Boost Your Business!

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

Bernard:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Boost Your Business series with SEOReseller and 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 with me today is Will.

{slide: Meet Our Panelists}

So Will has been our business developer for 3 years and I’ll let him do his own intro.

William:

Alright, hi guys. Yeah three years with SEOReseller, but I’ve been working for about 8 years in the web industry, been helping people grow their businesses as well. So we are very much looking forward to teaching you guys all about how to make your sales pitch.

Bernard:

It’s very timely because we actually did recently do our own sales workshop. Now before I jump into the meat of this conversation I wanted to start off by saying everyone is free to ask a question at any point in time during the webinar and right before I go into the webinar topics, I will do two shameless plugs. And 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 and these are our brandable documents, our client management material, our sales materials, sample contracts and sample SLAs. We strongly recommend that you go in there and review them constantly plus these materials can be used to train your own 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 really excited about is our mockup builder and our proposal creator, so right after this webinar we’re launching this feature in your Dashboard. What the mockup builder does is it allows you to design a website from pre-built templates that we’ve built into the system. Their classified by themes and their built from thousands of premium web designs. It allows you to take into account whatever your client told you they wanted to see in their site and design it. You don’t need professional help. It’s drag and drop, it’s what you see is what you get and it’s awesome. It’s very easy. Once you’ve made the mockup you’re actually able to integrate it into a proposal creator. And what the proposal creator does it integrates an SLA, a contract, an intake form and a presentation of the mockup all in one go.  And you can do all of this in a matter of minutes. Easy does it. 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 and what we want to do is talk to you about prepping for the pitch and that is what we call Laying the Groundwork. And laying the groundwork has to do with overcoming the reality of smallness by thinking big and looking big. Tools for you to create desire and then of course at the end of this session we’re going to 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 let me be honest with you. If you’re not prepared for it and you haven’t done your research your client will.

Bernard:

So I absolutely agree. Its Google is a powerful tool. It’s, 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 on them, 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. In order to, in order 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. So, take for example, I’ll let William take this away.

William:

So 91% of your traffic goes to page one of Google, and that’s on the serps. And 29% of the clicks on the first position.

Bernard:

And 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. Now because we’re talking to you guys  and you guys service agencies, 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. So 60% of those businesses don’t have websites. That’s roughly about 17, 18 million opportunities for you. 41% of them openly say that they plan to build a site and 28% of them already have their domains.

Now here’s the funny thing. Even though Godaddy commissioned redshift research to execute this, this research in the US, in the US market. Did you know that this is also true, almost globally? That there are 60%. 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 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 the conversation that we had 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 that is a freelancer or is working a job and is doing this moonlighting or you know is thinking about setting up their own boutique agency. This is you guys. They were you guys two, 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 how to access it from a mobile phone from a desktop they bookmarked it. Everything. So, with them, the Dashboard helped them scale up because they could managed their projects from there, they can generate their proposals from there and so on and so forth. 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 the proprietary technology. We’re allowing you to be able to show your results to them. Now 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 the, 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 then they know you’re not fly by night, that you’ve got a reputation, that you’ve got a proven methodology.

So the Dashboard allows you to look like you have invested in proprietary technology. It shows them that you were invested into this industry. More than that you can claim that you got a methodology that other clients can attest to. And if you guys need help. Inside our methodology explainer are end client testimonials to how the methodology worked for them. Then of course that 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. Way back in 2011 we ran a $200 remarketing campaign and in 2011 nobody knew what remarketing was. Nobody. Nobody knew that ads could algorithmically follow you around based on your personal preference. And when we ran the ad, when we ran the remarketing campaign our ads started appearing to certain users everywhere, everywhere. And 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. And if we were spending that much, we must’ve been big. The result was the interest to partner with SEOReseller increased by a factor of 8 to 10 that month. It was amazing. And this is similar to what the Dashboard can do for you. It can look. It can make you look like you are an established, invested, player in the industry.

{slide: Leverage the technology}

William:

Now like we mentioned earlier. It’s all about leveraging and leaning on the technology. I know we could have been giving you tips on pretty much 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 very first thing your end client gets to see and what you should pretty much propose for is the White Label Dashboard. It helps you to create that good impression and also allow you to highlight some capabilities their willing to fill out moving forward. So to set up your White Label Dashboard you can upload your company logo, you can set your color scheme, about two of them, you can customize the link that the clients use and then you can put that within the White Label Dashboard. Configure your sub domain 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}

And this is how you access the demo site and remember, once you, once you set up the White Label Dashboard you’ve got your demo account live. Now in the event you haven’t fully set it up by masking it on your, inside your domain or your name registrar there is a URL that you can access that’s literally slash and then our companies name. When you go to access hub and login as [email protected] and then the password is demo, you’re going to see a campaign that looks like as if it were live. It’s got rankings, it’s got traffic, it’s got data. It allows you to show them exactly what the experience with you will be like.

And this is something that we’ll discuss moving forward because you have to be able 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 show them, 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, going back to the webinar from last month. We always said, lean on us for the methodology. Lean on us for the technology and we try our best to get you guys as educated as we can on how our methodology works. Now, there’s one, 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 actually 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 and we put in some testimonials inside our methodology explainers and you guys can use this.

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 by doing this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times each month, we found a formula that works.

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

William:

Not only that, what comes with the methodology are, it’s team, it’s an entire team that’s here to help you. Everybody here at some point has learned SEO, has learned Web Design, has learned everything about the digital marketing spectrum. Outside and once they’ve come in, they’re able to understand what we’ve gone through and all of the research that we put in every month. The experience of every end client you guys bring forward to us becomes theirs as well. And 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. That’s us and that’s the team that will help you guys too.

Bernard:

Now, 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, their floored at how large it is. Because, you know, when it started off it was one, two, three, four, five campaigns. And a few months down the road they’re probably running around 30 – 50 projects with us at any on any given month. It’s hard to imagine how much intricate work and how many people have to collaborate in order to make those projects successful and whenever they walk into the office, they’re floored. And this is where they appreciate all the work that goes into making these projects successful.

Remember, even though you’re starting off, even though you’re a one man show and you have to face down 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, and this is a very important phase of the sales process.

William:

And like I, like we were saying earlier. It’s all about the prep. So if you’re not researching your clients, your competitors are. And let’s say you’ve interacted for the first time with your client if you didn’t do your research, they probably did the research for you already and that doesn’t make you look good. So you got to show genuine interest as well by understanding their problems. Now, when you present to them and once if you’ve done your research and you’re able to provide the data, what happens next is that you have to influence to talk at least 50% of the time. That shows you have control of the conversation.

Bernard:

Now, at the risk of being a little inappropriate I always like to compare, whenever I do sales training, I like to compare selling to dating. Because they are very similar. It’s about you getting to know someone and that’s precisely what dating is. And if you, and you always prep for a date, but 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 on a pitch. You don’t learn anything when you’re mouth, when your mouth is open. You learn something when you’re listening. Make sure that at least half the time you’re asking questions. Because that pitch is about you unearthing business requirements, marketing needs and their business goals. This is what you want to find out.

Now the reason you want to run an audit inside the system is because the audit is designed to keep the conversation focused on the client. Remember you’re going to have to have 45 minutes to 60 minutes max inside the sales pitch. Make sure you make the most of it and that you use the time wisely by focusing on your prospects business. Their marketing and their goals.

{slide: Sample Questions to Ask}

So here are a couple of sample questions to ask. Will, what do guys ask our partners?

William:

Well, here’s a, 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. So the first thing we ask is what kind of business and what services do you offer your clients? So Are you a BtoB or are you a BtoC? Are you also in the services sector? Like what are the three major problems that you’re experiencing in your business. And what are the areas you’d like to see improvement within your business? I mean what are the things that you felt the whole, I mean last year, what were the things that you’ve encountered that your business was suffering from. Now, next to that we asked them after, ok, 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 in any of that? Once you’ve gotten all those questions out of the way than you can ask them, so, do you have a time-frame? Do you have a time-frame to see how long it will take to get these all worked out? And if you do, how much do you feel it’s going to take for that to happen?

Bernard:

So, one of the things I want to remind you guys, is all the questions are not made equal. Not all questions are made equal. Some questions allow you to zero in on a perfect prospect. And for us these are really three things. Have they done it before? And did they have a previous provider? Do they have a time-frame and do they have a working budget? Pretty much for us an answer, a positive answer to these three questions, gives us a stronger drive to close those potential prospects, because they have an existing need. And you know that you’re offering a service that works and you know that you’re offering a service that’s transparent. You should do whatever it takes to close that sale. You will do that lead, that prospect a disservice by not closing them to the best of your ability if they’re needs exist.

{slide: Create Desire}

William:

The next step is creating desire. Now it’s all about telling a story and if you told the story right, everybody will understand what the moral was, or at least what lesson you’re trying to put up. 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 had the ability to walk somebody through a demo account and show them exactly the kind of experience that 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 making an emotional connection.

{slide: Use the Audit}

You don’t necessarily need to Maven your way through the pitch in order to win the sale. So, get to know your clients by knowing their business ahead of time. And this is where the Dashboard again is a tool that helps you. Right, smack, dab in the middle of your Dashboard is a field where you’re allowed to run an audit. And by typing the URL and pressing run it allows you to create an automated report. It literally takes a minute in order for you to generate this and what it does for you is instant research. Now, there’s a right way to use the audit and there’s a wrong way to use the audit. So here’s a pro tip. When, in that 45 – 60 minutes disclose just enough information for you to peak their interest. So I’ll repeat that. Disclose just enough information for you to peak their interest. The goal of the audit is not for you to run a conversation that defines each one. This is what’s pagerank, this is what malware is, here’s your IP address, here’s what’s moz-rank is, here’s 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 have an opportunity to address their questions. It also keep you honest by focusing the conversation of that pitch entirely about them. So, the point is to keep the conversation about them and not you.

{slide: Closing Rate}

So, just to prove our point and to illustrate our point we wanted to pull up a couple of statistics and personally. I found these statistics very surprising. These are February performances for some of our partners. These are not by the way necessarily the same partners we talked about in the previous webinar. These are 3 partners and two of these partners religiously use the automated audit. But partner 3 actually has in-house experts that run their own manual in-depth audits. So, let’s go to partner one. Partner one actually 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 30 day close rate is, in the previous webinar I said that SEO, you know, that it takes time, it takes a lot of consideration, 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. And so it takes 30 – 90 days in order for you to close a prospect. But partner one running 60 proposals added 21 new campaigns into 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 going 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 things that is good about partnering with agencies is, you’re open to discuss your methodologies and 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 onto their portfolio giving them only an 8.5 30 day close rate.

Now, there’s a very scientific reason behind this and this is what we like to call the Candy Store analogy and 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, they may, they’ve probably never seen a Dashboard before ever. All they’ve probably seen are excel reports, all they’ve got were conversations or emails or promises or guarantees, 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 and this all about again thinking big and looking big. Once they see the Dashboard, they’ll realize, wow look at this. This is, this is something I’ve not seen before, so 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. But, so, if you need help with the Dashboard and you feel if you have not seen it before, don’t worry, because all you have to do is, you can pretty much contact your project manager. It might even be me. Rarely Bernard but then there will be project managers assigned to your account so feel free to call them up. And I guess not the only thing; we also have sales tools as well.

Bernard:

Pro tip. Offer value first. This is one of the most sacred dogmas to selling. It’s about offering value first. And offering value first means you investing time, effort, potentially even money and resources to closing a prospect. It’s always appreciated. It’s always appreciated. Now, we understand that this is a requirement in order for you to do a successful close and this is why we give you a lot 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, 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, your resources and then you will all, 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 at this point and yet here you are, investing time, money and effort in order to help them grow their business. That speaks tremendously about what you would be like as a provider.

{slide: Offer Value}

Now, the other ways to offer value is to prove your expertise, right.  This is where we said, you know, provide them with case studies, give them the methodology explainer that has 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 you’ve already at this point, you’ve already set up your Dashboard, you’ve already generated the audit. At the point that you execute the audit or have the 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. In reality as they go through the material they will become more curious. They will find more questions and you know, 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, it’s again, now 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. Wow all of this is free and I’m getting all this information. I just have so many questions. I, I, I’m so interested in what you’re doing. I and now I believe that you’re going to help me. So, but, instead of just promoting your product or focusing on just one product, or service or, an offering, you have to now focus on your client’s pain points. And you have to address them with the service offerings.

So if you can 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, like we said earlier, when you do your prep, you got to really only focus on like 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 is, just what they need to focus on as well. Identify their needs; find out which services are matched with the problems of your client.

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. Because, you know, we want them to be top notch, spear head, aces. We want them to be at the top 10% of the industry. But in spite of the fact that we teach them that we also let them listen to the recordings of the more tenured employees, of the more tenured salespeople.

One of the funny observations that they make during, 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 is about here’s old we are, how old is your company. Here’s what we were trying to do 2 years ago. Where are you guys at right now. What are you guys trying to achieve with your SEO, because when it was us, this is what we were trying to achieve. Are you, where are you from in, in the United States. So these are, 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 or flooring or whatever it is.

All sales, the sales process is the same. It’s all about you figuring out their needs and it’s all about meeting the 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. And this is precisely what we mean when we say staying within the area of relevance. Now, here’s a hint. Beside that report is a tool you can use to identify areas that need improvement. Find out are these areas of improvement, are what is important to them, or do they have other important business requirements, other important business growths.

William:

Just to add as well. At some point your client may actually tell you what the problem is at the start. That gives you a clue about whether you should focus on it or not. Some people may have advised them before. But knowing where you’re client’s at and is going back to staying, 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 at this point you’re really only halfway there. If you don’t take the time to understand your client. If you don’t try to take the time to understand about your prospect or lead, whoever it is you’re pitching to, you’re not going to be able to match your service offering despite the technology that we put behind you. In order to conclude it to a close.

There’s certain requirements in order for you to do a close and the first one is establishing an emotional connection. And this one we can vouch for. We have campaigns, projects, inside, inside our portfolio that are older than me and I’m on my fifth year at SEOReseller. So we have campaigns that are running older than me and that speaks a lot about the kind of relationships that we build. The other is of course we wouldn’t have been able to keep those campaigns for that long if we weren’t able to 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 really need to be skeptical. But if we couldn’t show results, we would feel bad about taking someone’s money and that’s not the way 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, 4 major penguins, 25 pandas later.

Now, the other is of course, providing them consistent and predictable experiences and now I like to compare this to is, experiences at McDonalds. In a book called Selling the Invisible, it teaches you to sell or to identify the difference between what is your product and what is your commodity. And in reality here our commodity is rankings. The commodity is rankings. But the product is the experience. It’s the same thing at McDonalds. At McDonalds it’s a, they’re not trying to sell you food. The product is not food. The commodity is food. But what, why people keep going back to McDonald’s is because it is a consistent experience. It will be a predictable experience. The coke, the burger, the fries, they’re all going to 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 con, you need to be consistent and you need to be predictable. So, granted that you need these buying criteria’s, or more of these buying criteria that you need. The closer you are to the close, remember, establish the emotional connection. In the 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.  If you’re not trying to solve the problem, you’re not adding value.

And then of course provide consistent and, provide consistent and predictable experience. If you say that you’ll be there and that you will provide them responses within the day that you’ve got staffing during 8am in the morning till 5pm in the afternoon, make sure that you’re available for them during that period. Consistent, predictable experiences are valuable.

{slide: Rundown of Tips}

William:

So 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. And another clue is, 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. And you just got to think big too. Cause it’s yours as well. And if you’re not researching them, you’re competitors are. It’s all about the prep. It’s like a date. It’s like what Bernard said. If you’re sensitive enough and if you’re paying attention and you’re showing interest in them and half the bandwidth and 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. And 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 but remember that we will post these pro tips on, on a recorded video and upload them onto YouTube and send you guys the URL. But I just wanted to do my own rundown very quickly. Showing expertise, showing expertise is not you trying to Maven your way through a sale. Showing expertise is about you simply knowing a few bits and bytes of data by heart. 23% of people will click SEM results, 62-74% of click through stays 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 piece of data. There are 28 and a half million small businesses in the united states alone. 60% of them don’t have websites. 40% of them want to have websites, and 28% of them already own their domain names. Right? Knowing these pieces of data off the top of your head allows you to become instant expert.

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. And to do that you have to think big. Use the Dashboard. Give yourself the edge of having proprietary technology that backs you up. Next is, you know, do your homework. If you’re not researching them, you’re competitors are. But more than that if you’re not researching them, they’re probably researching you. You don’t want to walk into a sales pitch with your prospect having more, more information about you than you have about them.

Now, breaking the stranger’s barrier and creating an emotional connection. I wish we could automate this. 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 back it up with the methodology explainer. And you know, the, the White Papers and so on and so forth. Educating the customer will create more questions. The more questions they have, the more frequent the points of communication with you are. The more frequent they talk to you. The more opportunity you have to become a friend. The more opportunity you have to build that rapport. Make that connection. Break that barrier.

And then of course the last bit is. You know, disclose just enough information. Remember that out of the 28 and a half million small businesses, it will not be the majority that are 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 within the area of relevance.

{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 pretty much what you can take when you go to a pitch. We start with the partner checklist. So a lot of what we’ve spoken about, you’re going to find within this doc. And 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:

Now next is the brandable base sales deck. This allows you to at least create an overview of your company or at least of the services that 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 from a holistic approach.

Bernard:

These are the sales guides, but part of, but part of what comprises these are the site audits, the product catalogues, the white papers, the case studies. All of these are available inside the Dashboard.

William:

Next you have a website 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 exactly.

Bernard:

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

{slide: Q&A Session}

So I’ll let Will take the first question.

William:

Ok, let’s see. It says. So, what do I do if I’ve already had SEO before but I’ve had a bad experience with our old vendor? So, my ex, well, I’ve got my own advise on this and Bernard will have his own advise on some of these, but I think at the end of the day our message will be the same. So, what do I feel about clients who’ve had bad experiences with other vendors. Here’s the truth, it’s all about solution selling. So let them, let them talk about it, let them tell you all about what’s happened. And of course try to empathize with them. I mean, if you were in the same situation as they were. If let’s say, oh, my last provider said that they provided most of the things that was on this list and then when I got back to them only a few of what they promised ever happened.

Bernard:

Or guaranteed page 1 ranking

William:

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

Guaranteed work means you’re about to offer quality and of course you’re going to be transparent about it. So please do that. That’s the first thing, like the guy said in my example. He didn’t get what he had paid for in terms of what he was supposed to expect with the work. Then do so and promise him that it’s going to happen, it’s going to change and you’re going to do what you can. It’s also by you can also create an emotional connection just by listening that way. And responding appropriately. Pay attention, it’s all their asking cause they just want to rant to you. But, the best part about having a client that’s had a bad experience, I think it’s an advantage. Really. Cause it allows you to, it’ll tell you, there’s a story already there and if you pay attention enough, you can work off of it and provide a solution. It’s pretty direct. I, that’s my, pitch. Be positive.

Bernard:

Now for me. If somebody told me they already had SEO before but they had a bad experience with it. Now remember, problem and an opportunity, they’re the same thing.

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, the only thing I hear is I’ve done SEO before. I’ve done SEO before. That’s what I hear. And to me, how I will respond to that is that’s great, I won’t say that the bad experience was great, but honestly it’s great that you’ve done SEO before. That means you’re not a stranger. And you probably at some point understood the value of investing in SEO activities in order to gain results for your website. So it already addresses one area of the qualifier. Right? They’ve done SEO before and they’ve had a previous vendor. Next is you need to find out what happened. Why was there a bad experience? Was it the quality in the experience, was it the work, was it the results? Which one didn’t work? More important than that, how much did they pay? Because SEO digital marketing just like everything else you get what you pay for.

You get what you pay for. And so you’re able to overcome that by telling them one thing. The methodology drives results. We rank campaigns. We rank websites. And 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 me.

Bernard:

Now before I talk about this from the perspective of what we’ve just talked about, I’ll talk about this like a salesman. For me, building desire is about understanding what someone’s personal need is, more than the practical need. Obviously 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 really it. That’s the practical, that’s the practical need. And that’s not unique. That’s not unique to any SEO provider. What is unique is how they respond to a personal need. Is the campaign being done for vanity, are they doing it to gain an edge in the market, are they doing it because they want to replace they want their agency, their small boutique agency, to replace their job. Why are they doing it? And if you can address that, if you can address the personal need, you can help them build desire. 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, the trust inevitably builds up. And there’s a, there’s a hack. The hack is, get to know them so that you can get them to laugh. According to Jeffrey Gitomer, and I love this guy. The guy’s a true sales guru. According to Jeffrey Gitomer, if you can get them to laugh, you can get them to buy. I am a believer. I am a believer in that. So, the best way to build desire is find common ground with them. Get them to talk to you frequently, find out what their personal needs are, addressed the personal need. Be consistent, be predictable, be their friend. Don’t be a stranger. Be accessible. All of these help you build trust.

William:

Next question is do I have to pay extra to run audit reports. I can, I can handle this one.

William:

So {laughing}, well, 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. And 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 to you for free, doesn’t’ mean it costs us nothing to produce them. It costs us something to produce them. It costs us something to product 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 find out, where you are having challenges in the close. Where are you having challenges in the pitch? Where do I need to help you? Should I invest more time and educating you? Have you gone through a white paper, but they will investigate and they’ll 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 offering value first and giving you guys free stuff.

William:

Which kind of goes to the next question. Is the proposal generator going to be available even if I haven’t bought any services from you?

Bernard:

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

William:

Yeah…

Bernard:

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

William:

Well, because the proposal generator allows you to create it, like we said earlier. You create the mockup for your web design, sorry 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 wait for you. And when you feel like you’re ready, take care of the payment, because your client paid you to move forward. But you don’t have to, you don’t have to have any other services with us to start with that. OK, there’s another question Bernard and I think this relates to you as well. 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 awesome question. I think you can look at it as an advantage and disadvantage. Most sales people tend to be adverse to an in-house expert existing in a, during a, during a pitch. And I don’t think you, you have to be afraid. If there’s anybody that 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 minute to, 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 are going to 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. In fact, if there’s anybody that will be able to vouch for the validity of the Dashboard, of the, of the audit and of the White Paper, it should be their in-house SEO. So in my opinion, it works to your advantage.

William:

OK, next question is what do I say to prospects. Did I. 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 that it’s your Dashboard. Because it is your Dashboard.

William:

The reason why we laughed was before we had a client that, instead of saying White Label Dashboard, he said white lion Dashboard.

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

Bernard:

OK, great question. So, and I think this will relate to another question about pricing. And I will, 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 onto our prices is the cream you put on your time, on your effort. And so, you cannot devalue your own time, you cannot devalue your own effort. You cannot devalue your own project management, your sale skills. Put a premium on it. What we will say, is put an appropriate amount of premium on it. You must only charge, and the best advice we give our clients is, charge for the amount of love you intend to give. That’s really the best way for us to advise people.

And for us, the acceptable rate is to double or triple whatever our wholesale rates are inside the Dashboard. Now, for those of you that think the pricing is too high and by the way, 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. And because of the premium experience, you should be ready to charge premium and you shouldn’t be apprehensive to charge premium. They will get what they pay for. They will get a proprietary Dashboard, a methodology that works, transparent reporting, real time project management visibility. All of this is available to them. So, it’s a premium experience, and that’s why you should charge premium for it.

William:

And to add you know, when you’re, like we said, during the pitch you’re to show them and trying to offer value. They will get a clue at the start pretty much where everything is at because of the, because of how extensive your reports are, the design, how you’re telling them all this gets updated so often. I think it’s, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid to put it out there and be prepared to defend it.

Bernard:

Now the next question seems to come from someone that’s already using the Dashboard. And the questions is, how accurate is your Dashboard in terms of showing rankings. Is it significantly better than other tools out there? So, this is a great question. And I’m going to answer this by saying, most of the results that we get on our Dashboard, that we drive on the Dashboard are actually similar to the other tools out there. There’s not a lot of discrepancy between their technology and ours. But what I will say is because we understand the technology behind it, because we built it, it is very accurate. 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. And 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 was going to pick between data driven by our Dashboard and one of the third party tools that we also use, I would also take our Dashboard’s word for it. Now, mind you, and this is where you 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 and what not so, there will be discrepancies between what you see in real time when you try to mimic the query 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 the half of it because I’m basically, my, the way I work, I’m a connecter. When I talk to clients, I really try to go for being able to talk to them and Bernard is sort of a salesman slash Maven.

Bernard:

Well, no, for me 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? I think business people are smart. Small business, large business and enterprises and they appreciate honesty…

William:

Right…

Bernard:

And if they are able to drive you into a, if they paint you into a corner, or ask you a question that’s a little beyond your capabilities, they will not take offence, if they say, if you say you need to consult a technical consultant, you need to consult your in-house SEOs. So, they won’t take offence 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:

And that, that’s our last question Bernard.

Bernard:

Well no actually we’ve got one last, one more. And it’s the last one. This one says…

William:

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 go to the URL slash your company’s URL because if you haven’t set up the white label version, it creates the URL by default for you. Log in into your White Label Dashboard, not the agency Dashboard, the White Label Dashboard and log in using the demo credentials. And 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 and talk about it in your sleep, call us. We’re more than happy to, we’re more than happy to walk you through the demo account. There is a bitly link right on this slide and it’s bitly/getsked. Call us, schedule an appointment with a project manager. Dial our number. William will pick up. Our project managers will pick up or you know, and 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. And again if you’ve got more questions, feel free to give us a call.

William:

Now we also want to remind you and let you know that the recording will be available. It will be within the resource tab of your Dashboard. And we’re going to upload it to YouTube as well.

Bernard:

Now, for those of us that have sent an email about, for those of us that inevitably going to send an email about missing the webinar, we are publishing it very shortly. And to those of you that have sent me a personal email, I will send you the URL to where the video is. So, that’s all the time we’ve got for now. If you guys have questions, the invite was sent via my mailbox, you can send me an email. But the best thing that I can recommend is email us at [email protected] Schedule a kick, a kickstart call with a project manager. Or call us. We’re here 24 hours a day, 5 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 on the next Boost Your Business webinar.

William:

Bye guys.