Consider this!
I was watching a little TV coverage of a recent Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auto Auction and seeing all the bidders at the auction, the super hot and rare cars being sold was very interesting.
These cars were not selling for $10K, many were selling for $50K, $100K, $200K and I even saw some selling for $500K. They even auctioned a vintage plane for over $1 Million Bucks!
There was hundreds of people at the event but another thing interesting to me, a great deal of the winning bidders never even attended the event in person and were still winning the car(s) they wanted! How?
Internet Bidder on BarrettJackson.com .
Barrett Jackson one day decided that this "internet thing" can expand our business and they decided to offer their service "online" so the people that could not attend the auctions in person, could still place bids online. The customers can view detailed inventory with content, pictures and more… while never leaving home.
Online bidders were driving up prices on in-house bidders and vise-versa. Many people that were in-house would win the auction lot but nearly just as many would be sold to a "internet bidder"!
After seeing a lot of cars sell to a "internet bidder" for wide ranges of prices, I couldn’t help but think… What if Barrett Jackson never decided to take their business "online"!
If they didn’t, these cars would be selling for a lot less and the only way somebody could bid was either by phone or in attendance. Simply by allowing online bidding was like adding 4 more rooms full of bidders with money in hand and no fancy chairs were needed to fill them!
Going "online" allows Barrett Jackson an unlimited amount of people world wide to use their service and buy what they are offering with a click of a mouse.
BarrettJackson.com is priceless to the company and just imagine if they kept putting it off to "go online" with their service.
If your business is not "online", I would highly suggest doing so. Be sure to provide your customers an easy way to find you and this is done with a make sense, easy to remember domain name. The internet is one of the most powerful tools known to man kind and not using it, is simply a bad business decision.
Jenny Bender
If it can work for an auto auction, imagine the other applications! Bridging online and offline business offers such amazing potential.