0:00:00
So in today’s training, I’m going to show you how to bolt on a $1,500 that should be like minimum discovery package to pretty much every website project you sell. Now a couple of caveats here. Number one, this is a necessary step in the process. A lot of freelancers and agencies do some of this work, but they just don’t charge for it, which you have to get out of the habit of doing that. Number two, it’s critical to the process. To do my job right, I have to go through this discovery phase. And that’s how it’s explained to clients. In fact, this isn’t like a, don’t think of this as a bolt on option. We don’t present it that way to clients. We’ve presented as, this is a step in our process, a critical step, a necessary step, a mandatory step. So in 99% of the cases, it’s not even a question of whether or not they’re going to actually pay for this.
0:00:52
They are going to pay for this or they’re not the right client for us. And I’ll show you how that is explained throughout the process of the sales conversation. And really, I thought about how to teach this the best way. I thought of a couple different methods, but at the end, I was like, well, let’s just do a sample sales conversation. That way, number one, we can see the necessity of a package like this. We can also see how it’s presented to the prospect or to the lead and how it’s explained to them, how that necessity is explained to them in that presentation. So I think there’s a lot of value here in terms of sales, in terms of understanding the, you know, underlying necessity of a package like this. But we’re going to go ahead and jump into the training. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. We’ll have a little back and forth. If you come up with any other objections, we’ll answer those. And if you see any ways that I can improve how this is presented to the client, I’m all ears on that as well.
0:01:47
These trainings are for me to share with you my experience, what’s worked for me. I will say that when I go into meetings with clients, you put me in a room with 10 leads, the 10 qualified leads, I’m selling nine projects, right? That’s like my close rate is extremely high. So no, I don’t study sales. I wasn’t trained in sales, but I have the results to back up that, you know, the way that I lead these conversations, it works. But if there’s a better way, if there’s things I can improve on, I want feedback. From you guys as well, because I’m here to get benefit out of this, you know, just like you are. I might be a little bit ahead of you, but I’m just sharing what I know and what my experience is based on. And I can still learn things, right? So let’s go ahead and hop into the training. All right, guys, let’s talk about how to add $1,500 to any website project with a discovery package.
0:02:39
Now, some principles before we get going. Number one, legitimately expanding the scope of a project is a benefit to both you and the client. I know a lot of freelancers and agency owners, even their wary about expanding the scope. They seem to feel bad for their client. They’re like, I don’t want to put more on their plate. I don’t want to make them pay more, right? Legitimately expanding the scope of a project is a benefit to both you and the client. And you see what we’re going to be adding, you can see the value here. This helps us do our job better and it helps the client get better results. Everybody wins when you legitimately expand the scope. If you don’t expand the scope in an area where the scope should be expanded, you are not doing your job as a freelancer or an agency owner and you are doing the client a disservice. They are looking to you as the expert. It’s like if you went to a surgeon and the surgeon didn’t tell you, well, we really need to do this prep step of cleaning and things like that.
0:03:43
Then you get an infection and you die and nobody is happy, right? We legitimately expand the scope for a reason so that everybody has a better outcome. Principle number two, expanding the scope beyond what the client is used to is going to require education. So if you go into a sales conversation and you just start trying to expand the scope, even if it’s legitimate and the client boxed at that or they have an objection or they have questions and you feel like, oh, well, Kevin just told me to expand the scope, right? Like I tried to do that and they won’t go for it. Well, it requires education. It requires some selling and that’s why we’re going to do a sample sales conversation here. So number three, principle in this particular example, the expansion of scope is a required step in my process for 99% of clients because it helps me do my job the right way, as I just mention, but I think that is an important point to go over in that sometimes expansion of scope is optional for the client.
0:04:47
Sometimes it’s not optional. It’s a requirement to work with you and you have to be okay saying, I’m sorry, this is a requirement, right? And if you’re not on the same page with us, then we’re probably not a good fit. And I’m actually going to show you in this sample sales conversation where a little bit of that comes up just so you can see how that is covered. So like I mentioned, we’re doing a sample sales session here. We’re going to run through this training with a lower end lead. So keep that in mind. Like a higher end lead is probably not going to have as much objection. They’re not going to, they’re just going to trust you more, okay? Let’s put it like that. So a lower end lead, they are going to have more objections, more selling is probably going to be necessary. That’s why we’re doing this sample sales session with a lower end lead.
0:05:31
I do want you to keep in mind that all sales sessions are dynamic. So the goal here is to understand the underlying principles and points that I’m trying to communicate to the client so that you can respond accordingly regardless of the direction the conversation goes in. Like this is not a role play. So I have to make up what the client might say. Of course, when you’re in a real sales conversation, the client may say different things. So you have to understand the underlying principles so that you can continue to steer the conversation back to the main points, back to the important selling points, all right? So let’s go ahead and get started. A typical low end client will often come to you and say, we need to get our website redone. They’ll throw in this tidbit here. It’s just a simple x-page site, might be five, might be seven, whatever, right?
0:06:18
How much will it cost? Or if it’s a client that doesn’t currently have a website, so maybe a brand new business, they’re just going to come to you and say, hey, we need a simple five page website. How much? Now whenever a client uses the word simple, what they’re communicating to you is this needs to be cheap, all right? So if they know that they have a complex thing or they want to invest a lot, they don’t say simple anything. Like they’ll come to you and say, I want the best of the best. I want all the bells and whistles. I want this that. Everything, if a client says we need a simple anything, they’re trying to cheap out on you, all right? Now they might not be doing it on purpose, like they might not know why it’s important to not do this, which is why I’m asking you the question, like what do you say when a client comes to you with this line of messaging right off of the jump?
0:07:06
This is a red flag. The client shouldn’t be telling you the specifics of what they need. They should be looking to you for the specifics. So let me give you an example. The specifics says I need a simple five page website and what they’re communicating to you is I need this very cheap, but what they’re also communicating to you is I need you to do what I’m telling you to do, right? I’m telling you my site needs five pages. Really what a client needs to be doing is saying, hey, you know, Joe, I’ve got this problem in my business that our website isn’t producing or that we don’t have a website and when we don’t have a website, we can’t get any leads online or we can’t get any sales online or we have an existing website and it’s not getting any traffic or it’s not getting any, like how can you help us? Can you fix this problem for us? That should be the context of the conversation you’re having.
0:07:56
If you’re having a conversation with the clients telling you, you need to do this that and the other thing, they’re not seeing you as a valuable resource. They’re not seeing you as a consultant. They’re not seeing you as somebody who can solve their problems. They’re seeing you as an errand boy, right? Like they’re saying, hey, fetch my water, right? Like go make me this site right here. I know what my business needs. I know what I want. I would highly encourage you to not work with clients who have that attitude. Now in all fairness, a lot of clients have that attitude just not knowing better, right? They need to be steered into the right frame of mind to understand your value, to understand what you do. Because put yourself in their shoes if they’re thinking, I just need a web designer who designs web.
0:08:42
Like that’s like literal in their mind. It’s like web designer designed webs. Okay. And then they come to you and they tell you that’s what they need you to do. They need to start seeing web design, web development, this digital marketing realm, all kind of wrapped into one. And the person they go to is the consultant because 95% of the time, the clients have no idea what they’re doing online for marketing. They don’t know what their website is supposed to say, what it’s supposed to look like, how it’s supposed to be laid out. They don’t know anything. They don’t know how to get traffic. They don’t know what SEO is or like they know about it, but they don’t know how to do it. So really they need a consultant to steer them in the right direction and then do everything correctly.
0:09:21
That’s what we have to establish here. So red flag immediately, clients should not be telling you the specifics of what they need. They should be looking to you for the specifics. So how do you deal with this? Immediately reframe this. And this is one of the ways that I do it. There’s multiple techniques, but I’ll just say, oh, that’s interesting. Because there are reason you’re only looking for five pages. Most of the websites in your industry have far more pages than that, just curious. Like I want the client to explain to me now why they think five is the magic number. And you can see what I’m throwing in here. I’m letting them know, hey, all your competitors, they got more than five pages. Okay. So do you know something that they don’t know or like what I’m like, I’m saying it politely, right?
0:10:05
But I need the client to tell me like, where did your expertise come from? How do you know your site only needs five pages, right? And this is honest, it’s the truth. Like no website that’s dominating a local market, especially but then a national market. Do you think brochuresites dominate local markets? No, brochuresites don’t dominate local markets or national markets. So if this person legitimately wants results from their website, they want traffic, they want leads, they want this consistent flow, they want a 24 seven kind of sales machine for their business, five pages typically ain’t going to cut it. And when I’m talking about adding more pages, I mean, it could be blog posts, it could be service pages, it could be service area pages, it could be location pages. There’s a lot of different things we can add. I’m not talking about adding like, you know, terms of service pages and things like that. I’m talking about money pages. So if they’re looking for five money pages, it’s not enough.
0:10:59
And I’m letting them know, hey, your competition has a lot more than that, right? So do you know something they don’t know is basically what I’m asking? And so because the client typically doesn’t know anything, they’re just going to make something up like they’re just going to be like, oh, well, blah, and they’re going to give you some reason. It actually doesn’t matter what they say here. You’ve established, right, that all right, your competitors have more than five pages, all right? And you really don’t know why. So now we’re going to go in in a different direction. So this segways perfectly into, okay. So just so we’re on the same page, what are the main goals you have for your website? What do you want your website to do for your business? This is a key question because this is where you’re going to steer them into saying, oh, well, I want more leads or I want more sales or like something tangible, right?
0:11:50
All right. So the client says we want to get more leads. Now I’m giving the client the benefit of the doubt here. I’ve had so many of these conversations. I can’t tell you all the crazy stuff I’ve heard clients say that are completely irrelevant to their business, right? But I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt that the client actually says something relevant and intangible and says, well, we want to get more leads. Like that’s an obvious thing that they want to get from their website. So you say, perfect. We’re great at achieving that. How many leads per month is your website bringing in right now? It’s very important to get clients to talk about specifics. When you’re talking in abstracts, it’s very hard to tie abstracts to real world value. So the more specifics we can get, number one, you can see if your client is even thinking in the right direction, right?
0:12:38
If they start saying outlandish stuff that you’re never going to be able to achieve, that’s another point that you have to steer them back into reality, right? So I’m asking them, all right, let’s set a goal right now. How many leads per month is, or I’m just asking them, how many leads per month is your website bringing in right now? I’m just going to set a goal in just a second. So a lot of times what the client will say here is, actually, I’m not sure. The number of clients that have a really solid handle on their numbers, it’s like few and far between. Some will have decent, rough estimates, but a lot of them will just say, I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s much. They might have a good handle on their numbers from other channels, especially if it’s like local brick and mortar, local service-based businesses, because they’re used to doing a lot of stuff offline. So they might have a better handle on their offline numbers, but when it comes to their digital numbers, they’re usually in the dark.
0:13:34
And you see this all the time when you set up analytics for clients and they never look at their analytics, right? They just don’t know their numbers from digital a lot of times. So you have to be prepared for a client to say, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s much. So what do you say? That’s okay. We hear that a lot. What’s a realistic number that you’d be happy with every month? So you don’t want to make the client feel bad for not knowing their numbers. You just want to, again, start steering them to reality here. So you ask them, what’s a realistic number that you’d be happy with every single month? And the client might say, I’d like to see at least 50 new leads coming through the site every month.
0:14:13
Now depending on the niche industry, whatever, you have to determine here is this client being realistic or is this client being totally outlandish with their goal. Because if it feels outlandish, you need to steer them back to reality because you’re starting to set expectations here. And if you set the wrong expectations about what you can accomplish, you’re going to lose in the end. So this needs to be a situation where you’re looking at that number saying, okay, that’s realistic. But the other reason I’m asking about this and you’ll see where this conversation starts to go, right? So I start to say, hey, you know, that sounds very doable. If we built a site that brought you 50 leads every month, how many of those leads do you think you could close? I now want specifics on when a lead comes in, what percentage are they closing? Because I need to know if they’re able to do their job on the back end.
0:15:02
I mean, if it’s a successful business, I assume they can. If it’s a relatively new business, they may not even know the answer to this and you want to know that upfront because that’s something to look for. Okay. So part of your job is helping the client get leads through their website. If you’re building websites for people. But the other half of your job is to help them learn how to convert their leads if they’re having a problem. I can tell you, you know, just a lot of clients, a lot of clients I’ve gotten a lot of leads for and they can’t close on the back end. They either have a bad salesperson who can’t sell or they have somebody who doesn’t follow up in time. They’re super slow in their process. So by the time they get to the lead, the lead is stale. There’s so many reasons why they might not be able to convert and I’ll tell you this.
0:15:46
You don’t want to get into a pissing match with your client where it’s like, but I’m giving you leads, like, but they’re not good leads because we’re not closing them. It’s like, but you’re not closing them because you suck at sales and like, you can’t be going back and forth like this with your clients. So what I’ve found in my experience is if I notice a client can’t close, I don’t wait for them to say, hey, we’re not making any money with you. Yeah, you’re sending us leads, but they’re obviously junk leads. No, I jump in and say, hey, guys, I think, you know, there’s some holes in the sales process here that we might want to take a look at. And I start to be very productive with how we can close those gaps because I know at the end of the day, guess what? If it’s not working, the funnel, the whole thing is a funnel. If the funnel is not working, I’m getting blamed. I’m at least, you know, partially getting blamed for this funnel not working. So if I see a problem anywhere in the funnel, even if it’s not my job, I jump in and say, hey, I think there’s a hole in the funnel here, right?
0:16:40
Like, can we take a look at this? So very important for you to make sure that they can close and then just get an understanding of how many leads they can close because this is going to tie into that goal that you’re trying to hit. So the client says, well, we can probably close 30% of the leads that you bring us, okay? Perfect. So that would be 15 sales a month. How much is a typical sale worth to you? Now we need to get into revenue numbers. This directly ties in with the value of what you’re selling. If you can put real numbers to the benefit that the client is going to get, you can juxtapose that benefit with what you’re charging them. And it makes it more palatable when you say, hey, let’s say you were selling a retainer for a lead generation funnel and you say it’s going to be $1,500 a month. I’m like, whoa, that’s expensive.
0:17:30
It’s like, no, because it’s going to generate you $7,500 a month. That’s an amazing return on investment, right? If you’re dealing with real world numbers, then this all becomes very easy to sell because it makes sense to everybody, okay? But if you start dealing in abstracts because you didn’t ask any of these questions and you’re throwing out numbers, well, we can probably get you this. So we can probably get you this. It’s just like, oh, well, that’s all theory. And now you’re asking me to pay for theory. Whereas you’re telling me, hey, you can close 30% of sales I bring you. I know I can bring you 50 leads a month. We’re going to get these sales. We’re going to make this amount of money based on your average ticket price, all right? So the client says, well, it varies. If anywhere from $500 to $1,000 on average, and then they often will buy again at some point down the road.
0:18:15
So what we’re going to do here is we’re going to be very conservative. So you’re going to see, okay, let’s use the low end. I always use the low end when clients give me numbers, use the conservative end. Don’t over sell this. Low ball, 15 sales at $500 is $7,500 per month, a new revenue for your business. And that’s being conservative. Now you can remind them all day long. We’re being conservative here. Okay, you’re probably going to make more than this. We’re being conservative. Do you by chance know how much traffic comes to your site each month and where it comes from? The client says, I really couldn’t tell you. I can’t imagine it’s a lot. So the reason I’m asking this question is because if we’re going to get 50 leads, I know what a good conversion rate on a website is.
0:19:00
I know I now know how much traffic I need to get. And if their site doesn’t have anywhere near that amount of traffic, guess what? We’re selling SEO. We’re selling PPC. We’re selling Facebook ads. We’re selling something to bring in that traffic because we can show them the numbers don’t line up. We’re not going to get 50 leads on the 100 visitors coming to your site currently. That’s not reality. It’s not going to happen. And the client can see and understand that. So when I say, okay, here’s what we need to do about that. Naturally, they know, well, that’s not going to be free. And we’re dealing again with real numbers. We can see that the math works and the math makes sense.
0:19:35
So I say, because I’ve done due diligence before talking to this client, you’re probably right. I checked your status, the myths in our discovery software, and your site isn’t really pulling anything in organically from search. Now I can’t really see what they’re doing with social media. I can go look at their profiles and see if they have any engagement there and I can make a guess. But I don’t really have much in the way of actual stats. You know, PPC, I can do and see if they’re running PPC ads. I can kind of see some data on that. But I have the most data publicly available when it comes to search traffic to a website. And I can see the keywords that they’re ranking for and all of that. So I can alert them to the fact that, hey, yeah, you’re not really ranking for anything and you’re not really getting any organic traffic. And that is setting up the SEO part of this conversation.
0:20:24
And I just want to pause here. This is where I will ask them if they’re doing anything on social PPC paid ads. Even if I know ahead of time that they’re not or they’re doing a little, I just want to hear them talk about it because I want the words to come out of their mouth because I want the realizations to go into their brain, you know, in their own, in their own words in their own language, right? So I could bidding to themselves, yeah, we’re not really doing anything on social. Yeah, we’re not really doing anything with PPC. We’re not really running any paid ads. So they can see like, okay, well, these are the reasons why your website is getting the results it is. Now, you know, you need a new website, obviously. We also need these other things. We’re not just going to build what you already have, call it a day and move on with our life because we’re going to end up with the exact same result.
0:21:10
And you’ll see how that works into the conversation. So I bring it up. I say, all right, well, here’s a big issue. I can’t get you leads without traffic. Your existing website isn’t ranking for anything and redesigning it isn’t going to change that. Remember, they came to you for web design. They told you we need a new website. It’s five pages. Go ahead and build it. You know, what’s it going to cost? So we’re steering that conversation with a consulting approach of, look, this ain’t going to work. If we do what you’re asking us to do and that’s all we do, it ain’t going to work. So we need to do something different. And I agree with them, right?
0:21:47
I agree your site needs to be rebuilt. That’s not, you know, in question, but we do have to rethink the strategy. And then I start to tell them what I want for them. Ideally, your website should be ranking locally in city, city, city. Obviously you inject the, you know, whatever cities are relevant to them. And you should be getting steady traffic organically from that, which can convert into leads. So let them know, you know, traffic is not just traffic. You can’t pay your bills with traffic. But when we get high quality organic traffic, that’s, we can convert that into leads all day long. So I’m educating them on the process. I also throw in here. There’s also some things we can do with PPC or digital advertising. Keep that PPC word in your mind because that’s part of this discovery package or digital advertising to speed things up since SEO does take some time.
0:22:32
Now I’m setting an expectation here that SEO is not going to be an overnight success. And whenever I sell SEO, I’ll just put this caveat in there. Whenever I sell SEO, I tell them nine or 10 times explicitly. Do not expect any results for a year. I want them to be mentally committed to a year. Now can I get them results sooner than that? For sure. I can get them results sooner than that in vast majority of cases. But I don’t want them to be mentally expecting results on that for a year. Because if I can get them comfortable with that, then our expectations are golden. We can overpromise overdeliver. Yeah, you don’t want to do it the opposite way. So I’m letting them know if front SEO does take time. But building a site that’s actually capable of ranking is a key foundational step. So now I’m segueing into our main cell here.
0:23:24
So can we segue into talking about our typical process and how we make sure that we build the right website for your business? This is key language here. We’re not building a website for your business. We’re building the right website for your business. There is a big difference. And part of building the right website for your business is crossing our teas and dotting our eyes. And that happens with a discovery package. So the client says, yes, what’s the process? Tell me the process, right? This is where we get into tangible stuff. So the first phase of every website build is the discovery phase. Now notice, I’m not positioning this as well. We have this optional discovery package that’s no, no, no, no.
0:24:06
The first phase of every website that we built is the discovery phase. This is where we do market research, competitor research, and keyword research. We need to pull the latest trends related to your industry. We need to do some spying on your competition to see what they’re doing right and where they’re vulnerable. This is a key thing because businesses love to know where their competition is vulnerable and it does legitimately help us understand what a competitor is doing really well and what they’re not doing great at. But most importantly, we need to see exactly what your ideal customers are searching for so we can create all the necessary pages required to rank for those terms. Now clients typically don’t know how SEO works. They don’t understand that you can’t just load up one page with a bunch of keywords. They need to understand that, hey, if there’s 10 target keywords that we’re going to go after, more than likely we’re creating 10 pages. We’re creating a page for every single one of those key terms.
0:25:05
And it’s typically a lot more than 10, right? It’s going to be in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. And we branch out into service areas. It gets even more. So what I’m doing right now is setting up to say, we need to figure out what your people are searching for so that we can create all the necessary pages required to rank for those terms. You see how that is in complete opposition to their opening statement of, we need five pages. I’m telling them we need to create all the necessary pages required to rank for those terms. This is a good point. Well, I’ll bring up this point in a minute. You’ll see when we get there. If we don’t do discovery, we’re basically flying blind. This is completely true.
0:25:47
And we’re going to end up with a poor site architecture and pages that are never going to rank. So if you don’t know about SEO, where you’re at in your own business, the site architecture is very important. You know, when we decide on the URLs, we decide on the organization of, all right, what’s the services plug going to be, what’s all the page slugs under that going to be. We don’t want to get into a situation where we realize, hey, half those page slugs aren’t related in any relevant way to really important keywords that we’re trying to rank for. And so as an SEO, like I can tell you this, I can’t, like the number of sites that a client has come to me and say, hey, we paid this other company for SEO. They’re not getting any results. They were trying to do it with our old website. We need you to come in and do your SEO magic and I go in and look. And like the site architecture is an absolute mess. Nothing is the way that it’s supposed to be.
0:26:42
I have to inform them, well, this all has to be rebuilt from scratch. Like we can’t just come in and do SEO to your site. There’s too many fundamental issues with your site here. So you as a freelancer or agency walking through this process, bolting on this discovery package is basically saying to the client, we’re not going to put you in that mess. We’re not going to put you in that situation. We’re not going to dislight your money on fire, right? This is a necessary step that leads to the creation of an effective site map and an effective site architecture. All right, then I get into this. We got to go back to their original kind of mindset. I know you said you only wanted a five page site, but the reality is that your site is going to eventually need to be dozens and dozens of pages deep. If you’re really interested in pulling in serious traffic from search, the good news is, and now I’m going to alleviate some pressure here, the good news is that we can start with five or so pages and then add more to the site consistently over time to get the site to where it needs to be.
0:27:43
So now we’re presenting this process of like eating the elephant one bite at a time. Like I know where you want to start, where your mindset’s at, but I also know what your website needs, right? And now we’re going to bridge the gap. So we’re going to see how much you can afford up front and then whatever can’t be done in version one, we’re going to bolt on over time. So I’m also setting up a long term campaign strategy. So when you see how we, when I get to pricing and scope and proposals, how we often turn these projects into 12 month campaigns and retainers and things like that. So we know where we’re starting, we know where we eventually want to get to. We’re going to see what can be done immediately and then what can be done along the way. And now the client feels like, okay, this agency, this person, they have my best interest in mind, they’ve told me what needs to happen. They’ve told me how, you know, the scope of the website is actually a lot bigger than I previously thought, but at the same time, they’re willing to work with me in the sense that we’re going to start slow and we’re going to build this thing over time.
0:28:49
So I don’t have to dump a whole bunch of money in right at the beginning and I don’t have to undergo this massive project that I wasn’t expecting to undergo. So we’re kind of positioning it as, don’t worry, we’re going to work with you. We’re going to, this is how real websites work. They’re built over time and this is 100% legitimately true. We have to get clients out of the mindset of you build it and then it’s done. You build it and then it’s done. That’s not how it works. You build it and then you iterate and you add and you iterate and you add and you change and you iterate and you add and you keep making it better over time. It’s a living, breathing thing. That’s how it has to be positioned. They have to understand that 100% to really be on the same page with you. Now here is a tip. It seems counterintuitive.
0:29:37
I would challenge them to back out at this point because you want to know, is this person actually on the same page with me? Are they really understanding and digesting what I’m telling them in the direction I’m steering them? So I say this, now we don’t have to do all this, right? If all you want is a quick five page website and you’re not interested in ranking or driving serious traffic or yada yada yada, whatever other goals that they said that they had, then I’m happy to refer you to someone who will create that for you. But you’re still going to have a traffic and leads problem. So I’m reiterating, look, we don’t have to do all this stuff that we’re talking about, right? I will, if you want, what you want, five page website, that’s it. You don’t, you know, you’re not thinking about anything beyond that. You just, you know what you want. That’s what you want.
0:30:20
Cool. I will refer you to somebody. Now, there’s a lot of things happening in this statement. Number one, we’re establishing the fact that, hey, if you’re not on the same page with me, then we’re not a good fit. Number two, I ain’t desperate for this work, right? Like I will gladly just send this project elsewhere, five page website that most people would take, I will, I will ship it out. I will give it to somebody else, right? And then I’m reiterating, but if I do that, you’re not going to get any results. You’re still not, you’re still going to have the same problems that you have now. But I am challenging the client. I’m giving them an out here. Like if they could say, ah, well, yeah, I didn’t expect all this to be. So we’re going to have to figure something different out, right?
0:31:00
Maybe we’ll go invest more in billboards. Maybe we’ll go do a radio ad. I don’t know. It’s up to them. You are giving them a way out right here. So the client says, wait, so you can’t do a simple five page site. That’s, I put this in here to be, most clients aren’t going to say this. They might think it though, right? Like well, hold on, what do you mean refer me out? Like we’re in a sales conversation right now. Why are you trying to get rid of me? Okay? So we have to, you know, establish our company vision and culture here, right? So I say, well, we just don’t take on projects like that because we can’t generate great results and a great pay study with a five page site.
0:31:36
Our passion is working on projects where we get to have a real impact on small businesses and that requires a complete strategy with a truly effective website. So I’m reiterating here company values, agency values. I’m reiterating that I actually want to get great results for you. I don’t just want to cash your check, right? Like if I just wanted to cash your check, I would have been at the very first sentence, five page website, here’s how much it costs, deposit the check, do it, ship it out the door. Don’t care if it gets results, you know, onto the next one, right? So you can see here how this is like a thousand percent legitimate where I’m saying, well, I’m not going to build a website that’s not going to get any results. I’ll give that project to somebody else. I want to turn your business into a great case study. I want like that’s something I want personally, but you want me to want that because if we turn that into a great case study, it means your business got, you know, a lot more successful.
0:32:31
So I’m just letting them know like I want results, I want a case study and this is our passion. Like we wake up to change the course of businesses. We don’t wake up to move pixels around a screen. That’s not who we are. So if that’s all you want, I will send you to somebody who just moved pixels around a screen. So we’re putting your foot down at this point and saying, I don’t need your project. If we’re on the same page, I would love your project. But if you don’t want to get on the same page with us, we’re going to need to, you know, send you to somebody who is more in line with what you want. And 99.99% of the time the clients can be like, you’re right. You’re right. I want you to have a great case study because I want my business to grow. I actually want results from this. I do have these challenges.
0:33:18
We need to do this the right way. This is how they start thinking. Okay. Now you’ve got them onto the same page. And at this point, you need to walk them through the rest of the process. But you have effectively sold the necessary discovery phase, which will get included in the scope at $1,500 or whatever you want the price to be. We started $1,500. We go out from there depending on other factors. If you’re more comfortable in the beginning selling this at $500, sell it at $500. So you want to sell it at $750, sell it at $750. This doesn’t really matter. The point is we’re charging for a legitimate expansion of scope because it is a benefit to both you and the client. Go back to the core principles that we talked about in the beginning. Now I will give you an alternate route here because if the client is still like, eh, him and in hawing, right?
0:34:06
There are legitimate cases where based on the industry, based on the local market, we don’t really know what the potential is. So if you’re unsure of the real potential of SEO in the client’s market or if the client asks you what the realistic potential is, you can sell the discovery phase as a standalone first step service. Don’t do this up front. Try to bake it into the entire project, the way that we just talked about. But if you have to fall backwards, you think you’ve got this client, but they’re still unsure of what the actual potential is, then let’s go ahead and do the discovery phase as a standalone first step service. So $1,500 upfront, and I’ll show you how to sell that right now. So if they’re him and in hawn and I think it does make sense because especially like I don’t legitimately know what the potential is in their market, then I say let’s do this. I don’t want to make stuff up. I like real data.
0:35:02
Let us do the discovery phase only. Remember, we’ve already gone through the entire process. We went through step one, discovery, step two, architecture, step three, UX, step four, on and on and on, right? We went through that whole process. So now I’m saying, look, let’s just do the discovery phase. It’s $1,500 so we can pull all the numbers and give you a realistic projection of what SEO and PPC can do for your business. Remember, this isn’t just insight into PPC into SEO. It’s insight into PPC if they’re interested in that, which a lot of local businesses should be. And then we’re also doing the competitor research. We can remind them of that. We’re doing the general market research. Here it is right here.
0:35:43
Aside from SEO and PPC, we’re going to get valuable market data and competitor data that will be able to use to make your site and business more effective. You’ll get a chance to see what it’s like to work with us before we go through a full website build together. We’re taking baby steps now, which if somebody is doing lots of objections or they’re just very unsure, they’re usually open to this. And lastly, I say, if you do decide you want us to build your new site, we’ll already be done with phase one and we can dive right into phase two. Because remember how I positioned it. Phase one is required. Discovery is required. So if you do it as a standalone service, assuming after discovery, everything looks good and there’s a lot of potential here and you decide we’re going to go on and do the rest of the project, we’ve already got phase one knocked out. So we can go right into phase two.
0:36:33
They know they’re not losing anything here, right? All right. So the client says, let’s do that. So let’s do, let’s just cover some notes here. One, very, very, very, very, very important. Critical. Do not sell services that you can’t deliver on. I will cover how to deliver on this exact discovery package in separate trainings. Don’t just go out and start selling it now if you don’t already know how to deliver on it, okay? Number two, higher inclines are not going to need as much convincing as lower inclines. So that’s why we did the role play with a lower incline. Three, you can price the package at whatever you want. I already covered this. You can start if we started $1,500 and go out from there.
0:37:14
Location, size of site, size of company, whatever. That can impact the price. If you want to start lower because it’s more comfortable, start lower, but eventually work your way up, right? If you’ve been doing this work for free because you didn’t know how to sell it, stop doing that. Please stop doing work for free, okay? Bill for everything that you do. Number five. If you haven’t been doing a discovery phase with keyword research prior to your site builds, you’re probably making architecture mistakes. I told you in the middle of that presentation, all the sites that I’ve been to where the architecture is an absolute mess. We have to redo the whole thing. So don’t do that to your clients.
0:37:49
Number six, practice makes perfect. So you’re not going to have perfect sales conversations right from the jump. It is a really good benefit to role play this stuff. I will offer to do some live trainings where we actually do jump into some role playing. But I hope you guys got a lot out of this. If you have any thoughts, any objections, any comments, discussions open below. I do want you. If you are capable of delivering on this stuff, start selling this, start selling this immediately. And if you’re not capable of delivering on this, you will be soon because the trainings will be coming.
