Losing Clients By Not Charging Enough... I just did, by quoting $1,700

I'm not sure what you're asking. I quoted $1,700... he quoted $4,000. I don't think it would have mattered if I quoted $3,000 and he quoted $10,000... It is the appearance and forced value that the higher price is higher quality.

This is exactly what I have been arguing forever. Most don't get it though, they wonder why they aren't getting jobs too. John Durham and I have gone round and round about this exact issue. I think most people here don't charge enough money period.

I sold a website that I pre-ranked to a roofing company for a large sum of money. This is a company that is currently spending around $50k a month for all of their advertising budget(Yellow Pages, PPC, Radio, TV, Billboards, etc). If you came in and offered to sell them a website for $500 as John suggests, you're going to get laughed out of the building.

You should realize that companies are used to paying hundreds to thousands a month for most of their bills, asking for $500-1k-2k is laughable to them. There is a natural distrust on the part of the business owners that if it's too cheap, it can't be worth it. They distrust a deal, wondering what the catch is.

This was a good lesson to learn. You should aim for the fences every now and again. Don't be afraid to charge what you're worth, after all you ARE worth it aren't you?

Marcos

Well I lucked out... Just received the call and they're using me. Apparently I have 3 of his old clients, not just one. I didn't realize that. LOL. Now, I'm a bit bummed because I could have charged $4,000 up front and they would have bit.

This deal in particular is something I really wanted... even though it is $1,700 set up... the money I'm getting on the back end would be about $9,000 a year. The professions of the members on the board, mostly are things they are decision makers with... So one website with a 9K back end, can lead to ten more!

If that's the mindset, then that's what you'll find.

You're right Ryan, you have to prove ROI. You shouldn't sell any service that doesn't provide a reasonable ROI. I routinely turn down clients for which I can't find a reasonable expectation for ROI. I mean it does no good for instance for a Dry Cleaner to be #1 in Google, most people are just going to use whoever is close by and reasonably priced.

For a roofer if you can't justify a reasonable ROI for $1k a month you're not doing your job right. That's not a dream, that's hard reality. I rent a roofing site in a 66k population city and they still get a client every other month that they can directly attribute to the website(it's probably more). So they make roughly $50k a year which is all incremental income. They aren't taking on any more staff, or paying for overtime, or buying any more trucks or paying for more insurance, etc. So their hard costs for that "extra" biz is usually just in materials so they are spending less than $5k a year for materials, and profiting an additional $45k/yr. I rent that site for $500/mo. So it cost them $6k a year to make $45k more profit a year.

I also know the hard realities of the business. In many cases the actual traffic can be fairly low. I have sites that average less than 4UV's per day which are still profitable. Being #1 isn't going to be an instant windfall of cash for most businesses. It can't be your only avenue of business acquisition for most businesses.

It's all in mindset however. Are you sure you have yours right? If they don't use me, they are more likely to go out of business. They can't afford not to hire me. I cost a decent amount of money but guess what, I do what I say I will do.

Plus what you're not getting about SEO is it's typically a one time charge. If I do the work to get your roofing site or whatever up, it's usually going to stay up there with minimal work. Try that with the yellow pages. I'll pay AT&T $10k to give me a full page ad this year, what happens next year, I got nothing. Versus working with a competent SEO company, you might pay $10k this year to get up there, but you'll likely pay $1-2k to keep you up there. And in many cases you can stop paying without any adverse affects.

So no I disagree vigorously that it's not possible to bill reasonable amounts for our services. I in fact argue the opposite way that's almost impossible to bill a reasonable amount for our services. In a major city lets say 1M or above a #1 site could probably get 2-3 new roofing clients a month. If I look at a long term 10 year perspective, I've generated 2(per month) x12(months) x10(years) x10k(price each roof) = roughly $2.4M. How much could I realistically charge that client for SEO Services? Not enough to equal even a small percentage of their revenue. I think 10% should be aggreeable, does that mean I can charge them $240k for SEO? Hardly.

That's just my perspective.

Marcos

Yes, everybody that has been saying this, I agree with it completely... I normally am the highest bidder... For this, I wanted a lower setup to make more on the backend.

Definitely going to start presenting a few proposals and have them decide what they like the best. I have a friend that does that, he brings about 3 options to the table for each client he has, and makes a TON of money that way because companies he thought would only pay a couple thousand, end up paying 15,000.

LOL! Well I do know a couple members of their club, but didn't know any of the board members, only a past president. I'm getting 9 grand on the back end though, so I wasn't really worried about the start up price... although they are now going for around $2,500.

Just a standard site, with protected content... no SEO, I charge $1,000 / mo minimum for SEO... they don't really need it. Also offering reputation management for them which includes some press releases.

This thread was an excellent read. Lots of experience and contibution here. I'm glad you got the contract iamnameless. If you hadn't, I agree with others here, stating that if you kept yourself in the loop and made the club aware you were available, you probably would have picked up their work later on, if your compeditor was as lacking in quality as you mention. The point is, to ensure you complete any bidding process not only professionally, but be on friendly and excellent terms with the club, or prospect organization/business. I have seen many businesses in the offline world, give the contract to the number 2 or number 3 bidder later on, when the work of the original bidder wasn't up to scratch as quoted, or if timelines blew out through the bidder having taken too much work on. Point is to stay in the loop, and keep it friendly. Looks like you did just that, and got the contract that was initially stated as going to the other bidder! Great result.

LOL! The funniest thing is, I would have had absolutely no clue if I didn't see a reference to that about a week and a half ago, and just nodded along until I had a chance to google it and find out what it was they were talking about. I was born in 86 so I never got to see any of those commercials... except on youtube a week ago LOL.