paycheck; all of the profit was reinvested and more inventory was purchased. By the third year the operation had moved to a 9,000 square foot warehouse (with air conditioning!), had 10 full time employees, and 100's of thousands of dollars in-house inventory all from the reinvestment of those first months. By the third year WMV had grown to become one of the top ten All-Clad dealers in the USA, larger then Amazon (in All-Clad) and larger then many of the department stores. While Jay-Paul had been a stock boy in 1997 he was now having dinner with Chuck Williams and Emeril Lagasse as a peer just a few years later.
The story goes on but that is all there is until the movie comes out :-)
He just wants you to remember that just a few simple rules of sales were responsible for his success: search engine optimization, customer service, always being available for the customer, offering a competitive edge over the competition and just a few others that he won't reveal on a public website :-)
He knows that he is able to apply these concepts to any product or service he sells and be successful at it.
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