Selling Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is getting harder and harder each day. Each day new companies are offering their services trying to convince the companies that their products and services are the real deal on their way to increase their income - on the Internet! Many of the potential customers are also "hurt" by negative experience with different proprietary and closed local search and directory companies and hard to convince. When talking to the different marketing directors across the country I experience little or no understanding of the power of SEO and PPC like Google Adwords. Even things like ROAS (Return of Ad Spent), ROI (Return of Investment), Conversion Tracking, Transaction Tracking, Customer Intelligence, Keyword Research, and more doesn't seem to help. The customers seems to have "closed" their ears and blinded their eyes for this great services. It looks like most of the customers that are not already into SEO, PPC or both are not motivated to work with this "new" Internet Marketing strategies and from time to time I get very tired of repeating myself over and over again without getting the complete understanding of what I'm selling. I'm a top level and experienced SEO consultant with 2 master titles and a total of 19 different certifications and consider myself as one of the top 10 consultants in my field in my contry, but I'm not good at selling what I deliver - and need some input to increase sales and booking new meetings Perhaps someone could post me some "phone script" for SEO and PPC services that is really working great for them? I'm always looking for ways to improve myself in what I do and this one is on the top of the list!
content is content, AD is AD. people will be tired of google's adwords and adsense. Also ROI on adwords and SEO is pretty low.
Are you serious about this? After working with SEO for more than 10 years I can only find ONE service giving us more quality traffic and conversions and transactions than SEO - and that is newsletters to niche markets. I'm experiencing that a lot of potensial customers are moving more and more of their Internet Marketing budgets online and into SEM - because this is working so good, is traceable and gives a great ROAS. Google Adwords is giving approximately 20 % clickthrough and Google Organic Search is getting about 80 %. Even though only 5 % of the websites viewed are search pages (ref: Google Learning Center), the pages are most often a result of a search in a search engine.. The importance and of SEO / SEM / ++ must not be underestimated! Any good "selling point" or perfect presentations? I really would like to have the "perfect script" for selling this by phone!
Yes, this would be the ideal situation, but when it comes to telemarketing and phone sales I am simply not good enough! I'm a technician and not a seller Perhaps someone could teach me some tips and tricks?
LOL you make me laugh, thats like saying people will get sick of google entirely and switch back over to alta vista or hot bot. Thanks for the smile.
just introduce yourself first and tell them your clients as such. After that you may put forward your proposals so as to sell them with affordable packages
I have a print shop, I do my own SEO. Last year I took a job as an Internet Director for 3 dealerships (only to get the inside info). Both companies I get at least 3 calls a day, mostly from hacks. I eat them up for dinner when they call. I simply ask them what they can do for me? The smooth talking salesman will get the gigs personally, if they show up face to face. The problem is, sales is an art form. The average techy can't sell their product. The biggest problem is finding a salesperson that will be able to understand the process, and to sell it.
There are so many rip-offs and kids who build a website and think they are an SEO expert people have lost trust. I have been in the business since 92 and it’s only gotten worse. Word of mouth and Proof are the only things that will get you work. I am one of the few companies the show their proof. Its all boils down to results. One company called me. They have a PageRank 7 or 8 but place crappy for their keywords. I asked them why and the told me to type in “website†sure enough they were (Google Adwords) What a joke. I don’t think you should even be able to put up and SEO or Web Design Site unless you are a real business with a license and ought to get fined if you don’t. On the other hand there are so many gullible people out their wanting to spend 20 bucks and think they are going to be number 1 on SE. I guess they get what they deserve. A fool and his money are soon parted.
The key aspect about selling is always the featur/ benefit approach. So you explain the feature of the product or service you are selling and then explain the benefit. here's an example specific to SEO "Have you considered buying our backlink building service which creates recognised links back to your website from other relevant sites, the benefit to you is that a) it will help search engines to better judge the popularity of your site which can potentially improve your page rank and b) helps drive niche visitor traffic back to your website." In this example the "Feature" is the backlink building service and the "Benefit" is the effect for the client website. Selling skills can easily be learnt, but your SEO technical knowledge is invaluable. Just follow the feature benefit approach every time you talk to customers and you can't go wrong. The problem with many technical experts is that they try to persuade us of the features of new technology when most people only want to know what the benefits will be. I wish you all the best in your ventue and i hope it works out well. I used to work in IT recruitment and have extensive sales experience. If you want to PM me with some specific services and/or products you want to sell and i'll put together some simple sales pitches that you can use over the phone, like the one above. My advice would then be just to keep going over them in your mind and when you get on the phone it will just become a natural part of what you do. I'm also happy to draw up some common objections you might face and some objection handling techniques. If you like what i come up with perhaps you might give me a few tips on SEO tips from your experience, but there's no expectation for you to do this.
are you cold calling companies or are these warm leads? cold calling is a real skill, you would be better off teaming up with someone who can do sales for you than trying to master that at the same time as doing the SEO, especially if it doesnt come naturally to you.
lol me too, and the first thing I thought is if this guy is like half our contractors were he'd be better off getting someone else to front for him
If you hava many sucessful cases or you guarantee Top 10 in google SERP, It is not hard to convince your customs . Sounds a good way.
I get a some hot leads from our website and also from "word of mouth". I've got above 10 years of professional SEO experience and have had great success with what I do - and professional customers looking for a SEO company in my country are always having on their top 5 list. When I'm able to book a meeting and show my results and they see what skills I have I have a very high sign-on rate! Besides of having several years of web development, graphical design, server administration and IT security experience and certifications I have also other important skills. As many of you recommend - I have also a professional SEO sales team (17 persons) working together with me - but I'm always looking for ways to improve myself in both technically and all other ways that my company may take benefit of. To get a brief view of my skills you may see my certification list in my personal blog ExposeIT.no.