One of the most important things you can do in any business is to properly set up expectations for your clients. It’s especially true when it comes to search engine optimization. Most people outside of the Internet marketing world have no clue as to how the search engines organize their results (hell, even many Internet marketers don’t truly understand SEO).  If you want to keep your clients happy, it’s extremely important to inform your clients of the process of SEO and to explain that the optimization process takes time. My personal rule with my clients is to overestimate  the time I think it will take to start seeing results. It’s always been my golden rule in business.  Underpromise and overdeliver. Why? Most people (in any business) do the EXACT OPPOSITE just to get a sale.  It’s truly refreshing to do business with someone who actually overdelivers on his promises. I’m even happy when they tell me 45 minutes for a table and I get seated in 25 at a restaurant. Now if someone tells me 45 minutes and I’m waiting 1:30, I’m pissed. Same thing when it comes to your clients. You don’t want them pissed from the start or they will probably be all over your ass. Having an “underpromise/overdeliver”  philosophy helps in a few ways:

1. If you can beat your time estimate for results, you look really good with your client. For example if you tell your client it’s going to take 3 months before they start to see sales occur as a result of your SEO work, and they start seeing results in month 2…..they love you.

2. It buys you more time if you aren’t seeing results yet. Let’s say competition is a little tougher than you first anticipated, and you aren’t yet moving up on the SERPS like you thought you would. Overestimating the time you thought it would take to start seeing results has now given you more time to move their site up.

3. Referral business will increase. Once your clients start to see results in a shorter time period than they originally anticipated, they will tell others about you I promise. Good businesses are hard to come by and people realize this so when they find someone that delivers results, they tell their friends about it.

Keep in mind, the most important element in any SEO compaign is not rankings but ROI.  All clients want to know how much business they will get as a result of your SEO campaign and of course that’s always difficult to anticipate. Underpromising and overdelivering also applies to the estimated return that your clients will get. In any business, it’s a rule to live by.

This is part two of How to Sell SEO Services.  In part one we talked about:

1. Targeting the right clients.

2. Finding out who the decision maker is.

3. Setting up the appointment

So really you’ve done the hardest part. Nobody likes setting up appointments. For me, it’s making the sales call that’s the fun part. 

4. Pre-call planning:

Before you go on your call, you need to make sure you do your homework and find out as much information as you possibly can about the person you’re meeting with, their business and of course their website.

5. The appointment:

Dress nicely. This doesn’t mean you have to wear a suit and tie but look professional. Deoderant would be nice don’t you think?. And no one likes talking to someone whose breath is kickin’ like karate. Go to town on some Altoids or gum. So you’re in the lobby waiting for them to come out. Now it’s your time to shine.

A. Meet and thank them for taking the time to meet with you. Make sure you have Internet access for the appointment, you’ll need it. If you don’t have a laptop with Internet then meet them in their office where they have a computer with access to the Internet. MAKE SURE to meet only in a place where you have Internet access.

B. Set the agenda. Why are you there? You’re there to find out more about their company, their business goals, their Internet marketing objectives. After finding out that info you’d like to show them how you can help them achieve those goals and then show them how you’ve helped other businesses to grow company sales.

C. Conduct the Interview. Want to know what the great salespeople do better than anyone else? They listen. They get the other person to talk. In order to get the other person to talk you need to ask good questions that get the other person to “open up”.  Be prepared with plenty of questions. You’ll want to take notes on the call so feel free to write down a bunch of these questions on your note pad prior to the call. Here’s the most important part (and where many sales calls go wrong): Listen when they talk. Sounds stupid….but the truth is most people are too busy thinking about their next question to ask instead of listening to what they have to say. Getting them to open up will also let them feel they their in control. One of the most important questions you can ask is what an average sale or new client is worth to them. For example, if you’re meeting with a law firm, ask how much on average is a new client worth to them. Suppose they say $3,000-5,000 on average, this will be important to know when it comes time to close the sale. Again, make sure to take notes.

D. Show them how you can help them meet their needs. If you were listening, you’ll know what their goals are. Now, show them how you can help them meet those needs. Jump on the Internet (if you’re in their office, ask them to “let you drive”.) You need to be in control. Now jump on the Internet and conduct some searches for the types of searches they want to come up for. Explain why the sites that are ranking for those search terms are ranking on the top of the search engines. This is your chance to show them your expertise on SEO. Now, this is one of the most important parts of the sales call. In order to gain their trust, you need to show them what you’ve done for other clients.  Showcase some searches where your clients are # 1 (or at least on the 1st page) on Google for targeted search terms. Share their success stories and how you’ve helped these other companies to succeed with their Internet marketing plan. If you don’t have any success stories to share you don’t belong there in the first place. If possible, show off some web stats and how people are finding other sites you’ve worked on. This can be pretty damn impactful for clients that have never had web analytics on their sites before. By showing them how you’ve helped others out this should get them excited to work with you.

E. The Close. At this point, if you’ve done a good job of understanding their needs and showing them how you can help them, they will want to know how much your services are. In almost every case for me, I have to set another appointment to go over costs.  I explain that I need to use my keyword research tools, study competition, estimate hours, etc. in order to come up with a price quote.  Don’t leave without setting up another appointment to go over costs. These price quotes are best handled in person. Remember when I said it was important to find out what a sale or a new client is worth? This is where justification of costs come in to place. Take the example of the law firm for example. If you can help them pick up 4 new clients a month (remember their average was $3-5k a month per client) then they should have no problem spending $2-3 a month for a localized SEO campaign.  As a marketer, I’ve always thought that a 5-1 return on my marketing budget was a good number.  In this example, spending $2k-$3k with a goal of $12-20k exceeds that number. Bottom line is if you spell out your costs this way then you have a much greater chance of turning that call into a new client. You should never have to hard sell anyone. If you’ve made a strong case for why they should work for you it should be a natural decision for them to make. With me, it always comes down to budget. There are going to be clients that can’t afford to work with you and that’s ok. Sometimes you just need to walk away in those instances.

 Happy selling. 

Before starting my own SEO company I worked in the corporate world. Being an entrepreneur at heart, I worked in the corporate world only for the training and experience that working for larger companies can provide. I was a highly successful salesperson and had even worked on the side as a sales trainer for small to medium sized businesses. The money was incredible at times (I once received a $200,000+  commission check for one month of work) but no matter how much success I had I didn’t want to work for other people anymore. Nothing beats working for yourself.  Unless you can’t make enough money to pay the bills and your forced to be a man whore  (or just a regular whore…I’m not sexist)  just to make ends meet.  Lucky for me I’ve never had to deal with that.  Sales have always come natural to me. Of course, there are plenty of great SEO’s that don’t need to sell their services because they have a great reputation. I’m sure Aaron, Todd, Rand and other high profile SEO’s can pick and choose their clients without ever having to make a single sales call. The reality is that if you do  good work, you will get plenty of referrals and/or your existing clients will increase their spend with you. I’ve only been in busines for a year and a half and I no longer have to make sales calls because of the amount of referrals I get. If you are in the position that you are looking to grow your business, then like it or not (I know many of you hate the sales thing) you are a sales person. You have to be one at some point if you have your own business. This post is aimed at helping the SEO’s who target small to medium sized businesses.

 1. Target the right clients

Whether in the corporate world, or in the beginning stages of my company, I always carefully select who I’m targeting as a prospective client. Most importantly, they need to have the money to pay for my services. There are many ways to find out which businesses will spend money on advertising. TV advertisers, radio advertisers, Yellow Page advertisers, etc. One example would be to look at your local Yellow Pages and find those companies who do full page ads. Those advertisers may be ripe for the picking considering the use of Yellow Pages has steadily decreased while Internet usage continues to grow. Many Yellow Page advertisers have seen a decline in sales over the past few years.

Also, make sure that you can actually help their business. There’s nothing worse than somebody trying to sell something to someone that doesn’t need it. Ever heard someone referred to as someone that “could sell ice to an eskimo“? I’ve always hated those sales people. DON’T SELL SOMETHING TO SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T NEED YOUR SERVICES. It’s called need based selling. Only sell something if it’s needed by your prospective client. Also, don’t offer SEO services if you can’t do the job. There’s nothing worse than someone who over-promises and under-delivers. There’s enough bad so called “SEO’s” out there that give the good ones a bad name. Or even clueless morons who trash what we do.

2. Find out who the “decision maker” is.

The decision maker is not the receptionist. It’s not an assistant. It’s not the administrator. You want to speak to the owner, president, Director of Marketing,… someone like that. Do research online or just call and find out who makes the marketing decisions. In small companies it’s almost always the owner.

3. Set up the appointment.

 You have a few options here:

A. Stop in
B. Call
C. Email
D. Write a letter

If you stop in: Make sure you bring something in with you. Do something different that other sales people don’t do!  Otherwise your just another sales person and most receptionists or “gate keepers” are trained to dispose of sales people. Drop off a simple web analysis report for them (speak to them in normal human speak, not SEO talk. Most people don’t know what an ALT tag or even what link popularity is). SPEAK TO THEM IN THEIR LANGUAGE!! Or print out some Google searches that show the top 10 results for a term you know they want. Business owners hate seeing their competition ahead of them! If you are just stopping in, don’t expect to see the owner but be prepared if you do.

If you call: In almost every business, the receptionist will answer so be prepared. Write a little script if you have to. Be clear about why you’re calling.  You’re an Internet marketing consultant who works to help small businesses to improve their visibility on the Internet. Their website can’t be found by those consumers looking for (example) “a girls boarding school.” You noticed that their website is missing many of the things that Google requires in order to rank on the 1st page of Google and you’d like to schedule an appointment with Mr. X to show him how you can help their company be found. “Did you know that over 1,000 searches a month are done for people looking for a school like yours?”.

If you email: Make sure you title the email “Name - Meeting Request” (or something similar to get thier attention). Many of these will never be read because of spam blockers and other reasons but use the same basic info from the phone call but with more detail.  Make sure you provide some examples of your work. At the end of the message, ask what time works best for them?

Send a letter: If you do send a letter, again, use the same basic content in the letter as the email. Use a hand written manilla envelope. Not the regular postate sized envelope but the kind that you can stuff an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet without having to fold. They are much more likely to open this than some envelope that looks like everything else they receive that goes straight to trash can. At the end of this message, let them know you will be calling to set up an apointment at X:XX am/pm. Use an irregular time like 9:13am or 3:28pm.  Make sure you call them EXACTLY when you said you would. THIS MAY BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD OF ALL (especially if you’re not good on the phones).

 One of the most important rules in sales is you cannot sell anything to anyone unless that person realizes they have a need. What’s the most important thing to any business? Sales! Sales are the life blood of any organization. There are some businesses that can’t take any more business but those are far and few between. Make sure you make it clear to them how you can help them grow their business. Give examples of other businesses you’ve helped. Success stories are always a plus.

 Follow these steps and this will help you set up the appointment.  On my next post I’ll be talking about what to do on the appointment.