When I started freelancing and fending for myself in this new industry of online marketing I was primarily selling pay per click, web design and SEO services as my core offerings. My goal was to always sell the prospect exactly what they needed and not what made me the most money and that they may not of needed but was nice to have. 

I am by no means a salesman, I hate selling and Im not a big fan of meeting new people and pitching them something they don’t really understand. That just seems awkward to me, and me selling face to face is awkward enough I do NOT look like the typical digital sales person being a large tattooed, bearded man I get a few strange looks when I meet people the first time in office settings haha. Fun Fact you will never see me in a business suit ever! I made a pact with myself that if I ever had to wear a corporate suit again I was doing the thing for work.

My goal was to sell $100k of marketing services for the year . I created myself a large database of businesses in my area that needed help with marketing thanks to help of a lead scraping tool called SCOPELEADS. This tool would let me put in locations, service types and some keywords and would go and bring back hundreds of results that matched my exact request. I spent a couple days building this so it got to a nice fat figure of businesses. When I had 200,000 businesses in that database I now had a playground I work in.

My Main Methods of Contacting these Businesses:
1 Email prospecting with website audits, SEO audits and more
2 Cold calling getting the manager or owner and highlighting the areas of improvement
3 Walking in cold to the physical business and trying to get the owner and manager

This was some time ago and I was starting out, when you start out the hustle is different you try to attack everything. These methods don’t scale well when you get bigger and bigger but for a one man show these were all I had to get the conversation started with these businesses.

What I learned is all of these methods really really SUCK! no one wants to talk to you or hear how their pride and joy website is missing all of these things they don’t understand. I had a of doors slammed in my face and was a hung up on a lot. But I did learn so much about what these business owners do want to hear and what hooks actually got them to take interest in what I was saying. I believe in  failing forward, so I may have lost 2,000 of those leads from my database but after 2,000 interactions I started picking up on what was working or at least intriguing the interest to take the conversation down other paths.

My confidence grew after figuring out these little 1% signals that I would use to compound and get the business owner invested in the conversation. I hate selling I really do but when it was becoming easier and easier I did kind a start to enjoy turning a no into a yes. A very weird turn of events but this sick little addiction to winning the conversation turned into sales and a steady stream of them closing me a nice little portfolio of new clients. I signed on 45 NEW clients over the span of 3 months. This got the attention of a bigger marketing agency who at the time was losing a lot of client (thanks to yours truly) so they made me an offer to sell my business to them for a nice little payday. I didn’t intend to be el solo while running a 47 client agency so this timed perfect with me scaling and then onboarding my new portfolio into their system and account manager team.

My sale of business was agreed on with one clause. That clause was that I work with the purchasing businesses sales and prospecting team to help them turn around their slump of no sales. I agreed of course I love training and developing talent. That was a no brainer. 

I don’t tell you this to impress, big note or get attention, but hopefully, motivate some people who may be starting out to take real action.Now Ive got the 7 tips below to help you level up with selling more SEO. Also because I know what it’s like selling SEO, it’s not an easy task the competition is fierce and the cowboys have made it damn hard to sell.

Seven Tips To Selling Premium SEO Packages
1. Only Target Businesses That Are Already Established And Have An Existing Investing Mindset.

2. Your Success Of Setting Clients Expectations, Will Be A Direct Reflection Of Your Retention & Revenue Success.

3. Frame SEO As A Long Term Growth Plan & You As The Vehicle That Can Only Take Them There.

4. What You Charge For Your Fees Should Be Directly Related To The Potential Value You Bring & The Size Of The Problem You Solve.

5. The Deeper & More Involved In The Client’s Business You Are, The Harder It Is For Them To Operate Without You.

6. Always Give & Deliver Value First. Give Your Best Stuff That Will Help Them Now Before You Ever Ask For The Sale.

7. You Are The Prize, Back Yourselves, Back Your Prices & Be Willing To Walk & Want Nothing!

This forms some of what Ive taught the sales and prospecting team at the agency I consult with thats helped them net $3.4 million in new business.

If you have an existing sales team ask yourself about how they sell and how good are their sales. You should be always reviewing your sales process and communications from sales person to business owner. Do you use the right language, do you highlight their pain points and then your solution all of these really simple conversation points play a pat in getting the conversation turned towards signing on for your services.

What ‘simple things’ can you do to improve sales?
Regardless of what is going on in the economy there are always simple things many businesses can use to improve their sales and profits. Sometimes making more sales is as simple as talking to more potential customers about what you sell. And there are a huge number of simple things you can do to attract more customers.

Here’s an interesting way to attract new customers that was both fun and extremely effective:
A hardware shop increased the number of people coming into their store with a fun competition. They put up a big sign in their window that said: “We guarantee that if you come into our store one of our people will professionally greet and welcome you within 15 seconds. If they don’t we will give you $50.00 worth of hardware of your choice free” People would walk down the street and read this sign. They would stop for a few seconds and then mentally say to themselves “That sounds interesting; I think I will check it out.” So they would walk inside the hardware store to see more about what was going on.

The store had a bell and buzzer on their door that sounded as soon as you went in. One of their salespeople would excuse themselves if they were dealing with a customer by saying something like “Can you just excuse me for 10 seconds” and then walk over to the person and welcome them to the store. “Thank you for coming in today, I’m just with someone else so please free to look around. I’ll be with you in a moment”.

This way the customer was always greeted professionally within 15 seconds of walking in to the shop.Now once the people were in the shop guess what many did?They said to themselves, “Well now that I’m here what can I buy that I might need?” Sales increased dramatically.What ‘simple things’ can you try this week to increase your own sales?The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is ‘look under foot.’
The great opportunity is where you are. John Burroughs

If you want to sell more of something I highly recommend taking stock of the following:
> your unique selling position
> your customers pain points
> your sales messaging and language
> your sales teams method for getting the actual signing of a sales contract/agreement

The sale is an important part of the process and your USP, your sales people and language even down to how they go for the handshake to confirm the deal are all compounding signals that can be improved by just paying attention to them.

I really hope this was helpful and you are able to implement some changes in your processes and business that result in you getting more sales and higher retainers for your services. If you liked this post please share it. Thanks.