Having trouble selling premium listings in your local directory?

It would be difficult to say which is easier for any individual, but both are equally reasonable. Honestly , most people have trouble asking for alot of money, so it would be easier for them to sell cheaper ones, but you could just as easily ask for $500 with a good pitch and list of benefits.

Remember, people dont buy features they buy benefits.

One guy might be better at selling the benefits of the exact same features that another guy has trouble expressing the benefits of. Selling benefits is simply "Building Value".

I will give you a direct answer in a minute, but for now- Building Value is something you do in the emotions of your customers. Sometimes you can add 3 new features, but you dont build any value in the mind of the customer.

If you are decent with your salesmanship though, you can build more value with less features. Its really about salesmanship. Then its also cool if , after you have sold them the value, when you can just throw an extra feature in or two, at the end of the close, to fend off potential post sale buyers remorse.

Building value is explaining the benefits of a feature in a way that excites the prospect.

For instance:

Having just the web page without any extra seo or features at all has alot of value, IF YOU KNOW HOW TO BUILD IT BY EXPRESSING THE BENEFITS.

So in this case (example) , just the page itself, with nothing else is the" feature":

1: It can serve as an online brochure for your potential customers.
2: It can be a place where customers can still buy your products even after your store hours are closed, that way you dont miss the customers that would maybe like to shop after hours.
3: You can put it on all of your business cards along with your phone number.
4: Instead of explaining your policies on the phone you can send people to your web page and it does all the work for you.
5: You can be featured on a directory right next to your top competitors, without spending a fortune....and take advantage of some of their advertising budget, because they send people to the directory and many of those people look around while they are here at other businesses featured.
6: You can use it in your offline advertising, and your yellow page ads to offer your customers even ONE more way to contact you for those who prefer the web over calling in.
7: You will get some visitors from search engines who arent currently customers and tell them all about your store effortlessly, even without any outside advertising.
8: You can back link it to any other sites you have increasing their authority...
9: Customers can fill out your online questionnaire...
10: You can list coupons, special and discounts on your page...and ask people to send them to others as well... thereby creating a little viral traffic with no effort.
11: You can list your 800 number on it...
12: Unlike yellow page ads , you can track and quantify your results.

All that and more (if I had time to list) can be used to build the value of just a single feature...a basic web page in your directory with no frills...

The idea is to have a couple of features and list all the benefits as opposed to listing a ton of features.

Now add more features if you want: (Samples)

Lets say your directory listing package includes a google places listing, a mobile version, seo, and live chat -

Thats a good $500 per month package if you sell it right.

Present it the same way, using benefits that build value. Again, a list of benefits builds even more value than a long list of features, but lets add a few:

1: You can add live chat

Value Building Benefits

A:
B:
C:

2: You can add a google places listing

Value Building Benefits

A:
B:
C:

3: You can add a backlink package

Value Building benefits

A:
B:
C:

4: You can add your own corporate email address instead of emailing from yahoo accounts...

A:
B:
C:

5: You can add your own forwarding .com domain

Benefits

A:
B:
C:

6: You can add mobile version of site:

A:
B:
C:

Then after you have them excited about the benefits, say something like "We are even going to throw in $100 advertising voucher worth $100 of free google advertising for you, just for buying today!

and thus put it over the top.

So basically Pmarketing, its really all about how you sell and engage the customer.

The "feature" is the Live chat function, and the benefits of that are what build value A,B,C.

Features mean little, but benefits are the "Whats In It For Me?". Thats what turns the customer on.

The better you can communicate those the better you can sell, and the more you can sell for.

Price depends on what you have to work with that you can sell. How many benefits can you line out? How well can you communicate them?

In any event, if you know how to sell, which you can learn here at WF, then either price is sellable, and it would certainly seem that selling them for higher is advantageous if you can build enough value in your presentation that it seems worth it to both you (because you have to be convinced to be convincing) and your customer.

You convince YOURSELF, by selling your own person on how much benefit actually exists there that you might be taking for granted, and you sell the customer the same way.

Surely you can see that for a person who doesnt have one, just a web page itself, without any frills can really benefit their business in at least ten different ways which I have lined out above. Even more if you think about it.

Hope this helps, and thanks for the opportunity to help. It felt good to get some led out and answer a post or two.

-John