Content writing for generic businesses

Hi all

I've been lurking on the forum for months now and I finally have a question that I could not answer by searching and reading the tons of awesome posts here.

I have been designing websites for local businesses for a couple of years now and want to start offering a content writing services to a specific type of client. This is the client who comes to you and says, "This is what I do in a nutshell, build me a website."
As a designer, I know how to make the website work from a design point of view and I can judge what a client needs design wise from a website, but on the content side, it gets a bit tricky.

There are 2 distinct groups when it comes to these clients:

1. This client provides a generic service (concrete pumping business, plumber, hardware store etc.). They are mostly industrial or brick and mortar businesses and can't describe their service in more than 20 words. So you ask for a bit of a description of their business and what they offer as services so you can write some copy for them and get their company mission statement and a 20 word description of all their services.

2. A company with a long list of broadly defined services that are all related and form part of one key service group. So when you ask this company for some information they send you an introductory paragraph and a bullet list of 20 services.

Now both these customer groups don't see the value in sales pages, squeeze pages .etc
They want a standard 4 pager with a home page, about us, services and contact page. These clients don't know how to sell their service because they almost never need to really sell it. They're used to someone phoning their office with a specific need, providing a quote and doing the job if their quote is accepted.

Now we get to the actual question.
How do you turn this limited information into website copy that will fill up these pages?
If your client can't even sell their own product, how do you?


Note: I'm still learning how to write good copy, so don't judge this post as the level of service I'm planning on providing.