Selling to Businesses

Get your own booth and let them come to you. That way you will not only get the exhibitors attention you will also get the visitors to the event who are probably business owners themselves. You also get some networking time as most vendors will be there a few hours before the event opens and will linger after it closes

al

Do you have any experience in website design or upgrading business websites? If you do, you could set up demos of before and after to show your skills.

If not, then you could take some of the business websites you're talking about that you feel are outdated and create your own mock up design and show it to them. Don't do the entire website, but just maybe on page so they get the idea and then propose what you could do for the rest of the site.

I think in this case, it would be critical for you to have your own website about website design. They will want to see SOMETHING you've done before even if it's just your own site.

Showcasing your own website and showing a sample of the other businesses and what their website could look like will make it difficult for them to say no to you (if you're good of course and your rates are not insane for someone who is inexperienced).

I think it's a great stepping stone for you though because if you can get a few businesses on board from that trade show, you'll then have a portfolio built to show others what you can do.

since you have already identify some websites that needs updating...you can send a mail to the site owners offering a free site audit check. And since most of these sites will fail the audit check send the report to them with some call to action why they need to fix the site and blah blah blah. But then i still like the idea of @agmccall - get your own boot and let them come to you!

Thanks for all of those thoughts. Really useful stuff!

There's also another scenario I've come across recently. I'll be in a business of some kind, a shop, garage, restaurant or whatever, and they'll either have a poor website or none at all.

How would you make an initial approach to such businesses?

thanks for the idea

What I do is attend trade shows (no booth), and just network with the vendors. Collect their business cards and followup with my offer(s). This is usually faster, better, and cheaper than having a booth.

What bothers me with this is the businesses are there to promote and sell their own products and probably not looking to buy services from others.

It would be a good idea to call all of them (or email them) beforehand and book a short meeting at the venue if they are interested to update their websites.

You can pull the website up on your cell, and see if it is mobile friendly. If not, point that out to them and explain to them that they are losing leads and sales because of this. Explain to them the importance of having a mobile friendly site, and show them the difference between their site and a mobile friendly one. Then, offer your services, ie, creating that are mobile friendly.

Attract them or drive their attention to you. If you are going to have your own both then let it be catchy, one that will get their attention. Provide some visual aid that would make things easier to understand. Something that will entice their curiosity.

let them know with your past work experience and projects....show them the past project digital marketing benefits and aware them about updation their websites

You don't sell to businesses, you sell to people.

It's not fishing where you catch them in a web or hook them on a line and slowly wear them out until you can easily pull them in and then chop off their heads, tails & scales.

It's not milking them like cows, injecting them with drugs or feeding them to extract the maximum amount of milk for two years then selling them to the meatworks.


They are real human beings who are trying to do the best they can in this short fragile life.


That is sales.

If that is too complicated then;

Tell the truth attractively.
Be nice
Keep a smile on your dial
Use their name
Look at their eyes, don't look up, down or sideways
Be patient, many times you are going to have to suck up their anger towards you and the pain they feel
Touch them in ways not just limited to the physical. Show them you care. Bandaging up the wounded takes compassion
Finally, all relationships are a gamble - an educated guess.

You've got to,

Know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
And, know when to walk away.

I have sold website designs at trade shows, via cold calling/email, and through inbound methods. Here is what I will tell you.
1. If their website sucks, they probably know it. They either don't care, can't afford a better one, have a design in process, or are actively looking to get it upgraded. You will be surprised how many people have crappy websites and just don't care.
2. If their website sucks, they are already getting sold to a ton. You won't be the first person calling or emailing them. So how are you going to stand out enough to get them to talk to you, let alone buy from you?
3. Trade shows are most effective for people that have very outgoing personalities who can make friends easily and quickly. Go to the luncheons/dinners, golf events, or whatever else they have going on that allow you to socialize. Make friends first and then let them find out that you do web design afterwards.
4. If you are going to pay for a booth, then you need to work it hard. I have been to trade shows / conferences and sold $60k+ marketing agreements. I have also gone and not sold anything. Stand up, smile, chit chat, participate in the event so you know what is going on and what people are saying about it, collect contact information from everyone, send LinkedIn connection requests, send follow up emails, add people to drip campaigns, find out who is going to be there before hand and send marketing flyers/emails (Advertise your booth.), give stuff away, talk to the other vendors and build your network for referrals, find guest post opportunities, offer to help as many people as you can, and have a booth that stands out. What I am getting at is that you can't just show up and expect it to work.
5. Consider running display ads.

Hope the above helps.

Adam

I'll tell you a little story re my Daughter and trade shows. My adopted Dad and I own a very large Agency, 76 staff now, but we started off with affiliate marketing and so on. When Sherri was 14 he convinced her to start her own IM business and website, and she chose drop-shipping teen clothes from the US and selling via her website to other students at her high school. Over time she was able to extend her promotions to a number of schools.


Go forward and she is now 16, still at school and going very well (for a 16 year old) with her business. John (my Dad) and I had just written the monthly newsletter that we send to our business clients, and one article was about QR Codes and how to use them, as well as how to make them for free using online generators. Sherri took our draft copy to read and came back saying she was starting a QR business and asking us to take out the list of QR Code Generators and to put her advertisement in it's place. She set up a one page website using most of our article plus order and payment system. As soon as the newsletter was published she started to get orders. She was charging £20 for something she could do for free in about 5 minutes flat, including emailing them the QR Code.



Few months later we were going to a trade show and Sherri (still 16) decided to use the three days to promote her QR business. She had business cards made with her own QR Code printed on them. At the trade show she just approached anyone and everyone, exhibitors or visitors, knowing that most of them owned business's. She would just approach someone, start to chat, ask for their business card and if it didn't have a QR Code she would show them hers, scan it with her phone and show them her website.



In the three days she got hundreds of orders, so many she enlisted the help of two of her school friends to make them for her. I think she paid them £2 for each QR Code they made, which was still very good pocket money for the girls who were churning them out, but even better money for Sherri. lol. She is 22 now, still makes money from the QR Codes but also has four other IM business's and two High Street Fashion Boutiques, selling her own labeled clothing and accessories lines. (sourced from Chinese manufacturers via Alibaba.) She also has a 51% share in a computer repair business that she set up for her boyfriend and recently bought a 50% share of an old fashioned lolly shop in town. She built the customer base for their computer repair business and doing the marketing for both those business's as well as her Boutiques. Yes I know I went on a treat but I am very proud of her.


Back to the trade shows. She got most of her success with approaching visitors, as usually those running the stands are run off their feet, but she still left them her card and brochure.. She had a very casual friendly approach, not salesy at all but just showing them what she could offer. (She also gave out her business card and an A4 folded brochure) And she had a low price point that they could hardly say no to. One thing she picked up on right away was that there were hundreds of exhibitors but thousands of visitors, and most would be business people if the trade show is directed towards them. Plus they were the easiest to approach. The exhibitors are there to sell not buy. The visitors are the ones in the buying mood.



Hope you might get something out of that story.
Cheers
Lindy

Hello John


I'll have to add to the story I told about Sherri as that was more just aimed at how she made hundreds of sales at a trade show, and I just noticed that you were being more specific in - "How would you approach these businesses with a view to updating their website?"


I like myob's advice about just collecting information from the exhibitors and following up later. The reasoning here is that many of the stands would just be manned by staff and even if the owner was present he would be concentrating on gaining new clients or customers for his own business. I also liked Julia's (Strategic SEO) reply and I will add to that in a minute. Not so keen on the idea of setting up your own booth, trade show space is usually very expensive, high hundreds to thousands of dollars plus the cost of your actual stand which can be similar costs. And then you are only talking with those that approach you and if you are a one man show and getting a reasonable number of visits you will find it hard to have a conversation with someone without ignoring others who visit at the same time.


Then you have the biggest problem, you are unknown and untrusted and trying to sell them on a reasonably high priced re-design. If you do convince them that they need it many will go back to their original web designer to have it done. We have 14 very experienced sales people spread throughout England and they would even have problems trying to sell a high priced service to a cold prospect on a cold call.



So we use a "foot in the door" sales method by first offering some low priced service that would help them. So you have collected their cards after a quick chat as myob outlined. (can be from exhibitors or visitors - and remember the largest number of business owners at the show are going to be the visitors if it is a trade show directed at business's. So now after the trade show you have time to look through the cards you collected and identify problems with websites. One problem that we find a lot is no contact form on their website, so they have no way of following up anyone who has visited their website. We show them this, explain why they need it and offer to add a contact form to their website for a very low cost. Then we have upgrades that can give us monthly residual income. The first is that we can link an autoresponder to the form so they can send newsletters and offers to their list. They send us the written newsletter or offer and we upload it and schedule for sending. A second upgrade is that they supply us with some information and news about their business and we write the newsletter for them. (we use writers from Fiverr) We can usually sell one or both of these upgrades as not many business owners want to learn how to use an autoresponder, they sound complicated high tech. Now we are not only generating residual income but they are getting to know us and we are building trust that we can then use to sell them on other services.


Now to Julia's advice on need for mobile responsive websites. That's a major redesign so they are up for high costs. If they balk at that we have another option, we can take their existing website and make a mobile responsive version. You add a small script to their existing website which redirects any visitors that are using cellphones or tablets. So we do this for £195 or about US$250, a fraction of what a new website would cost them. Then we also have a small monthly hosting fee, say US$25 a month. Building residual income again, giving us say an additional $300 a year per client, possibly ongoing for years with no additional work from us. The program we use does most of the mobile redesign in minutes and gives us a Before/After comparison which we can actually show them to help make the sale. Afterwards you might need to make a few manual tweaks for the finished site, but not much. We like to keep our prices low and make our profits on volume. Some companies charge double or more what we charge. One guy from the US told me I was making chicken feed at that price and said he charged US$750. I asked him how many he would do per month and he said at least 3. My reply was that with our lower price we did about 20 per day, so around 100 per week. Thats around 400 per month giving us $100,000 or so per month on just that service alone.. Then we are also adding another $10,000 or so residual monthly income to our pile from the hosting charges. And it only takes 3 girls to do those websites so not a lot of cost at all. I much rather get my chicken feed $250 rather than his rooster feed $750. But I didn't tell him that lol.


Next idea can be used for the small business's you mentioned that don't have a website. Many of these can not afford the $1500 or more for a website, but they could afford say $100 a month plus hosting to lease one. So say $100 month lease, thats $1200 per year. Plus hosting say $25 a month is another $300. So thats $1500 per year anyway but your getting this for as long as they continue to lease the website, so usually year after year after year. You need to have your own hosting to both build residual income as well as stop anyone from moving their website and stop paying you. We have our own hosting company but you can get shared server reseller accounts at many hosting companies. A reseller account may cost you up to $75 a month but you can host just heaps of websites. It takes maybe 3 minutes to set up a hosting account then you are getting those monthly hosting payments for no additional work whatever. In your leasing agreement/contract you retain the rights to the website you design as well as specify your hosting.


I could sit here and tell you a hundred ideas but no time for that. Hope above might help you though, even to generate similar ideas yourself.


Cheers
Lindy

I think the best thing to do is to consult a guru who is good at updating website that will result to more buyers

Back in the day when I had just started online marketing and building websites, I started by selling to conference attendees. One really easy way is to just go to the conference, hang out and get to know people. I actually was invited to cocktail hours and more and while at the conferences, I would pick up a list of attendees and also would give my email in the registration (which would get a list after the conference of all of the attendee AND their websites, phone numbers and emails - gold!) I sold probably 6 figures in one year just from doing this. The point is, you don't have to exhibit - you can just attend to reap the benefits and since you live nearby a conf center, this should be easy peasy

Not quite what I said.

While at the trade shows, the only objective is to briefly network with the vendors and find out who the decision makers are. Never try to sell or otherwise interfere, especially if they are busy. Usually, I just collect business cards after determining if they could be a lead.

Specifically, I would wear a conservative three-piece business suit with a conspicuous name tag, and bring along a business partner who is also similarly dressed. Being vividly memorable is an extremely powerful advantage to leverage when following up.

As mentioned in a previous post, I then call within a few days or mail a postcard. My introduction is generally to compliment the owner or decision maker on their booth and staff, then open with a relevant bold power offer (big claim, ie: "I am going to show you a product that will increase your sales 40% guaranteed").

Don't sell over the phone to these types of leads. Get an appointment to meet with them for your offer presentation, to "prove" or demonstrate the bold power claim. Keep in mind there are many others who use this exact strategy. Selling at trade shows is almost always through visual impact, so your presentation must also contain visual impact which overwhelms the competition.

In addition, consider prospecting the trade show attendees. Quite often I pick up leads by just walking around the hotel lobby as well as the trade show exhibits. Curious about our nametags, they stop and ask "What do you do"? Hand them your business card, and get their contact information.

Not always a sale results, but some of the referrals can be golden. Remember everyone there is either in business, or knows someone who may be looking for your product or service.

It's tricky without coming off like you're flat out attempting to sell them. The way I would approach it is to offer people a chance to have me review their site carefully and then tell them what changes I could make, why I would make them and how it would ultimately benefit them. The review would be something you could offer just as a means of getting your foot in the door. if you can do what you do for a reasonable price, then I don't see why it couldn't work out well for you.