ICOM Marine Radios and Nothing but ICOM Marine Radios from ICOM Marine
A communications, sales executive believes that face-to-face, direct sales is no longer a viable means to generate business. Opening a Yahoo storefront that offers ICOM VHF marine radios and accessories, he now plies his trade taking advantage of the old and new. His company, ICOMMARINE offers ICOM marine radios and nothing but ICOM marine radios: VHF marine radios, SSB marine radios, as well as Shakespeare antennas, mounts, and accessories.
Fair Oaks, CA (PRWEB) October 21, 2004-- It’s an all too familiar story. A 50
year old communications industry, sales executive spends two-thirds of his life
shlepping products from a mental suitcase filled with tired old jokes and a fist
full of platitudes only to wake up one morning to discover that his greatest
challenges these days have little to do with dealing with
rejection.
“You know, it used to be that success
in the business world was pretty much defined by the ability of individual sales
rep to not only make face-to-face contact but to overcome objections. That
attitude continued to prevail in the world of communications systems up until
ten years ago,” Chuck Costa, Critical Mass Enterprises’ CEO, said in a recent
interview.
Costa has seen that long standing, direct sales paradigm
deteriorate in a single generation. “With the advent and the rapidly growing
popularity of the internet, the retail sales process has become increasingly
‘dehumanized’,” he said. “Chief executives don’t fill their calendars these days
with meetings with sales reps because they can instruct an underling to do most
of the research and that is readily available on line.”
The paradigm
shift had been starring him in the face for years. “I finally got the big
picture about five years ago when, sitting in an airport lounge waiting to catch
a late night flight back home, it dawned on me why my company had undergone so
many re-organizations, territorial changes, adjustments to compensation plans,
and changes in management,” he mused.
“The company I worked for then
continues to be a state of denial. Face-to-face sales are a thing of the past
and no manner of reorganization is every going to change that,” he said.
Internalizing this slow but inevitable paradigm shift, Costa launched http://icommarine.com/
[ICOMMARINE.COM], an internet specialty store that caters to the communications
needs of casual boaters, fisherman, and serious sailors. “I did a lot of
research before I joined the world of e-commerce,” he said, “and one of the
things that I discovered is that while most on-line consumers use the net to
shop various providers, when it comes to the actual purchase, given a choice
most consumers still prefer to talk with a human being before they commit to a
major expenditure.”
This apparently is what is driving icommarine.com’s
early success. “Putting together a storefront is relatively easy with Yahoo’s
Merchant Solutions products, but coming from the world of direct sales, I had
difficulty just sitting on my hands waiting for things to happen,” Costa said..
This impatience led him to ply his considerable skills on the phone,
relying on his well established connections in the communications industry to
drive traffic to his company’s on-line storefront. “While we get a lot of
business from consumers visiting our on-line storefront, the bulk of my business
comes from direct telemarketing,” he said, “so I have been able to enjoy the
best of both the old and new worlds.”
Using Yahoo’s Merchant Solutions
products, Costa built a website which showcases nearly all of http://icommarine.com/icvhffimora.html [ICOM’s VHF fixed
mount], http://icommarine.com/icssbmara.html [SSB side band], and http://icommarine.com/icvhfhamara.html [handheld marine
radios]. In addition, the company carries a comprehensive line of http://icommarine.com/maraac.html [ICOM accessories] including
http://icommarine.com/shmaan.html [Shakespeare marine
antennas] and http://icommarine.com/antennamounts.html [mounts].
Costa decided to specialize in the sale and service ICOM marine radios
and for good reason. “We wanted to create a site that offered a wide selection
of radios from a well respected manufacturer and chose ICOM because of their
reputation for quality, durability and cutting edge technological design,” he
said.
Specialization has an added advantage. “Too many sites have such a
wide array of products that it not only makes internet shopping experience
frustrating, it’s next to impossible to keep sufficient stock to meet the needs
of our clients,” he continued. “We focus on radios, not fishfinders, chart
plotters, or fishing poles and lures. Just radios, because that’s not only what
we know best, we can offer immediate delivery.”
Asked if he had any
regrets about leaving the traditional sales industry, Costa was quick to
respond. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
ICOMMARINE.COM, a division of
Critical Mass Enterprises, is located in Fair Oaks, California. He can be
contacted at 800-892-9429.
The author, Ron Scott, is a free lance writer
whose occasional submissions cover a wide variety of subjects that range from
his favorite http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/8/prweb149888.htm
[hamburger recipe] to an http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141305.htm [American
sucess story].
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/10/prweb170270.htm