Great Comebacks For Cheap Offline Clients?

I'm still trying to figure out what your prospect said that was insulting.

You asked, he answered.

1 word "Next"

You've got his money. Who cares if he insults you? You can tell your friends I ate your socks as long as you cough up the money you owe me.

My response would have been, "Well, if it doesn't work out for some reason, please give me a call." The client may find that they actually get what they pay for.

"Good Luck"

I don't even discuss "doing websites".

It's somewhere in the "lead generation tactics" discussion.

"Oh, you don't have a website? I sort of assumed that you did. Well, we'll take care of that, but we really need to discuss other ways of how we're going to drive prospects into your your lead nurturing system."

Hi, Christian,

You could have said

"Wow! Congratulations! You got a great deal there! I have been looking for ways to make my services cheaper so would it be possible for me to come round and look at this proposal?"

That way you would have found out if there was one.

Christian: I would say to the customer as politely as possible:

Leave it to the customer to work out the implication of what you just said.

I might also ask if the customer would like to receive a brochure, or mention that I am offering an x% discount for the highest priced package only for x number of days or weeks, and then invite the customer to get back to me if for any reason they are not satisfied with the work of the lesser priced company.

This usually gets the customer thinking about wasting their hard earned money for inferior products or services. You're also offering a deal on your expensive package - everyone likes a deal!

You don't have to insult the competitor, just acknowledge that they know what their services are worth. And so do you. And the customer is about to find that out!

I have a client. He nets a large amount per sign-up to his service. I never gave him a list of what I would or would not do. I never gave him a contract either. If I were to send a mere 2.000 targeted visitors to his site and he only was able to sign two of them, his ROI with me is close to 1/20.

He has had other companies in the past give him contracts, lists of services, explain how they will help his business, etc. In a year he had zero people sign up as a result of finding him through the web with those services. With me he signs 4-8 a month (4 the 3 days after I began). Not a ton, but a whole ot better than some flashy guy in a suit that thinks it is still 1996. Lol. He can 'fire' me anytime he likes. Or I can go anytime I like. He gets offers constantly from other larger and fancier companies that say his site sucks and they can do this and that (he sends them all to me. Lol). Maybe they can, maybe they can't. Maybe the site does suck.

I promise one thing and one thing only. To increase his business. Period. How it is done varies from client to client and testing a market is essential (to me). If I don't increase sales, why would I expect to be paid? AP charges a lot more than I do. I typically offer to businesses that don't have a lot of cash. They are the ones that need a boast the most. Hard to find a person with 2 employees (or none) that can shell out 30K for a promise. So I make a little less at first. When documented sales from my efforts become the difference of live and death to a small business, they rarely entertain another offer. They rarely balk at a price increase. And they are usually grateful. They also send all their friends so almost never do I get Mom trying to talk me down. Lol.

for 2K and $50 a month, you didn't lose anything. Be glad they went away. your time is worth more than that.

You get this,

I would make a note of there details, leave it a month and call back to see how everything is going.

I have signed up many a clients doing this! ; )

Keep following up until they tell you to stop calling! I make sure every follow up call starts and is based around advice, in the end they see my value! ; )

GoGetta

A twist from an old marketing story:

How much is your site? $450... oh .. we specialize in fixing $450 sites.

Honestly you're better of without them. If they are going to dicker about price at the beginning, they'll dicker about everything else and try to wrangle you into doing free work.

I had a friend who referred me someone that just wanted a site made. I typically don't take these types of clients because I specialize in marketing and this guy just really wanted a website. So as a favor to my friend I talk to this guy. He tells me how he's hired several people in the past and none of them ever pan out. He's paid multiple people $400 a piece to do his site and then they flake out and bottom line is it's over 2 years later and he still doesn't have a site he's happy with.

So I tell him my price (which I actually discounted since this whole thing is really just a favor) and he tells me he just wants to pay $400. Uhhh...it hasn't worked for you yet, are you really going to keep going down that road? Turns out his assistant has a friend who will do it a lot cheaper than I will.

Now I'm a very frugal person, but it makes sense to pay more to have it done right the first time than to end up spending more in the long run fixing cheap mistakes. Of course all these people who are doing cheap work (in every sense of the word) give our profession a bad name and make people that much more wary to hire a web person. Of course all those wary people don't realize that they're the ones that messed up by only looking at price and not quality or value. If this guy the OP mentioned doesn't work out then he'll be wary to hire the OP later because he's already been screwed once.

Actually I`d say your client was perfectly in his right to decline, and that no comeback would be necessary.
However, I can understand where you are coming from, you feel because of the time invested (yours) that you should have some kind of recompense, and are annoyed that he didn\'t go with you. You shouldn`t be upset, this is just part of the business process. You should also look at your prices. Quite possibly you have priced yourself out of the market, and either need to become more competive (more efficient in what you offer), reposition yourself (offer something others don`t), or look at offering other services.

Hey Christian, I feel your pain man. Listen don't worry so much about it, this happens all the time when your selling services.


There is always someone out there undercutting the next guy. The trick is to keep your composure and be a professional.


I would simply thank him for his time and ask if you could check back with him in a few weeks to see how his new $450.00 dollar site is doing in the search engines.


Believe me when I tell you it wont be doing well.


Think about it, could you create a site, do the market research for targeting keywords, create the graphics, setup the landing pages for lead generation, setup the autoresponder messages, track the analytic, drive the traffic, write the articles, do the backlinking and maintain his site for $450.00 bucks?


I didn't think so, no one would. He will find out he got what he paid for.


The good news is that once he sees the results he will remember your professionalism and want to have you fix things, assuming you kept in touch with him.


At this point though I'm pretty sure you may not want to, seeing as he's a penny pincher.


I always go for clients who are not afraid to spend money to bring in new clients. If your potential client is not actively promoting, then chances are they either don't have the capital or are completely clueless about why they need to advertise.


In any case at least your out there doing something instead of dreaming about it.


Good luck in all your endeavors offline, and remember there is always another client just around the corner.

I would listen to AP that guy has some pretty solid advise. I am working on changing my model from selling a service to selling results. Too many crappy web guys out there that are promising the world on a website for dirt cheap. But by selling the whole package you are no longer competing with the crappy web guy who's own site reminds you of a free geocities site lol.

Good information! Best of luck to you Christian!

ok ...I am game. Lets get started .

Christian, excellent topic

Some solid advice has been thrown out here for people to use or not use.. being a part time offliner I see all aspects of what is being said here. A business wants increased revenue and through a website they see the potential to increase revenue but most of these guys need to have a overall marketing plan installed to really help them, a website is just part of it.

Thanks for a educating post!

"Find someone else to work with".

You want to be working with clients that value your time. I have found with consulting that it is always the clients that try to bargain you down that end up still unsatisfied in the end.

All great advices as I just started helping businesses in my local community too. I don't too much phone calls myself and if can I meet with them face to face.

interesting topic and some great ways of looking at things in a different perspective. I look foward to some more helpful posts.

Directed to AP, Michael Hiles et al...

Cool that you guys get big gigs but the tone of your posts is a bit wierd...

As I'm sure you'll be the first to admit, no one has all the answers, and many multi-million dollar businesses are based on selling low, at volume.

Yeah cool, if you want to go down your road and charge large bucks, do it. But alternatively, you can charge less, properly set up your systems and procedures to scale up and nail a hell of of a lot of clients paying you £750 a month.

Not more work (provided you have the right systems), just a larger client pool, which can brings it's own considerable benefits down the road if you want to sell up, build JVs etc etc.

One other thing, it is easier to sell the latter type of business as it is not tied up with a "personality" or specific skills that only one individual has. Lower cost "plug in" systems that work are can be snapped up at 10X profit, provided you can prove scalability.

I think it's great that you guys do so well,congrats. But no need to be condescending because someone's business is focused on lower prices.

Peace and love everyone, peace and love...
TJ

I own a local home improvement business that specializes in
home design... Because of the slow economy I attempted to
get into home repair handyman type stuff...and it was a mistake
people want you to work for free.

People are excepting low end bids from contactor scums...
I am not going to walmart myself.

So I am with the Guy do not make yourself a commodity.
Create a USP that focuses on what you can do for the client
no one else can.

Back to my point...home remodelers are PIMPING themselves and
when the market turns around they will still have the cheap label.

Yet another example of ignorance.

You've got a guy on here telling you how he gets paid large sums of money and all some of you can reply with is "Yeah, but...."

Has it every occurred to some of you that the Warrior Forum and the recent "offline gold niche" is so tiny compared to the rest of the world? There is so much more to helping businesses than SEO work. I'm guilty of this myself...my product that I sell mentioned SEO and other internet related things. Which is why I'm working on updating it to focus more on the other ways you can increase business profits withOUT the internet or SEO.

Others mention it, I have mentioned it before, and it never fails...when someone talks about mindset and how that is related to your success, or lack of success, either nobody pays attention or replies saying how idiotic it is.

I guess it's the difference between the magic bullet mindset and the mindset of successful people...you know, the ones that realize there is no magic bullet.

It's a shame the Self Improvement part of this forum isn't more active...

Yeah I don't think guys like AP mean to sound arrogant but I understand that they are the type that are just to the point. Most people with the kind of experience they have are.

But at least they are here and offering advise! And as Vagabond said he is telling someone how he makes a ton of money at what he does and he is getting "yeah buts" and being accused of BS!

You would think some people completely new to this and do not know that you can make big money and that some are making way way more than others.

When I find someone making way more than I am I read every post and take action on whatever I can!

Interesting attitude Bob, especially considering I don't have anything for sale here.

So you can't buy anything from me.

Nothing.

You'd definately recognize some of my key clients.

Procter & Gamble, ever hear of them? They used to own a little brand of coffee called Folgers. Several years ago, they launched their instant latte product, Folger's Latte, and rolled out a huge marketing campaign to college students with campus music tours and free sample giveaways. I put together the integration between their web front end and their sampling fulfillment company, a firm at that time called Protocol Marketing. That was a multi-million dollar project alone.

Ever hear of Siemens Business Communications? Siemens had a software company partner called ADIS Automotive Dealership Information Systems. This company had a highly specialized CRM system tailored for retail automotive dealers that captured all of the incoming traffic of web contact requests, inbound PBX calls to the dealership, etc... I built all of the web integration side that used a plug-in to drive all the opt-in and information requests from a dealer's website into the database system. Before ADIS was sold to Reynolds & Reynolds for $40 million, I enjoyed hanging out with them and Siemens, and Gene Simmons (the rocker) in Siemen's booth in New Orleans at the NADA convention. That was a very large deal for me. Still fantastic friends with the CEO of ADIS, who started a couple more successful ventures before deciding to get Wife v. 2.0 and retiring to North Carolina. Could raise millions with him in venture money with a single phone call.

It was 1994 when I got into this game, and I merged my first web development company with Reach Publishing Systems in 1999. They own about 30% of the nation's Val-Pak (the blue coupon direct mail envelope) franchises. At the time, they had zero web effort for anything internally, or anything to offer their coupon advertising direct mail clients. That's was an $80 million dollar/year company in 2001 when I took the check and walked away. Still great friends with the CEO and I could drop 100,000,000 mail pieces for any client in the top 25 national markets with about 6 weeks lead time for each market. It was commonplace to do $20,000 every six weeks with many local business clients in combined direct mail and web campaigns.

Would you like me to continue?

The funding to start my web development company came from my opportunity to sit on the board of directors as the CIO for a startup private mortgage insurance company that was headed up by the founder and CEO of General Electric Mortgage Insurance Corp (GEMIC). When PMICO was sold to 3rd Federal Savings & Loan, I took my money and started a web dev firm.

Prior to that, I was installing predictive dialing systems for financial planning firms to do outbound marketing and direct mail campaigns. That is where I met the CEO that was starting PMICO.

I really don't have anything to prove to anyone, but I am certainly proud of my accomplishments in my career and have zero problem putting it on the table. I generally don't though because it tends to put a lot of "warrior types" on the defensive - whether because of my corporate orientation, or experience, or whatever. So I just sort of talk from experience and leave my resume in the attache.

Recently, I've worked on testing a couple of "offline" product launches, one I beleve that you're even a member of the mailing list (until I log into Aweber and remove you). I pulled off of it because what I do has tested to be far above the general mindset of the specific market of the WF, and frankly, I am pretty busy right now just simply DOING my level of consulting work.

I may still do something, but right now I am focused on the consulting work that has picked back up in a huge way in the 3rd quarter of this year, which is sort of in a conflict with the fact that my wife and I are expecting our 2nd child any day now, and I'm torn between retiring again to spend time with the kids and taking advantage of the low hanging fruit.

Just today, I had a fellow warrior request coaching from me. My response? I don't really do it as a service to other marketers, but I'd be happy to advise you, answer questions within reason, etc... here's my email address. No charge.

As for your $50K deal, that is actually quite modest in the world of corporate consulting. That's actually only 250 hours at a straight fee of $200/hr. Six man weeks? Not really a big deal for my average client size of $10 million in sales with 40 employees.

Feel free to post all the details when you actually do land one.

lol I love Val-Pak I actually use those to find more clients. Sometimes it is best to find them in places where they are already spending money.

Yeah pretty sure Michael knows his stuff!

MichaelHiles I have really respect for you.

I wish you the best in your adventures.

You give me great advice here just reading what you say.

Renier

You want a comeback, so here's an interesting idea.

Find that longtime control for the Wall Street Journal which begins with this famous opening narrative:

Get to know that letter inside and out. And then get crackin' writing a parallel letter that explains to the potential client:

How hiring you is so much better for their business than hiring that web designer who is not familiar with the inner workings of small business marketing. Explain in your letter how the business that hires a web designer based solely on price and thinks that they are saving money is actually losing the opportunity not only to grow but grow exponentially and have their business explode with customers due to the marketing knowledge they will not have implemented in their business. Teach then that marketing is more than a web page, that getting to the top of Google means absolutely nothing if it does not add dollars directly to their bottom line.

A lot of business owners get caught up in the "get a good deal" category and forget why they need a website in the first place. It's not to be able to point out to their customers that they are up to date and have a website, but to increase their bottom line by building a relationship with their customers that makes the customer open their wallets wide to them due to feeling a much stronger desire to do business with them.

Let your potential client know that it used to be yellow page advertising that drove customers to their door, today it's the internet and a properly set up web site, and ten years from now it just might be something else that the other web site designer will have no clue about. But with you, they don't get a website designer, they get a marketing consultant who happens to speak geek and is able to drive customers through their door and add dollars to their bottom line. Ten years from now that other website designer that doesn't understand marketing is going to be out looking for work, or going back to school to learn something else while you more than likely will still be able to help that client continue to drive customers through the door using techniques that will add directly to their bottom line and put cash in their bank account.

Why? Because you are not a website designer. You are a marketer.

But you hang out on an IM forum?

I'll add that they need to read books on BUSINESS... if nothing else to understand business mindsets (and maybe accidently turn their efforts into one as well).

Some favorite books on my shelf....

The E-Myth - Michael Gerber
The Marketing Imagination - Ted Levitt
Differentiate Or Die - Jack Trout
The Toyota Way - Jeff Liker
The Manager's Guide To Competitive Marketing Strategies - Norton Paley
Spin Selling - Neil Rackham
Personal Styled & Effective Performance - Merrill & Reed
New Venture Strategies - Karl H. Vesper
Selling Your Services - Robert Bly
See You At The Top - Zig Ziglar
The Magic Of THinking Big - David Schwartz
Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Marketing High Technology - William Davidow
The Art of Worldy Wisdom - Balthasar Gracian

Michael

have to admit , I jumped the gun before reading all of your posts. I apologize. The irritating part of this discussion was in the past vague references made to making money offline with no specifics. My main problem is making the contacts you seem to have all ready in place. I seem to be going in circles , and not producing the income you guys have.

Quite frankly , I dont think that I would have responded to my post as you did.

Once again , I apologize.

Even though I am new to both the forum and IM, I did run a plant hire company for over 3 years and was the marketing manager for the same company for 2 years before that.
The problem was that the owner of the company wanted us to rent machines out at a much higher rate than what other company's offered, however, we still were number one in the market for one simple reason, added value.

Consider that we had over 100 machines with operators for each and being a woman can often make things difficult (especially if you are young) in the construction business. But I knew my stuff, loved the biz and clients came to me because they knew I would move mountains to keep my word and help them. It was simple for them, they would rather pay me sometimes double than other rates (and this was no small amount of money because we are talking about contracts over 100k) because they knew that in the end they would get better value because of a much lower amount of downtime. I always made sure the repair crew was on call 24/7 and that we had replacement machines in the worst case scenario.

Oh, I got the "you are so expensive I am going to go somewhere else" line so often it isn't funny. But they still ended up coming back because they knew they could call me up and I would help them even if i didn't have the equipment they needed by giving them info on where they could find it, or if it was an emergency then I would give them a machine for a few hours in the evenings when I could pull it off a job for a few hours. I had huge contractors (people like Bechtel) telling me that they only call other companies if I didn't have anything available to help them.

They also love the fact that even though I was the managing director I would still go out to all the sites to meet everyone and make sure everything was cool. Sometimes you will find that the site manager is more crucial to your contract than the GM.

ooops, I have to go, but this post was just to mention that the most important thing is perceived value rather than price. Go the extra mile for them and people will beat a path to your door.

I would give him my business card and tell him, "When the other guy fails to deliver, leaves your website in shambles, or delivers no traffic to it, give me a call. Thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you later."

But that's just me.

Reminds me of a story I heard about a small town barber shop that had a big mega chain hair salon move in across the street and put up a sign that said, "$5 haircuts!"

Knowing they couldn't possibly compete at that price, the barber shop put up a sign that said, "We fix $5 haircuts!" I hear they got a ton of business.

I personally stopped trading time for money. It's a 1099 Internet World, I don't rely on Brick and Mortar businesses any more. They are all cash strapped and don't understand the value of great website design and marketing.

The biggest "marketing guys" aren't even in the same game as Filsaime, Kern, Kennedy, Abraham, etc...

There are major marketing players that spend several million dollars to simply TEST something.

Folks like SAMI/Burke, etc...

You have to realize that in the entire world of marketing, Dan Kennedy or Jay Abraham are tiny in comparison to some of these people.

AP, you asked what guys like me are doing here. I can only speak for myself, after deciding to come out of semi-retirement last year, I started hanging out here because I am as much a software guy as a marketing guy. It's an interesting dichotomy to be an engineer and also a marketing specialists... a dynamic that Perry Marshall can understand. The WF is one of the better marketing forums on the internet, and I've learned just as much about myself over the past several months by simply observing and interacting with folks that have a lot of desire, and are starting out their climb at the mountain base.

I don't do the seminar scene very much. Maybe I need to get out a bit but I've always found it to be more of an excuse for guys to get away from their wives and drink for the weekend - and that's not really my cup of tea.

There's something else to consider.

To IMers, having a website is one of the most important things in the world. To most small business owners, it's a distraction... something they're doing because they've been told they need a "web presence."

Their priorities are health care costs, hiring issues, taxes, government regs and things of that nature.

That's why they price-shop for a website and that's why it's a commodity to them.

You need to look at the situation from their points of view and their priorities, not your own. Then you might realize that just selling websites is a service that will only go down in price over time, not likely up. Especially with all the Wordpress and other 1-click website solutions that are available these days.

I think I would say "Please feel free to call me when it fails to convert"

What am I doing here?
stop learning and start dying
stop helping stop living.

(Besides, I am a newbie)

It is funny. So many in the 'real world' don't know who Kennedy, Abraham, Kern or PM are; most don't even care. When you start talking size, by many standards they are tiny. By Michael or AP's, I am tiny. Other then our family, friends and clients, I am sure no one cares who or what or how well any of us do. You won't see any of us on the next edition of Entertainment Tonight or with Brian Williams on the evening news.

This thread was about selling marketing services to brick and mortar companies. There is a ton of great info and experience in here. This isn't a contest. Everyone has they're own way of doing things driven by different reasons. We seem to market as differently as we do everything else; but the common thread is, none of us sell 'things'. Sell results. when you sell results then that company spending 300,000 a year on yellow pages (that no one reads anymore) spend more with you and less with them.
When you sell a keyword (or 5) on page 1 of Google, someone will do it cheaper or present it in a way that the client pays more than what you were charging. Here's the thing. Is that keyword(s) even going to bring in any business? what percent of those that Google 'Dry cleaning' are college students researching a paper? They aren't buying anything. So while someone undercuts you, they simultaneously screw the customer.

What do I know? Not a damn thing.
There are so many 'SEO' companies with people that graduated in '96 or '03 that do not come to forums and listen to guys like Hiles and AP and these people are running SEO campaigns for businesses AND they don't even know what a Goggle slap is! They never even heard of 'off-page optimization' let alone how to direct market off the internet. They test nothing. They are 'marketers'. Marketer=someone on salary with NO accountability. Market all you want, if it doesn't lead to a sale, it is useless. That is a commodity. (OK, so I do know one thing, that being that I don't know. OK 2 things, the other is I know how to find out, come to forums like this one to learn and test, test, test, Lol).

Nissan markets...Toyota sells! That is no accident. Nissan buys high priced marketing teams that have focus groups and brainstorm ideas. Great. Toyota tests and they test everything. Ask a Nissan rep how much he knows, he'll tell you. Ask a Toyota rep how much he knows, he'll say 'let me get back with you on that after I test it.' I Wonder why Toyota sells 10 times as many cars as Nissan?

All said, I really appreciate what I have learned in this thread. The fact Michael & AP make a lot more than I do doesn't even come into play for me. I could easily target a 'higher' or 'larger' clientele than I do. Fact is, I don't want to. I get as much out of seeing a 1-5 man operation suddenly not have to worry about folding as I do getting my pittance of a check. My clients usually don't have anything but a single line in the yellow pages to begin with. Most are 90 days out of bankruptcy anyway. Turn one of them around and the feeling you get knowing you saved 1-5 guys their jobs is worth more (to me) than they could ever pay. But without learning from everyone of the people here, I could never do that. I'd eventually become a 'marketer'. I know this is a 'marketing' forum, but it isn't really. It is a sales forum. No one sucessfull here is doing any marketing that isn't results driven.

Mark

Loving this thread! Old timers and old dawgs keep the good stuff coming, im taking notes

LOL,
I do remember that. Great commercial if what you were after is entertainment. You are right, didn't sell any trucks; in fact seemed like it unsold a few. Lol.

New to IM, New to helping tiny businesses keep their head above water.

Been in SALES my whole life. Have a disdain for 'marketers'. Lol. Marketing is supposed to 'warm' a prospect up... start the journey through the sales funnel. In my sales carrer (I have sold both Nissans and Toyotas as well as soft drinks & beer) seems marketing has hurt as much as helped. When trying to sell something and you find you need to completely negate what a marketing campaign has done in order to achieve a sale, you can become jaded, I guess. When you find you have to do marketing's job before even beginning yours, it tends to give you different outlook.
That is one reason doing your own thing is so great. It is easy to market when you know how the rest of the process needs to go. With 2 seperate entities, marketing by folks that can't (or won't) sell can be little help and really screw a sale.
Enjoy the sunset.

Yeah I just added all books mentioned to my Amazon wish list.

I have raised my prices after talking with AP a bit. Also redoing a lot of my methods for getting clients.

Sometimes the hardest part of asking for more money is being really confident in what you can do for a business. I have helped a lot of friends for next to nothing. One of the businesses I help had a 25% increase in sales. He only did about 25% of what I told him to do lol. Now he is getting more serious about paying me to help him on 2010.

It is amazing how many simple changes you can make that will earn a business more money. I have not had one client or prospect yet that is using separate phone numbers for tracking their ads! A forwarding number only costs $5 a month!

Not one of them has had their website listed on receipts.

Not one of them has had a plan for getting referrals from existing customers.

Not one of them is following up with existing or prior customers.

It's amazing how many little things they could do better!

How serendipitous -- I just today had that kind of situation. I did a site for a person who had an 'expert' tell her that her site was boring and offered her own site as a model. The model site is old style, boring and has 2 of its five pages blank. It does not even show up on google if you use targeted words that appear in her site's name. My client's site ranks 3 on google in less than 2 weeks. I started to explain this to the client and figured, ah to hell with it. I offered one redo of her site and will do that and then I am out of it. I am on my way to my site to get rid of the webwork link. Done and done.

In the day, I used to instruct in high end software and when people said they could get a better price elsewhere, I said, good for you and good luck with that. when -- invariably -- they came to me weeks later to say it didn't work out, my price doubled. Most of them accepted that without a word.

When I deal with potentiol clients I don't sell them a website, I sell them an online profit center that will act as their digital storefront. Sure anyone can create a website for $450 bucks but how will that cheap website be an asset for their business. If you educate your prospects and let them know that their website is just one tool in the tool set to staying ahead of the competition.

Hi Christian,

I do have many cheap clients. Be sure that 4/5 out of every 10 clients will come back to us if you keep their contact info and get back to them after a while. Bcoz such people will never get their work done at that price anywhere else.

So, stay cool and do your business in a wise manner. Good luck for your future!!!

Regards,
Paul

So interesting story.

I just got out of a meeting with a potential client's "business coach" who he hired for a 3 month term. My hope is to replace the business coach because my understanding is that the guy has done nothing for the client that has generated any profits.

So I am there because the potential client was referred to me by another client. At this time he is only interested in me doing his website because he needs a new one and wants one that brings in traffic and converts sales.

I figured hey if I can get in the door this way and offer some additional advise here and there that pays off maybe I can get a long term contract for all of his marketing.

Of course I sold him on the fact that I do NOT build websites. I create profits. But being that he has paid this coach, he wanted me to see him. The biggest reason I agreed was to just see what this guy was all about.

This guy was such a putz, lol. Extremely arrogant and made sure I understood that he has a degree in marketing, owns a couple of Wendy's restaurants and normally works with Fortune 500 companies. He even threw in a bunch of big words to sound even better.

What was really funny is I almost feel like I told him too much, as I was explaining the importance of targeted traffic and a site that converts etc... I also told him some of the strategies I use here and there and he made sure to write all of them down. Even asking me to repeat some of them so he wrote it down correctly. I'm guessing they were things he didn't learn in "marketing school."

Anyway, so to further prove that he knows more than me I guess, he starts asking me about whether or not I use "visual syntax" and have studied Google's report on it.

He went on to tell me that every single person that visits a site looks at only certain spots (blah blah blah) and how all sites should basically look the same and that is what is most important.

I thought to myself "oh crap! I better call all these marketers with one page sales letters and no fancy graphics in all the right places and tell them they are doing it wrong!"

We can now end all split testing because every business and every product only needs one site design!

He even drew me a picture and explained how he charges a lot of money to teach people this. And how he wants to "help" me.

He was very upset when I told him that I can make a site with hardly any graphics convert just as well as a site loaded with all kinds of strategically placed graphics. That content and a call to action are what mattered most. And that as long as the customer got there because the keyword was optimized properly on your site and they got the info they needed immediately and then you told them what to do next (call, give me your email etc) that the site will convert.

He for some reason did not like that I have tested different sites in different niches and each one seemed to have it's own hot spot for the optin box or phone number or video etc..

Then after all is said and done he informs me that he would be talking with a friend who also does marketing and websites who gives a little more attention to "visual syntax" then I do and would get back to me.

So chances are that he won't be recommending me to the prospective client and will probably be teaching his "friend" all of the notes he wrote down from me, lol.

Am I worried? Not really because the client has great references on me and is not happy with the guy anyway. So pretty sure I will get the job and hopefully a nice monthly contract.

So why did I just waste your time telling you all this? Well mostly to rant but to tell you about the 1 take away I did get from the meeting.

That take away is that the guy is extremely confident in what he does. And I can see how he gets businesses to pay him for his services.

I have no clue what he charges but he certainly does put on a good show. Now although I think his head is a few sizes too big and he needs to freshen up A LOT on his knowledge of internet marketing. I can see why people do business with him and that is his confidence and I am sure he is good at the basics with a business, but I would never let him touch a website or advice anyone on one.

So don't think that you do not know enough to make a business a success, just be confident in what you do know and don't BS the client!

p.s. I cannot find this guy online anywhere and when I did finally get his website address from his business card, his site does not follow any of the guidelines that he told me EVERY site must have and some of the pages are 404's lol.

Sorry for the epic long post but wanted to tell the whole story :-)

lol that's awesome!

Hey John I'm assuming that I am only a few hours away from you, so make sure that if you head up this way to let me know so we can do lunch.

One of the best threads on here I have read in a while. Appreciate all the nuggets of truth that everyone has submitted.

Great! Have him do it!

Hey Christian

What a great post!

It made me laugh.

Thank you for making my day.

Keith

I guess the question is, what value does the other guy provide for his price vs. yours? Is it less value than yours? If so, that is where the whole sales process is about education and teaching your prospect why you are the best and that price isn't a factor.

When people buy based on price it is because they are looking at the service as a commodity. That's not a good business to be in. You need to be educating your prospect on why you are always the absolute best and then price is much lower on their list of priorities.

This is more about how to avoid an 'insulting' situation in the first place.

Allow your prospects to pre-qualify themsleves through your marketing and sales process.

It takes a little effort but pays off.

A simple point to keep in mind...

If they give you a hassle going in, then they will be a hassle through out the relationship.

Most times it is best to just say see you later alligator.


Expect Abundance,

Michael

Great knowledge in this thread alone. Thanks for that guys, really REALLY appreciated. Me and my wife are brainstorming over here

Now, we're growing our customer list every month (75% is webdesign and graphic design for print jobs) BUT we really want to target customers to whom we can deliver our knowledge in SEO, List building, lead generation, etc: bigger customers.

One thing I don't understand is how can we get to those bigger customers (even if we prove we know what we're doing)? How can we compete with big advertisement companies?

This is what I find difficult, since locally we can grab new customers quite easily.

And yes, we have a professional website, we have a good personal presentation, we have good connections and referrals. We don't hide our phone number We've been doing this fulltime since 2004, yet, we can't manage to grab big fish - except a good work for a BIG company this month and a World Championship event last October/November - we created the marketing for them, both web and print.

What's your advice, even with little info on we and what we do?

Appreciate your ideas!! Thanks.

I just dumped a client that's been dragging me down for the past 5 months and it felt GOOD.

I never should have taken them on, but did because I had just started doing this full-time and took every chance i got. It was a big mistake because it really drained my energy and held me back from further expanding my business.

It's a broken business model that I was actually working harder for my cheaper clients. They were much more demanding and wanted to question everything, and sometimes even get in the way.

The clients that understand and appreciate what I do, they just let me do it. Those are the types of people I need to be focusing on!

Matt

An advertising guy I once knew always said that you had to hear 20 NO responses to get to a YES. Say Thanks a Lot Mr. Jones! Have a great day! Then move onto #2.

I work exclusively with one offline niche and travel the country doing so - making (usually) $1200 + per day when I make my calls.

During my visit I let them know that I've studied internet marketing for over 6 years (the truth) and that I also am passionate about their industry (also the truth and it shows when I talk to them).

By the time I've finished explaining my annual membership site and exactly what it offers them, once I've proved I understand their issues and concerns with their current methods of marketing, when I shown that I can do what I say I can do - but this stage they are expecting to pay 20 times what I'm charging. I give them my annual price, then go back and tell them something I 'forgot' to mention and let that figure rattle around in their minds for a couple of minutes. Then I laugh and apologise for getting side tracked, (I'm just so passionate about this industry) then I give them my special price - a 25% lifetime discount plus - because I know their time is valuable and they dont want to learn about this internet marketing / web development - I do all the updates on their site for them too.

I also make sure I show them all the other businesses in this niche - their competition - who have just joined in the last couple of days.

By the time I do all of this there really is no question of them disputing the price or the fact that they need me - they often comment that I haven't left them with any choice - they HAVE to join to stay in the game!

So the short answer is - answer ALL their objections before they get a chance to voice them - it leaves them with nothing else to say but "yes".

I would do exactly the same thing as he did with prices like that. Shop around for a better price. Being smart isn't the same thing as being cheap.

This thread is beyond great! Many thanks to AP, MichaelHiles, Madulali and Vagabond amongst many others! Not only are your advice solid, you flesh it out really well with examples - these help A LOT in making everything more real. I learned so much from AP bits of his conversations with clients.

I know you've changed my mindset and made see way more opportunities that were already there yet I didn't see before.

I feel I can somehow slightly contribute back to you guys with two book recommendations:

Never Eat Alone - if you want to take your networking and people skills to another level

177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class - Best "personal development" book I've ever read. It goes to show the author isn't king at marketing cause this deserves top spot. BTW for the people who don't like to read: each "secret" is 1 to 4 pages long. You can read one every other day for the year if you chose to

You don't need a comeback. You need to pre-qualify him.

You said you sent over 3 separate rates/plans with wide gaps. He chose some guy that charged him $450, which means he's not looking to spend a high amount for a website. You should have never sent him the $1,200 or $800 plans. The first time you spoke with him, you should have been able to gather what his budget is and what he's looking for. It's quite possible the $1,200 and $800 plans scared him off because he may have just assumed the $600 plan was some garbage plan with no value. Had you ONLY sold him the $600 plan, he may have not gone out searching for a cheaper web designer.

When people see 3 plans with differing price values, even if they're cheap, they often assume the cheapest plan isn't that good. The other guy probably just offered him a $450 plan and told him how amazing the plan is. Always pre-qualify.

Good information here! The diverse opinions are captivating as well as instructional for me. I am just starting out in this venture and so all of this is nuggets .... and the tips on Positioning are PURE GOLD and sweet music to my ears. I should have known this from my offline jobs.. but my brain didn't transfer! LOL Thanks for re-arranging my brain for productive action.

hmm...i think many of you guys charge far too high of a price...It's all well to try and sell your self a s a results company etc..but if i can get thos same results for 1/2 price guess where i am going?

so why is that acertainty? Maybe he's just not read all your magic "How to screw your customers and get thanked for it." books?

Disqualify people early, rather than try to qualify them thru the sales process after UMPteem meetings, followups.

You have to do it delicately, but can save an ENORMOUS amount of time and energy.

You have got his funds. Who cares if he insults you? You can tell your friends I ate your socks as long as you cough up the funds you owe me.

That is a price shopper, and he probably had someone he already works with or whatever. The main thing is that people do not work or hire you because of your price, they hire you because they like working with YOU; the value.

When I sense that someone is price shopping, I tend to tell them it is high or low. If you set it low, that is "kind of unethical", but not if you go high. Either way, you could say "Yeah I do full blown twenty pages and the works for $250 - but I just got busy", in which case they go to their "other guy" and ask why they are not getting the $250 deal.

Or you can Go high, and if he bites - then more power to ya!

When someone asks for a quote or a price too early - it's rarely a good thing. Unless we have spoken about what it is I can do, what they need and other expectations and requirements price is not really an issue.

If you are going for revenue (the fluid movement of customers) then you lower your price a little, but anytime you are doing fine you raise your rates. So when someone asks what your price is, they may be testing out several things in their head, but one of them is how DESPERATE are you for revenue. These kind of price shoppers also tend to have their own business setup like this, and are always worried about micro-managing price rather than actually focusing on cost.

I'd say, "Tell you what, I could at least register your domain for you and park a page up there so you can at least be available online for your customers to contact you ... then down the road when it starts bringing in biz... And you are ready to expand we can expand on it over time as resources are available... Even if we dont do the major work till later, I'd like to earn your business today..., in the meantime I can do a little here or there and try to boost it on the search engines a little...Would that help you out Bob"?

You never know, over the next 2 years Bob might be worth 10 or 20k to you in referrals... never miss an opportunity to make someone a client. Dont give them more than you can afford to, at least pay for your hour of time... but dont let them get away without making them a client.

EVENTUALLY everyone decides to start spending money on their website, if they have one... if they dont, then this could go on for years... make sure he has one, that way he will be proud to tell people and start getting emotionally invested in it. Most likely he WILL spend money on it later, as it becomes more and more of a point of reference in his daily business. Maybe even take 20.00 of the $100 he gives you and buy him some business cards with his web address... let him pass those out and get more invested in his site...

Nail him even if he gives you only $100. Do him a favor and say "Would that help you out Bob"?

Oblige him. Kill him with kindness. NAIL THE SALE WHILE YOU HAVE THE CHANCE if at all possible. Basically he just showed you "If you would have offered me a workable solution like a small down payment... You could have nailed me for the whole $600 package". He basically said that with his actions. His objection was real and it was really a money issue/haggling issue, unless he's just making up a story to blow you off... but assuming he's serious; What does this tell you?

SOMETHING AWESOME!

Yes.

It says it really was a good appointment, and that you really WERENT kidding yourself, but that you just stopped rebuttaling a little too soon. You stopped the negotiations just a little to soon... offering a couple more potential solutions for billing may have NAILED this appointment.

So now, the next time you see that, you will say.... "Let me try to tweak my offer a little more for this guy, let me try to negotiate just a little more, and come up with a solution that works a little better for him. He might just do it yet... and keep asking him "Would that help you out Bob...".

A Successful offline business will try their hardest to help a customer make a purchase. Later down the road they will spend more, if you help them trust me. Be the mouse that takes the thorn out of the lions paw. They will appreciate you later.

So , I might call him back up if I were you and say "look Bob, I really wanted to earn your business let me offer you a couple more solutions here, heck I am willing work a little to earn your business and once I do this work you'll see it was a good investment... If I can work with you like that would that help you out"?

Now is this jumping through hoops?

No its just a shot in the dark 60 second phone call... you have about a 50/50 shot.

Why not just walk away on this one and brush it off...?

1: Because in this case there is clearly a solution that can be offered as one last shot to put a grand in your pocket, over the course of the next year at least.

2: Because it only takes 60 seconds to take that shot, but it might take 2 hours to set another appointment.

Its just a matter of efficiency/ergonomics!

Hope this helps.

Over 25 years ago in horseshoeing school my instructor told the class someday a client will tell you they can get a horse shod cheaper by someone else and this is what you tell them: "My price reflects the quality of my work, I can only assume the other guy's price does the same".

Pretty simple stuff, kept my ego and spirit intact for years.

Christian, I am in the same boat as you, my local area has been hit financially and so many of the businesses I speak to use price objections, in my early days I used to do exactly as you did in your openning. It's different for me now, I guess it's because my skin in the game is thicker here's how I handle the "your price is to much objection".
I now come back with this question how much bottom line profit would your business get from 20 new customers? Wait for their answer and make a note of that?
Then I would ask them have you done any advertising with radio, newspaper, yellow pages? They usually say yes? that's when I go into their customer acquistion costs. by the end of that discussion
My new client is aware of how much money they are spending in traditional advertising to buy their customers and what each customer is costing them to buy on average it works out that each customer is costing them around $70 each to buy I then use that figure and show them how my services can reduce that cost down to around $5-10
per customer to buy
My closing is simple which would you prefer to pay? The answers a no brainer. I then give them another optional close and say is it easier for you to pay me monthly or weekly?
Based on that answer I then say can you give me a cheque today for this month and we set up an automatic payment for the rest?

Nice to see AP on this thread. He dishes out brutal tough love and I have learned a lot from him. And I agree with Vagabond 007 about the "yeah buts..." I find that I learn more by listening than by defending my status quo. Thanks for all the good feedback. Christian, I hope you found it as valuable as I did.