Ace Your Next Sales Pitch Webinar

Webinar Transcript

[Downloadable versions of this transcript, the presentation deck, and other materials will be available in the Dashboard Resource Center]

Bernard:

Hello, and welcome back to the Boost Your Business series with SEOReseller. For this webinar, we’re doing Ace Your Next Sales Pitch. 

Again, I’m Bernard San Juan. I’m the handsome guy on the left, and Will is with me today.

{slide: Meet Our Panelists}

So Will has been our business developer for three years, and I’ll let him do his intro.

William:

Alright, hi guys. Yeah, three years with SEOReseller, but I’ve been working for about eight years in the web industry, helping people grow their businesses as well. So, we look forward to teaching you all about how to make your sales pitch.

Bernard:

It’s very timely because we recently did our own sales workshop. Before I jump into the meat of this conversation, I wanted to start by saying everyone is free to ask questions at any point during the webinar. Before I go into the webinar topics, I will do two shameless plugs. 

Believe me – you’ll love to see these.

{slide: Recent Dashboard Feature}

So the first one is I’d like to remind everybody that we constantly update the content in our resource center. These are our brandable documents, client management materials, sales materials, sample contracts, and SLAs. 

We strongly recommend that you go in there and review them constantly, plus these materials can be used to train your in-house staff as well, and if you don’t have a lot of subject matter knowledge, this is the best place to learn them.

{slide: Coming this month}

The next one, which is something I’m excited about, is our mockup builder and our proposal creator. So, right after this webinar, we’re launching this feature in your Dashboard. 

The mockup builder allows you to design a website from pre-built templates that we’ve built into the system. They’re classified by themes and built from thousands of premium web designs. 

It allows you to consider whatever your client told you they wanted to see on their site and design it. You don’t need professional help. It’s drag and drop. What you see is what you get, and it’s awesome. 

Once you’ve made the mockup, you can integrate it into a proposal creator. The proposal creator integrates an SLA, a contract, an intake form, and a mockup presentation all in one go.  You can do all of this in a matter of minutes. Easy peasy 

Now one of the best parts of this is that we built it specifically for our Local Web Design projects, and that’s the product that we’re selling at $499

{slide: Discussion Outline}

So on this webinar, we want to empower you with tools, tips and techniques, that’ll help you pitch confidently and effectively.

We want to talk to you about prepping for the pitch, which we call Laying the Groundwork. Laying the groundwork involves overcoming the reality of smallness by thinking and looking big. Tools for you to create desire, and then at the end of this session, we will go through a QA session.

{slide: Lay The Groundwork}

Alright, so let’s talk about Laying the Groundwork.

William:

And laying the groundwork is all about being prepared.

{slide: Things to know by heart}

Preparation is key when you’re dealing with your clients, and if you’re not prepared for it or you haven’t done your research, your client will.

Bernard:

So I agree. Google is a powerful tool. Google is your oracle. It’s also their oracle – if you haven’t Googled them, they’ve Googled you. But more important than that, if you have not done your research, your competitors have. 

So, here’s an easy tip for you to walk into that sales pitch confidently. You have to walk in there feeling like an expert, and being an expert is easier than you think. For you to be able to walk in there with some amount of expertise, know your little bits and bytes of data. The ones that you know by heart. 

Here’s William to give you an example.

William:

So 91% of your traffic goes to page one of Google, and that’s on the SERPs. Then, 29% of the clicks were in the first position.

Bernard:

There’s more to it than that. Some of the other bits and bytes of data that we like to tell people to remember is 74% of click-through is on results 1 to 10, 23% of people will click SEM PPC ads and only 3 out of 100 people will go past page 10. 

Here’s a great bit of data that I think you all should know by heart. Did you know 28 and a half million small businesses exist in the United States alone? 60% of those businesses don’t have websites. 

That’s roughly about 17 or 18 million opportunities for you. 41% of them openly say that they plan to build a site, and 28% already have their domains.

Now here’s the funny thing. Even though Godaddy commissioned Redshift Research to execute this, this research is in the US, in the US market. Did you know that this is also true, almost globally? That 60% of all small businesses globally don’t have websites. 

This is a great piece of information for you to know off the top of your head all the time and it creates an instant expertise image for you.

{slide: Think Big, Look Big}

Now, let’s talk about you looking big. You overcoming the reality of smallness. Now you guys remember our conversation about partner 1, partner 2 and partner 3, right? 

These are the clients that we helped grow into enormous recurring monthly revenues and they all started out as one-man shows. 

They’re like you guys, everybody that’s listening to this webinar. Some of you are freelancers or are working day jobs and moonlighting, or you’re thinking about setting up your own boutique agency. This is you guys. They were you guys two or three years ago. 

They all started out as one-man shows. Now one of the things that helped them overcome the reality of smallness is that all three partners used the Dashboard religiously. 

They educated their clients on how to use the Dashboard, how to be dependent on it, and how to access it from a mobile phone to a desktop they bookmarked. Everything. 

So, with them, the Dashboard helped them scale up because they could manage their projects from there, generate their proposals and so on. So, here’s why you use the Dashboard.

{slide: Think Big, Look Big}

So the Dashboard helps you create a great impression.

William:

An impression is really what’s key here. It comes off at the start, and the best way to do that is by remembering that’s what we’re here for. You know, we have proprietary technology. We’re allowing you to be able to show your results to them. 

We also have a methodology that works and that other clients can attest to. Now you can also share the resources to handle your campaign. That’s all that’s pretty much all the files we have in the resource center.

Bernard:

One of the biggest challenges you guys will have to overcome is that a lot of you will start out like our Powerhouse Agencies as one-man shows and nobody wants to come across as you know, I’m a freelancer, I’m a one-man show. Nobody wants to come off as that. 

Everybody wants to come off as big. Because they know you’re not flying by night, you’ve got a reputation and a proven methodology.

So the Dashboard makes you look like you have invested in proprietary technology. It shows them that you were invested in this industry. More than that, you can claim that you got a methodology that other clients can attest to. 

If you guys need help. Inside our methodology explainer are end-client testimonials on how the methodology worked for them. Then, of course, you have the resources to handle their campaign.

{slide: Think Big, Look Big}

So, just to give you guys an illustration of how the image of largeness helps you overcome the reality of smallness, here’s a story. 

In 2011, we ran a $200 remarketing campaign. People needed to learn what remarketing was. Nobody. Nobody knew that ads could algorithmically follow you based on your preference. 

When we ran the remarketing campaign our ads started appearing to certain users everywhere. 

These people, these prospects, these leads thought we spent millions. It didn’t matter that we spent $200 on a remarketing campaign. In their minds, since we were everywhere, we must’ve spent millions on that campaign. If we were spending that much, we must’ve been big. 

The result was that the interest to partner with SEOReseller increased by 8 to 10 that month. It was amazing. This is similar to what the Dashboard can do for you. It can look. It can make you look like an established, invested player.

{slide: Leverage the technology}

William:

As we mentioned earlier. It’s all about leveraging and leaning on technology. We could have been giving you tips on how to work with what you’ve got. But that’s really why we’re here. 

We want to help, and even if it’s your first time, don’t worry about it because that’s exactly what we want to show you. 

The first thing your end-client gets to see and what you should propose is the White Label Dashboard. It helps you to create that good impression and also allows you to highlight some capabilities they’re willing to fill out moving forward. 

Set up your White Label Dashboard. You can upload your company logo, you can set your color scheme, can customize the link that the clients use, and then you can put that within the White Label Dashboard. Configure your subdomain Dashboard and then add your White Label Dashboard title.

Bernard:

Now, once you’ve done that, that’s only half the battle. Remember that once you set up your White Label Dashboard, you still have to show the client Dashboard what they’re going to see.

{slide: Leverage the technology}

This is how you access the demo site, and remember, once you set up the White Label Dashboard, you’ve got your demo account live. 

When you go to access hub, log in as [email protected] with the password ‘demo.’ You’ll see a campaign that looks as if it were live. It’s got rankings, traffic and data. It allows you to show them exactly what the experience with you will be like.

We’ll discuss this moving forward because you have to help them imagine what their future success with you will be like. 

So the Dashboard allows you to do that. It allows you to walk them through a demo account that shows them vividly what kind of experience they’ll have with you.

{slide: Use the methodology}

Now, returning to last month’s webinar. We always said that you could lean on us for the methodology. Lean on us for the technology. We try our best to get you guys as educated as we can on how our methodology works. 

Now, there’s one reason why we’re still here and why we’re a strong player in the industry. The methodology works. We rank our campaigns. We rank our clients. We rank the end clients. Everybody that works with us. 

We will lose sleep if our campaigns refuse to perform. So to attest to this, we’ve put in some white label, you know, we protect the identity of the customers and our partner agencies. We put some testimonials inside our methodology explainers, which you guys can use.

So it’s important that you understand how the methodology works. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Lean on us for the methodology. But take our word for it when we say that we found a formula that works by doing this hundreds and hundreds of times each month.

{slide: You have an entire team to back you up}

William:

Not only that, but what comes with the methodology is, its team – an entire team that’s here to help you. Everybody here, at some point, has learned SEO, Web Design, and everything about the digital marketing spectrum. 

Once new clients come in, they can understand what we’ve gone through and the research we put in every month. 

What we want to do is share that knowledge and we have the team to help you do that. So when we say we have about 130 -140 people ready to help you, that’s the same thing and the very same thing you can say to your clients as well. That’s your team. 

Bernard:

Previously on Boost Your Business, we told you that we flew those Powerhouse Agencies partners over to the Philippines, and we did. Every time they walk into the office, they’re floored at how large it is. 

When it started it was, more or less, five campaigns. A few months later, they’re probably running around 30 – 50 projects with us on any given month. It’s hard to imagine how much intricate work and how many people have to collaborate to make those projects successful. 

Whenever clients walk into the office, they’re floored. This is where they appreciate all the work that goes into making these projects successful.

Remember, even though you’re starting, even though you’re a one-man show and you have to face the reality of smallness, you have a team of 131 digital marketing professionals backing you up. You’re not alone. You have this whole team. We work for you at SEOReseller.

{slide: Get to know your prospects}

So, let’s talk about qualifying. This is a very important phase of the sales process.

William:

As we were saying earlier. It’s all about the prep. If you’re not researching your clients, your competitors are. 

Let’s say you’ve interacted for the first time with your client. If you didn’t do your research, they probably researched you already, which doesn’t make you look good. So you got to show genuine interest as well by understanding their problems. 

Now, once you can provide the data and present to them, what happens next is that you have to influence them to talk at least 50% of the time. That shows you have control of the conversation.

Bernard:

Now, at the risk of being inappropriate, I always like to compare. Whenever I do sales training, I compare selling to dating because they are very similar. It’s about you getting to know someone, and that’s precisely what dating is. 

You always prepare for a date. More than that, when you’re on the actual date, you allow whoever you’re with to take at least half the bandwidth. 

The same is true when pitching. You don’t learn anything when your mouth is open. You learn something when you’re listening. Make sure that at least half the time, you’re asking questions. That pitch is about you unearthing business requirements, marketing needs, and business goals. This is what you want to find out.

Now, you want to run an audit inside the system because the audit is designed to keep the conversation focused on the client. 

Remember you’ll have to have 45 minutes to 60 minutes max inside the sales pitch. Make sure you make the most of it and use the time wisely by focusing on your prospect’s business. Their marketing and their goals.

{slide: Sample Questions to Ask}

Here are a couple of sample questions.

Will, what do guys ask our partners?

William:

Well, here’s a few of them that we’ve collected, and then it’s supposed to lead to two stronger questions, but you can’t get to the last two if you have not been able to ask the rest of these. 

The first thing we ask is “what kind of business and what services do you offer your clients?”

So are you a B2B, or are you a B2C? Are you also in the services sector? What are the three major problems that you’re experiencing in your business? What are the areas you’d like to see improvement within your business? What were the things that you’ve encountered that your business was suffering from that you’ve encountered? 

Now, next to that, we ask them, “do you know what you’ve been experiencing?” Have you guys figured out a way to fix it? Do you have any solutions? Do you have an in-house expert advising you on any of that? 

Once you’ve got all those questions out of the way, you can ask them: Do you have a time frame to see how long it will take to get these all worked out? If yes, how much will it take for that to happen?

Bernard:

One of the things I want to remind you guys is that all the questions are not made equal. Some questions allow you to zero in on a perfect prospect. For us, these are three things. 

Have they done it before? 

Did they have a previous provider? 

Do they have a time frame, and do they have a working budget? 

A positive answer to these three questions gives us a stronger drive to close those potential prospects because they have an existing need. 

You know that you’re offering a service that works, and you know that you’re offering a transparent service. You should do whatever it takes to close that sale. 

If their needs exist, you will do that lead or prospect a disservice by not closing them to the best of your ability.

{slide: Create Desire}

William:

The next step is creating desire. 

Now, it’s all about telling a story, and if you tell the story right, everybody will understand the moral or at least what lesson you’re trying to tell. So you got to help them visualize their future success with you. 

The more vivid, the clearer it is, the vision, the more likely you’re going to close.

Bernard:

Agreed, and this is why we ask you guys to make sure that you set up your Dashboard like our three successful Powerhouse Agency partners because they could walk somebody through a demo account and show them exactly the kind of experience they would have. 

Now, when it comes to creating desire, it’s all about you breaking the stranger’s barrier. You trying to be a friend, and you make an emotional connection.

{slide: Use the Audit}

You don’t necessarily need to maven your way through the pitch to win the sale. So, get to know your clients by knowing their business ahead of time. This is where the Dashboard can help you. 

Right in the middle of your Dashboard is a field where you can run an audit. Typing the URL and pressing run allows you to create an automated report. 

It takes a minute for you to generate this; what it does for you is instant research. There’s a right way to use the audit and a wrong way. 

So, here’s a pro tip. In that 45 – 60 minutes, disclose just enough information to pique their interest. So I’ll repeat that. Disclose just enough information for you to pique their interest. 

The audit’s goal is not for you to run a conversation that defines each. This is what’s PageRank, what malware is, here’s your IP address, what Moz-rank is, and what page authority is. 

No, all it’s there for is for you to create interest, encourage them to ask more questions, and then go to you for more frequent communication so you can address their questions. 

It also keeps you honest by focusing the conversation of that pitch entirely on them. So, the point is to keep the conversation about them and not you.

{slide: Closing Rate}

So, to prove our point and illustrate our point, we pulled up a couple of statistics and personally. I found these statistics very surprising. These are February performances for some of our partners. 

These statistics are not necessarily from the partners we discussed in the previous webinar. These are three partners, and two religiously use the automated audit. But partner three has in-house experts that run their manual in-depth audits. 

So, let’s go to partner one. Partner one created sixty proposals from their Dashboard and they engaged 21 new clients. They enrolled 21 new accounts with us this month. That gives them a 35% 30-day close rate.

Now, the reason I’m saying the 30-day close rate takes time, it takes a lot of consideration, and not everybody knows what it is. Remember 60% of small businesses don’t even own websites. So their much, even less going to know about what SEO is. 

So, it takes 30 – 90 days for you to close a prospect. But partner one running 60 proposals, added 21 new campaigns to his portfolio. Giving him a 35% 30-day close rate. That’s tremendous. I didn’t even expect that data when I ran it.

Now partner 2, same time period, February last month, ran 24 proposals through the system and added 6 of those clients into his portfolio this month, giving them a 25% 30-day close rate. 

Also, very impressive because some of those 24 are still very likely to close at some point during the next 60 to 90 days.

Now let’s talk about partner 3 in contrast. Partner 3 created 24 proposals. They created 24 proposals in-house using their own experts and the reason we know the number of proposals they do is because we cross-check their proposals. 

One of the many good things about partnering with agencies is that you’re open to discussing your methodologies. We teach our partners very well to not over-promise something that our methodology cannot deliver. So we see every proposal that’s done. 

Having generated 24 proposals, they added 2 clients to their portfolio, giving them only an 8.5 30-day close rate.

Now, there’s a scientific reason behind this, and this is what we like to call the Candy Store analogy. You guys probably heard it via the term analysis paralysis. When you give someone too much information, you drown them in information. This is not the purpose of the audit. 

The purpose of the audit is to pique their curiosity, encourage them to ask questions down the line, and then start more conversations with you. Whether through a 30, 60, 90-day close. That’s all it’s meant to do. It’s not meant to drown them in info. It’s meant to make them more curious. More interested.

{slide: Offer Value}

William:

Now, at that point, you’re allowed to, and you’re able to offer value. So here’s another pro technique about how to offer value. Like we said earlier, you got to lean, and you’ve got to leverage the technology. We spent over $100 000 creating this proprietary Dashboard. 

Here’s the truth. Your clients have probably never seen a Dashboard before. All they’ve probably seen are excel reports. All they’ve got were conversations, emails, promises, or guarantees, or Google docs. That’s, that’s all they’re ever going to see.

Now that’s the difference between a client who’s never seen any technology like that before, so once you’re showing them, this is all about thinking big and looking big again. 

Once they see the Dashboard, they’ll realize, “Wow, look at this. This is something I’ve never seen before. I guess I have the same potential as this person. The same person you’re showing me on this demo account.” 

Well, yes, of course. If you need help with the Dashboard all you need to do is contact your project manager. It might even be me. Rarely Bernard, but project managers will be assigned to your account, so feel free to call them up. 

Bernard:

Pro-tip. Offer value first. This is one of the most sacred dogmas of selling. It’s about offering value first. And offering value first means you investing time, effort, and potentially even money and resources to closing a prospect. 

It’s always appreciated. Now, we understand that this is a requirement for you to do a successful close, which is why we give you many of these materials for free. You don’t need to tell your prospect that these things are free, by the way.

But remember that the Dashboard costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and it’s there for you to use. 

You will have used your proprietary technology to show them what their experience with you will be like. You will have done your research about them taking up your time and your resources. 

You will also be able to provide them with White Papers that educate them on the methodology you’re about to introduce them to. That’s all offering value first. They have not engaged with you yet, yet here you are, investing time, money, and effort to help them grow their business. 

That speaks tremendously about what you would be like as a provider.

{slide: Offer Value}

Now, the other way to offer value is to prove your expertise. This is where we said, you know, provide them with case studies, give them the methodology explainer with the end client testimonials. 

Provide them with the White Papers and the Guides because these allow you to leverage cognitive bias called Authority Bias. Now, what do we mean? Remember that at this point, you’ve already set up your Dashboard and generated the audit. 

When you execute the audit or have a conversation with them in the pitch, let them know that you will hand them educational material about what you’ve just discussed that will answer most of their questions. As they go through the material they will become more curious. 

They will find more questions and they will probably have some friends in the industry that they can ask. It will raise more questions and create more opportunities for you to engage them.

{slide: Create Desire}

William:

So, after offering your value, you need to be able to create that desire. They’ve seen everything. They now know that you’ve done your research. They know the value. 

They might be thinking, “Wow, all of this is free, and I’m getting all this information. I just have so many questions. I’m so interested in what you’re doing. I and now I believe that you’re going to help me.” Now, instead of just promoting your product or focusing on just one product, service, or offering, you have to focus on your client’s pain points. 

So, see these two circles here, the client needs and the service offerings. The area or the space between that is the area of relevance. Now, as we said earlier, when you do your prep, you got to only focus on the site audit – you got to only focus only on certain things. 

Don’t define the whole thing, and that’s really what defines that area, just what they need to focus on as well. Identify their needs and determine which services match your client’s problems.

Bernard:

Now, remember, we train our digital marketers and our project managers, one of the things we try to teach them, we try to teach them as many SEO metrics as we can.

We want them to be top-notch, spearheads, and aces. We want them to be in the top 10% of the industry. But even though we teach them, we also let them listen to the recordings of the more tenured employees of the more tenured salespeople.

One of the funny observations they make during this part of their training is that there is virtually no SEO conversation happening on any of those pitch conversations. None at all. Most of it concerns how old we are and how old the company is. 

Here’s what we were trying to do two years ago. Where are you guys at right now? What are you guys trying to achieve with your SEO? When it was us, this is what we were trying to achieve. Are you from the United States? These are great questions to ask and what you see is that you know, all sales pitches are the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling SEO, flooring, or whatever.

For all sales, the sales process is the same. It’s all about you figuring out their needs, and it’s all about meeting their need with your service. So case in point. We try to teach our guys hundreds of SEO metrics. 

We don’t expect them to get into a 4-hour conversation to educate our clients about it. We expect them to only talk about the metrics that the clients can leverage to drive results. This is precisely what we mean when we say staying within the area of relevance. 

Now, here’s a hint. Besides that report is a tool to identify areas that need improvement. Find out what areas of improvement are important to them or if they have other important business requirements or business growths.

William:

Just to add as well. At some point, your client may tell you the problem at the start. That gives you a clue about whether or not you should focus on it. Some people may have advised them before. 

But knowing where your client’s at and who is going back to stay, I should know their story, and from there, you can take it all the way. The site audit helps you identify if that problem is real. I just wanted to add.

{slide: Buying Criteria}

Bernard:

Now, since we’ve gone through prepping and we’ve gone through building desire and you trying to break through being a stranger and trying to become a friend, establishing an emotional connection. 

Let’s talk about the buying criteria because you’re only halfway there. If you don’t take the time to understand your client, your prospect or lead, or whoever it is you’re pitching to. You will not be able to match your service offering despite the technology we put behind you. Therefore, you’ll find it difficult to conclude it to a close.

There are certain requirements for you to close, and the first is establishing an emotional connection. This one we can vouch for. 

We have campaigns and projects inside our portfolio that are older than me and I’m in my fifth year at SEOReseller. So, we have campaigns running older than me, which speaks a lot about the relationships we build. 

The other is that we wouldn’t have been able to keep those campaigns for that long if we couldn’t show results. Now, granted that we always teach every agency that wants to become a powerhouse, don’t guarantee results because, you know, no reputable SEO agency guarantees results. If they do, you need to be skeptical. 

If we couldn’t show results, we would feel bad about taking someone’s money, which is not how we operate. It’s important for us that we drive results. The methodology works. I can’t even say it enough in this conversation. The methodology works. This is why we have been here 6 years, four major Penguins and 25 Pandas later.

Now, the other is providing them with consistent and predictable experiences, and now I like to compare this to experiences at Mcdonald’s.

We recommend reading Selling the Invisible. It teaches you to sell or to identify the difference between what your product is and what your commodity is.

In reality, here, our commodity is rankings. But the product is the experience. It’s the same thing at Mcdonald’s. At Mcdonald’s, they’re not trying to sell you food. The product is not food. The commodity is food. But people keep returning to McDonald’s because it is a consistent experience. It will be a predictable experience. 

The coke, the burger, and the fries will all taste the same today as they will have tasted two months ago, as they will taste two months from now. The same needs to be true for the experience you provide. People take comfort in the familiar. You need to be consistent, and you need to be predictable. 

The closer you are to the close, remember to establish an emotional connection. In sales parlance, it’s called building rapport. Get them to laugh, and you’ll get them to buy. Show output and results. 

Remember, you’re selling. You’re selling a solution which means there’s a problem you’re trying to solve.  You’re not adding value if you’re not trying to solve the problem.

Then, provide a consistent and predictable experience. If you say that you’ll be there and will provide them with responses within the day, make sure you’re available for them during that period. Consistent, predictable experiences are valuable.

{slide: Rundown of Tips}

William:

We want to do a rundown of the pro tips that we mentioned earlier. You want to show expertise. Know your bits of data by heart. Another clue is to focus on the client.

Get that data and make it relate to what they’re experiencing. Overcome the reality of smallness. Think big, look big. 

Everything we have on that Dashboard provides you with the tools to look big. You just got to think big too. Cause it’s yours as well. 

It’s all about the prep. It’s like a date. It’s like what Bernard said. If you’re sensitive enough, paying attention, and showing interest in them, it’s going to work. 

Next is breaking the stranger’s barrier and creating an emotional connection. That’s what’s going to build mutual trust and respect. Disclose just enough info. Don’t try to maven your way through a pitch.

Bernard:

So, I hope you guys are taking notes because taking notes helps you remember things. We will post these pro tips on a recorded video and upload them on YouTube. We’ll also be sending you guys the link. 

But I just wanted to do my rundown very quickly. Showing expertise is not you trying to maven your way through a sale. Showing expertise is about knowing a few bits and bytes of data by heart. 

For example, 23% of people will click SEM results, and 62-74% of click-throughs stay on the first page. Only 30% of people will go to page 2 and page 3. Less than 3% of people will go beyond the 10th page. These are sample pieces of data. 

You can present them with information. For example, tell them there are 28 and a half million small businesses in the U.S. alone. About 60% of them don’t have websites, and 40% of them want to have websites, while 28% already own their domain names. 

Knowing these pieces of data off the top of your head allows you to become an instant expert.

Start overcoming the reality of smallness. Don’t look like a one-man show. You might be a one-man show, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you can’t look like a one-man show. You have to look big. 

To do that, you have to think big. Use the Dashboard. Give yourself the edge of having proprietary technology that backs you up. 

Next, do your homework. If you’re not researching them, your competitors are. But more than that, they’re probably researching you if you’re not researching them. You don’t want to walk into a sales pitch with your prospect having more information about you than you have about them.

Now, let’s talk about breaking the stranger’s barrier and creating an emotional connection. I wish we could automate this. But the only thing that we can do is put you in a position that encourages this behavior. 

This is why the automated audit only supplies so much information and why you need back it up with the methodology explainer and the white papers.

Educating the customer will create more questions. The more questions they have, the more frequent the communication points with you are and the more opportunity you have to become a friend. The more chance you have to build that rapport. Make that connection. Break that barrier.

The last bit is to disclose just enough information. Remember that most of the 28-and-a-half million small businesses need to be more experts. Especially the ones that have never owned a website before. So, disclose just enough information, something they can appreciate, something that clearly shows value, and something that stays relevant.

{slide: Takeaway}

William:

So we created a starter pitch kit just to help you setup. Now you can find this in your Resource Center. So, it’s what you can take to a pitch. 

We start with the partner checklist. So a lot of what we’ve spoken about is in this document. Having this on hand will help you at least keep yourself in check.

Bernard:

The partner checklist tells you how much you’ve overcome the reality of smallness. And how big you will look in front of a client. It’s how much of the prep you’ve done.

William:

Next is the brandable base sales deck, which will allow you to create an overview of your company or at least of the services you’re about to put forward.

William:

But it’s just an overview cause the next one, the next two is probably, where how specific it can get. But with the brandable base sales deck, at least you’re approaching them holistically.

Bernard:

These are the sales guides that contain the site audits, the product catalogs, the white papers, and the case studies. All of these are available inside the Dashboard.

William:

Next, you have a website audit guide. So it also allows you to understand how our site audit works. It’ll help you explain what the site audit’s all about. And this will help you to pinpoint which ones you want to talk about.

Bernard:

I think that’s all we have for acing your next sales pitch, and I hope it’s added a lot of value. We won’t conclude the webinar just yet because we promised to address some of your questions, and we had several during the course of the webinar.

{slide: Q&A Session}

So I’ll let Will take the first question.

William:

It says, “What do I do if I’ve already had SEO before, but I’ve had a bad experience with our old vendor?”

I’ve got my advice on this, and Bernard will have his advice on some of these, but I think our message will be the same at the end of the day. 

Here’s the truth, it’s all about solution selling. So let your clients talk about it. Let them tell you what happened. 

Try to empathize with them. Put yourself in their position. If, let’s say, your last provider stated that they provided most of the things on this list, and then when you got back to them, only a few of what they promised ever happened. How would you feel?

Bernard:

Or guaranteed page 1 ranking.

William:

Or they guaranteed page one ranking. Yes, there’s a difference between guaranteed work and guaranteed results.

Guaranteed work means you’re about to offer quality. Of course, you’ll be transparent about it. So please do that. 

Just like the guy from my example, he didn’t get what he paid for. So, assure him that it’s not going to happen with you, it’s going to change, and you’ll do what you can. You can also create an emotional connection just by listening and responding appropriately. 

Pay attention – it’s all they’re asking for because they just want to rant to you. But the best part about having a client that’s had a bad experience is it can be an advantage because there’s an existing story. If you pay enough attention, you can work off it and provide a solution. It’s pretty direct. Be positive.

Bernard:

Now for me. If somebody told me they already had SEO before but had a bad experience, I make it a point to remember that a problem and an opportunity are the same.

Bernard:

Viewed from a different angle, right? And if somebody tells me they already had SEO before but had a bad experience with their old vendor, I only hear that I’ve done SEO before. So, how I will respond to that is to think of it as a great opportunity.

I won’t say that the bad experience was great, but it’s great that you’ve done SEO before. That means you’re not a stranger. The client probably, at some point, understood the value of investing in SEO activities to gain results for their website. 

So it already addresses one area of the qualifier, right? They’ve done SEO before, and they’ve had a previous vendor. Next, you need to find out what happened. Why was there a bad experience? Was it the quality of the incident, was it the work, was it the results? Which one didn’t work? More important than that, how much did they pay? 

In SEO, like any digital marketing strategy, you get what you pay for. So, you’re able to overcome that by telling them one thing. The methodology drives results. We rank campaigns. We rank websites – that’s all. 

Now, you won’t be confident of that immediately off the bat against your first pitch. But the more you work with us, the more confident you’ll get, and you will know you will be a believer in the service. And you’ll know that every time you enroll a client into it, we are ready to drive results for them. Positive results for them.

William:

Here’s the next question I think Berns, you’re more appropriate to answer this. How do I build desire and make them trust us?

Bernard:

Now, I’ll talk about this like a salesman first. For me, building desire is about understanding someone’s personal needs more than the practical need. 

If someone is interested in SEO, the practical need is they want to rank, they want to drive traffic, they want to close sales. That’s it. That’s the practical need, and that’s not unique to any SEO provider. 

What’s unique is how they respond to a personal need. Is the campaign being done for vanity, or are they doing it to gain an edge in the market? Are they doing it because they want to replace they want their agency or their small boutique agency? Why are they doing it? 

If you can address their needs, you can help them build desire. 

The next question is, how do you make them trust you?

This one is also simple. Run the audit, give them the White Paper, encourage them to ask questions, and get them to talk to you frequently. 

When you increase the frequency of communication between two people, trust inevitably builds up. Then there’s a hack. 

The hack is, to get to know them so that you can get them to laugh. According to Jeffrey Gitomer – I love this guy as the guy’s a true sales guru – according to him, if you can get them to laugh, you can get them to buy. 

I am a believer in that. So, the best way to build desire is to find common ground with them. Get them to talk to you frequently, find out their personal needs, and address them. 

Be consistent, be predictable, and be their friend. Don’t be a stranger. Be accessible. All of these help you build trust.

William:

The next question is do I have to pay extra to run audit reports? I can handle this one.

William:

It’s pretty quick. So, No. You don’t have to pay extra to run audit reports. It’s free. It’s right there in your Dashboard. We’ve taught you the steps, and it’s all that counts. You don’t have to pay extra. Repeat that. You don’t have to pay extra. It’s free.

Bernard:

Now just to show you guys the kind of experience that you can expect when you work with us, let’s say you’ve run a hundred and one audits, and remember, just because we offer them for free doesn’t mean it costs us nothing to produce them. 

It costs us something to produce that technology and costs us something to be able to continue to provide it to partners. 

But when we see somebody generate 101 proposals and have 0 closes, expect that our project managers will close you. Or they will talk to you, they’ll call you. And they’ll want to discover your challenges in the close. 

Where are you having challenges in the pitch? Where do I need to help you? Should I invest more time in educating you? Have you gone through a white paper? They will investigate and try to find a way to make your pitches more effective because we don’t want you guys to burn through your leads list.

William:

Exactly. And we’ve seen that before.

Bernard:

And like we said, in the same way, we encourage you guys to offer value first by offering free stuff. The proposal generator is our way of providing value and giving you free stuff.

William:

Here’s the next question. Is the proposal generator available even if I haven’t bought any services from you?

Bernard:

So if you’re talking about the proposal generator, my shameless plug–

William:

Yeah.

Bernard:

It’s already available for you. If you created your Dashboard account, it’s there, and it’s live. Log in, and try it. You’ll love it.

William:

The proposal generator allows you to create it like we said earlier. You make the mockup for your website. And then push out the design, attach it to your proposal and generate it. 

The invoice is created, but it sits there. There is no charge. We will wait for you. 

You can take care of the payment when your client pays you to move forward. But you don’t have to have any other services with us to start with that. 

Here’s another question, Bernard, and I think this also relates to you. What if my prospect has an in-house SEO? How do I handle that pitch without stepping on their toes?

Bernard:

OK, so, that’s an excellent question. I think you can look at it as an advantage and disadvantage. Most salespeople tend to be adverse to an in-house expert during a pitch. I don’t think you have to be afraid. 

If anybody can vouch for the accuracy of the data inside your audit, it’s their SEO. If there’s anybody that can vouch for the correctness and the value of the White Paper, it’s their SEO. 

Remember you’ve got a 45-60 minute pitch that you can do with them. If you set yourself up because you didn’t prepare and you’re getting ready to get grilled, you will get grilled. But if you go there with a genuine desire to add value, I don’t think that there will be any toe-stepping. 

If anybody can vouch for the validity of the Dashboard and the audit, it should be their in-house SEO. It works to your advantage.

William:

OK, the next question is, what do I say to prospects? Can I say that I built the Dashboard?

Bernard:

OK, so I’ll answer this one.

So, it’s that simple. We’ve built it for you. It’s proprietary technology. You can tell them that it’s your proprietary technology. 

We’re not going to run around telling people, oh that’s not theirs that’s ours. No, that’s not in our best interest, nor is it in the best interest of our prospects, and that’s not how we got big. 

We built the tools for you. If you want to tell them it’s your Dashboard, go ahead and tell them it’s your Dashboard because it is your Dashboard.

William:

We laughed because before, we had a client that, instead of saying White Label Dashboard, said white lion Dashboard.

OK, alright, so the next question is, should I mark up the reseller pricing on the initial pitch?

Bernard:

OK, great question. So, this will relate to another question about pricing. I will tie those two together. Should I mark-up the reseller pricing on the initial pitch, and your prices are too high, how can I make it work for me? I’ll answer these questions together. Should you mark up during the initial pitch? Yes. Absolutely. You must mark up on the initial pitch. Remember that whatever you add to our prices is the cream you put into your time and effort. 

So, you must respect your own time. You cannot devalue your effort. You must uphold your own project management and your sales skills. 

Put a premium on it. Put an appropriate amount of premium on it. You must only charge for the amount of love you intend to give. That’s the best way for us to advise people.

The acceptable rate for us is to double or triple whatever wholesale rates are inside the Dashboard. Now, for those who think the pricing is too high and thousands of end clients don’t agree, because we’ve run thousands of campaigns already, the pricing is not too high. 

You get what you pay for. That is the kind of value that we will be offering. It is a premium experience so you should be ready to charge premium, and you shouldn’t be apprehensive about it. 

They will get what they pay for. They will get a proprietary Dashboard, a methodology that works, transparent reporting, and real time project management visibility. All of this is available to them. So, it’s a premium experience, so you should charge premium for it.

William:

During the pitch you’re trying to offer value. Your clients or prospects will get a clue at the start about where everything is at because of how extensive your reports are, the design, how you’re telling them all this gets updated so often. 

Don’t be afraid to put it out there, and be prepared to defend it.

Bernard:

Now the next question comes from someone already using the Dashboard. So, how accurate is your Dashboard in terms of showing rankings? Is it significantly better than other tools out there? 

This is a great question. I’m going to answer this by saying most of the results we drive on the Dashboard are similar to the other tools out there. There’s not a lot of discrepancy between their technology and ours. But I will say that because we understand the technology behind it and because we built it – it is very accurate. 

The results are taken from Google. We aren’t using any PI. We aren’t using somebody else’s technology. It was built right here. So would I say it’s significantly better than other tools out there. 

I wouldn’t say it’s significantly better than other tools out there, but if I were to pick between data driven by our Dashboard and one of the third-party tools we also use, I would take our Dashboard’s word for it. 

Now, take this with a grain of salt. Remember that Google is very good when it comes to customizing search results based on user preference and geo-location. So, there will be discrepancies between what you see in real-time and what the Dashboard reports. 

But the Dashboard is an objective, accurate result of the rankings.

William:

That’s perfect, that’s great. OK, next question. How do I handle prospects asking very technical questions?

I will start, and I’ll let Bernard take half of it because I’m basically the connector. When I talk to clients, I try to go for being able to speak to them, and Bernard is sort of a salesman slash maven.

Bernard:

Well, no, I’ve got a simple solution to this question. How do you handle prospects asking very technical questions? Simple. You call us.

You call us. Right? Business people are smart. Small businesses, large businesses, and enterprises – they all appreciate honesty.

William:

Right.

Bernard:

They will not take offense if they can drive you into a corner or ask you a question that’s a little beyond your capabilities. If you say you need to consult a technical consultant, you need to consult your in-house SEOs. So, they won’t take offense to that. 

Park the question and tell them you’ll get back to them and then as soon as you’re done with the conversation, call us.

William:

Is that our last question, Bernard?

Bernard:

We’ve got one more and it’s the last one. 

William:

So it says, how do I access the demo account?

Bernard:

How do I access the demo account? This is simple. If you’ve set up your Dashboard, your demo account is already there. 

Go to your White Label Dashboard or the URL slash your company’s URL because if you haven’t set up the white label version, it creates the URL by default. 

Log in to your White Label Dashboard, not the agency Dashboard, White Label Dashboard, and log in using the demo credentials. You will be able to see everything in the demo account. 

Now, if you’re apprehensive, you’re having a hard time figuring out how to make it work, or you need to be able to interpret the data, call us. We’re more than happy to walk you through the demo account. There is a bitly link on this slide, and it’s bitly/getsked. 

Call us, and schedule an appointment with a project manager. Dial our number. William will pick it up. Our project managers will pick up your call, or you know, in some situations, I pick up.

So, the demo account is there. It’s live. Login to your White Label Dashboard, [email protected] the password is demo, and you’ll be able to play around with it. 

If you’ve more questions, feel free to call us.

William:

We also want to remind you that the recording will be available. It will be within the resource tab of your Dashboard. We’re going to upload it to YouTube as well.

Bernard:

So, that’s all the time we’ve got for now. If you guys have questions, you can send me an email. But the best thing I can recommend is to email us at [email protected]. 

Schedule a kickstart call with a project manager. Or call us. We’re here 24 hours a day, five days a week. So thank you very much for joining us. On behalf of my partner William, I’m Bernard, and we’ll look forward to seeing you again at the next Boost Your Business webinar.

William:

Bye, guys.