My SEO Company is Dying! Please Help

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This is my first post but I've been lurking this forum for YEARS. I've learned so much from so many people here but I now feel I need to reach out for help. Here's my story:

Over a year and a half ago I started an SEO company. I'm no salesperson so I hired a friend with a background in tele-sales and he averaged only 3-4 sales per month. It took over a YEAR just to make enough sales to barely afford to expand into an office (~$2,500/month). I took the leap in December 2011 into a nice office. It took all the money the company made since its inception to move in and furnish this place.

My pricing is $348-$598 first month and $149-$399 per month thereafter. No contracts! For this price I offer optimization of the client's existing site, or if they don't have a site I buy a domain and create a one page site. I make them a 30-second video, optimize their Google Places, their Yahoo! Local listing, place them in directories, create a Facebook and Blog that is updated bi-monthly, research their competition once monthly to discover new citation sources, provide reputation management to cut down on any negative reviews while eliciting positive reviews, provide a tracking phone number, give them $100 toward AdWords within 72hrs of signup to juice them while we work on everything and depending on price we will keep the AdWords going throughout each month. YES, we do all that! I do a great job for my clients who typically see anywhere from 15-50 new phone calls per month come in through our tracking system.

Problem is, since moving into this office I have hired OVER 40 salespeople for telemarketing and I am disappointed to admit I do not have a single one of them still working for me today. In fact, not ONE of them ever made a sale! They either quit the first day after making 30 calls or they come in for a week or two and end up quitting anyways due to no sales. Pay structure is commission only with 40% front end, 10% monthly residual with a $300 bonus for closing your first 5 sales. Also two or more sales in one day = cash bonus as well as a $100 cash bonus for making over 5 sales in one week. After the first 20 sales I bump them up to 50% up front with a 15% monthly residual.

My sales manager remains my only winner but now his rate is 2 per month This paltry sales rate has brought him to the decision to leave the company. I don't even blame him, he's not making enough money. I'm not making enough money. At one point I tried making my own sales but only managed to close 2 deals in 3 months.

Here's the beginning of our script:
"Hello, Good morning (or afternoon), may I speak with ____. This is _____ with ______. I'm Looking for a _____ in ____ to help bring more clients in. Is this a good time to talk? How are most of your customers finding you if you don't mind me asking?"

From there it's sort of a play-it-by-ear situation. We have a form that asks all the information we need about their business that we walk them through over the phone and we have an informational email that we send on request. Believe it or not the script has been revised and tested over 20 times and unfortunately no matter how we word it, the sales refuse to happen.

Most of the people who sound interested end up flaking out using excuses such as "I don't have the money" or "I don't need any more business right now" or they ask to call them back another day in which case it is a perpetual game of phone tag. Half the time they won't even pick up the phone (dodging our calls?).

Can anyone offer advice concerning the sales problem? I've been working this entire time for free, never taking a paycheck from the company and living entirely off of savings.
#search engine optimization #company #dying #seo
  • [DELETED]
  • Get a new script. There's tons of information and WSO's on helping you with that- your script is so dull and generic. If I heard that I'd hang up in a second.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      You have to sell more aggresively, let them feel that it sucks to not be on the first page in Google and that they are missing a ton of value to competitors that way.
  • I completely agree with you, Ashera. Problem is I have tried again and again to revise the script but the end result is always the same. I realize I may need to seek an outside source for a script but I have had trouble finding anything out there that seems to relate to me, and I have done tons of searching on this subject. Could you or anyone else point me to a thread or WSO that contains a working SEO script?

    As for studentmedia, the post was lengthy to ensure no details were left out. Just posting "I'm having trouble making sales, help?" would have brought on responses requesting more information such as what is my script, how much do I charge, what do I pay my sales people, what services do I provide etc.
  • Your script is awful my friend. Pay someone to do something really good. I have a offline based company in Italy and I paid 300€ to get a one page sales letter , my conversion rate so far is pretty good. We have 3 different versions of it and we use a different one every time , based on our local client.

    I can't really tell you what to write down, you need to focus on your clients mentality and start working from there. Good luck
    • [1] reply
    • Trust me when I say I have spent countless hours revising the script based on what my 'clients mentality' is. Everything I come up with is awful and everything my sales manager comes up with is equally as awful.

      Just think: that is the 20th-or-so iteration of my script and THAT is what I've ended up with!

      I'm great at ranking local businesses and creating new business for them but I am the epitome of a terrible salesperson and the last guy who should be writing scripts. I'll gladly pay money for a script I just don't know where to get one from or who to pay.
      • [2] replies
  • Start voice broadcasting, it is not against the law to broadcast B2B. Use a message which says you want to update their profile for free and take it from there. Oldest trick in the local SEO sales book.

    By providing the free service of making sure their profile is correct you build trust and get an look at their listing so you can explain their weaknesses and the service you can provide. Once that person is interested send them to the closer who gets them signed up.
  • Your Staff turnover is terrible and that is a lot of people to go through your office and not get paid. How about giving more incentives, sometimes commission only is not enough.
  • I appreciate everyone's responses. I would like to add that I do have other methods of sales both already implemented and up-and-coming. I am involved in the community networking with businesses, a member of the chamber of commerce and even going to be holding a 'seminar'-type presentation in two weeks. On top of this I will be implementing a mailer campaign. Also I have a friend going door to door part-time (just started this last week) and he seems to be getting the hang of it.

    Unfortunately none of that solves the problem of an empty office furnished for an 8-man telemarketing team. It seems my main problem is with the script and I have suspected the script of being poorly written and thus a poor performer many times, and I have re-written and revised it many times to no avail. I guess I needed confirmation of this from the forum because at this point I have nobody else to turn to for help.

    If anyone could point me at a source of a script, or a 'script writing person' or 'script writing service', whether it be free or paid, it would be a great boon and blessing to me and my company.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      I think you need to train your employees better, they probably know way to less about SEO to ask the prospects questions
  • Hire some freelancer tele-markers, I am sure you can find someone at freelancer.com or odesk.com - You can hire at low cost, specially guys from South East Asia (Philippines) are highly recommended as their proficiency in English is high. Hope it helps,

    However, when you hire, check their reviews, already worked projects and etc - Don't go for newbie as you are in middle, go for bit experienced guys. Good luck,
    • [1] reply
    • well that is your answer right there. Stop being a telemarketing office and instead be an s e o office. What you need to do is you need to create the sites, rank them, and then approach several businesses regarding each site so that they can purchase your services from you for that site....
  • You need to be offering something on a monthly basis so keep your customers returning. Once you have them you need to do what ever it takes by either making the services cheaper or more for their money. Lets say you have 5 clients you can send them an email saying something like "Out of all of our clients you have been selected to receive a Bonus of....." He would be really chuffed with this and feel like he has more of a connection with the company. As for sales you don't need 8 'telesales' you need 1-2 'bullsh*ters' People who can think of their feed, know the business, know the industry and that can actually sell something. Also you don't need full time people just freelance right now. The freelance people can be part time on a 'cash' purpose and come into your office and have their own workspace but only on a part time. You will always get what you pay for.
    • [1] reply
  • Volunteer work is a awesome opportunity for clients. I've gotten quite a few quality clients through volunteer work. Non-profits, local events health organizations. I'm sure you can turn your business around by lending yourself to a few causes. I've gotten clients through volunteering than than any networking circle I've been apart of. You can also run a few local classes for business owners. Position yourself as an expert, and then they will be asking YOU for your business.
  • You could diversify your income streams by building websites for you that make you money as well as making sites for others in the offline world.. Just a thought. If you have the skill sets of seo and building of websites whats stopping you?
  • Any company expansion is based on profits/turnover, and you expanding into the new office does not match your profits. You expanded too soon. You could have managed everything virtually as suggested.

    Anyway, you can send me a PM of your current script if you wish, and I will take a look.
  • I'll be honest with you, as a business owner I can't stand it when seo companies ring me, in fact i hate it. Telling me I need to be #1 in Google when I already am. If you are ringing people and they are hanging up the phone then you are looking in the wrong places and choosing the wrong business'. These people are just too busy.

    I would knock the telemarketing on the head completely and source clients online. I have built websites and whole business' for people just by talking to them on forums like this. Trade forums like plumbing, cleaning, carpentry, builders forums, car valeting etc make a list of all the trades you can think of and sign up to a few large forums.

    If you sign up you will see alot of newbies looking for help and guidance, they are just starting out and need their hand holding for a while. They might have a small budget ready and need help getting things moving. In this case you really shouldn't think of yourself as an seo but a business consultant who has experience with helping new start ups.

    The same story with ebay, go there and see the demand for business' for sale. There is alot of people out of work and also alot of people with large redundancy payoffs looking for something to do. Go to the Adwords tool and see the demand it's huge, but you need to get yourself seen online, once they see your offer they will come to you.

    Go on some of the large trade forums and leave a really good signature and partipate there. Put something like; "Get a website and get #1 in Google". I will guaranted within a week someone will email you. Same with ebay, offer local site design and actually list websites, look at the demand and see what people are looking for. Many are first timers and need help, so put that in your listing, that you won't just sell the site and leave them in the dark.

    Instead of cold calling use local papers. Tell the paper to put the ad in the business section. Many of these business' rely soley on papers so when they see your ad for web design and more business they will take an interest. It's also good to network with local business and chances are they will refer you.

    As mentioned there are alot of people out of work so why not use job directories and post an ad? Something like "tired of being unemployed? Then start your own business!". Just because they are unemployed doesn't mean to say they can't find the start up capital.

    When you look for business like this it's very targeted, they will be looking for support and you need to be there to help them. If your sifting through sites on page 1/2 of Google this is not targeted and ringing them is mostly unwanted, they don't care how nice you are or how good your script is.
    • [ 7 ] Thanks
    • [3] replies
    • dmtaylor, why others don't catch on is why I have a bite.

      The first and only answer should have been, quit cold calling.
      Especially in the US. We have a do not call list, and some people,
      myself included are quite aggressive. I report all crap via the
      fcc website. It works. You could get fined, sued, or both.
      You can't just pick numbers to call.

      Stuff like this is what gives true "SEO" a bad name.

      There's nothing SEO about telemarketing.

      Now if you are not cold calling, then you must have a
      lousy way of getting prospects.

      If you have a real company, your manager would not be making
      sales calls, and if he did, certainly would be selling more than 2 a
      month.

      You don't have an SEO company.

      A good SEO company sells itself.

      Seriously. I have never heard of any legit SEO "company"
      doing what you are doing.

      Paul
      • [ 2 ] Thanks

    • I totally agree with dmtaylor quit/stop cold calling as people are busy and they don't want to be bombarded with telephone calls/offers.
    • Thanks, I thought I was the ONLY 1 that gets 3 a day!,MIN!!,Yikes, I need a seperate answering machine, JUST for them!,TY,for a Great Idea, and Modular plugs! Bingo!, Its in the works! LOL,On Them,when i Nicely say, hang on for a second!!! HEHEHEHEH,,Just thinking about it,has my mind going like the 1st Potato,shooter I made! Way before its time, From 100 Yards,thru a page fence,Looked like french fries!
  • I would go for cutting out the telemarketing. I built a large list of local businesses simply by attending events and networking.
  • I have to admit, I'm in the boat with paulgl. You're an SEO company but you're using traditional marketing methods that are older than the process of SEO itself. There are many, many new marketing approaches that utilize new technology and are far more effective (and less costly) than what you're currently doing. I'd get out of that office as soon as possible. There's no reason you should be paying that amount of overhead every month to stay in business. You can run an SEO company with a $70/mo Internet connection, $20/mo VoIP line forwarding to your cell phone and a $15/mo hosting account. Take a step back, collect yourself, maybe take a few days off and realize you're not in trouble just yet. All you have to do is get a little creative and think outside of the box a bit. To be honest, I'd ditch the script. Cold calling is dead. Don't waste money on getting someone to write you a new one. The reality is, people don't like telemarketers. *hint* You need to figure out a way to get in touch with people that already know they want what you have to offer. Believe me, there are plenty of customers out there. Here's a quote that I think you should internalize - "All lasting business is built on friendship." You've got this under control, just made a couple wrong turns that's all. Nothing you can't recover from.
    • [1] reply
    • True. The people that are successful with telemarketing are very experienced and know how to laser target their clients, they know who their clients are, what they do and how they think. They are very confident and have an outgoing, arrogant, vain, outrovert personality.

      You need rigarous training and the job is extremely stressful. If you haven't got 5 years+ exp then forget it, your not going to sell anything - you will not find experienced telemarketers turning up at your door, these people are worth 100k+ annually. Some people are really born salesmen and can flog a dead horse, so look at the type of person you are? are you really made for this? You need to know who you are and what your best skills are.

      There are a few reasons why cold calling business' is a bad idea but the main one is you are wasting their time! they are too busy and haven't got time to stand around talking to you, also you are blocking their line! their customers are getting an engaged tone so think about the business you're losing them and why they get angry.

      You are far better targeting people by email (even this is not an exact science), everything is trends and circumstances you can't just buy an email list but you can email certain business' at certain times of the year, in a dry period perhaps? which business' and when? i.e an accountant would mail out a sales pitch just before the end of the tax year. When they reply - respond with the hour, this will show you are an action taker.

      Ditching the office is a good idea, isn't one of the great things about working online is having the freedom to work anywhere in the world? go mobile.. Suited, booted with car, phone and laptop - is all you need. You can be living in a wooden shack in India and still be an excellent seo! (no offence meant)

      Using other people skills is also a good move, for the cost of that office you could hire 10 forum posters, and you could have a pretty decent Adwords campaign too.. Target people's email coversations, get inside their heads and read their minds, know what they want, when they want it and most of all give them an offer they can't refuse.

      eBay is the biggest online market place in the world, if your not using it then their is something wrong, same goes for all the classified ads websites and Adwords, spend the cash and set up a good looking store with high quality products, show case studies and portfolios, sell your products hard, use call to actions words, use colour psychology and plenty of images, make them see all the things they haven't got and what they're missing out on and also focus on the great deal your giving them, if it's more costly elsewhere then tell them! If you want to be a professional then you need to look like a professional.

      Use guarantee's and put your money where you mouth is, like Paul said if you're really good then your business will sell itself and you will be turning people away because you're too busy.

      Use loss leaders, your main charge is too high $500 just to get them in the door, it's too much and is putting them off, you're not thinking like a marketer. Give away FREE websites or reduce the price "Get 50% OFF now!" and capitalize on hosting services. If you know what you're doing then you should be able to throw up a 10 page site within the hour. Also play on the FREE advertising Google give you to get them going.

      Don't just give them a crappy 3 page site! build high quality 10 page websites, this is what will make them want to spend more money with you so go above and behond and you will be rewarded for it. This is really important to them so get this right. If your clients are retail then go for the deluxe style magento themes, and make it perfect.

      Target your clients hook, line and sinker once they take the bait, UPSELL! UPSELL! UPSELL! use addon services, Adwords campaign managment, Google places listing, organic seo, social media, directory submission or bundle them together and give them a great deal.

      Remember some of these people might not have the money ($500), but it doesn't mean they won't be loyal customers that will pay you for a long time. You need to offer services that meets everyones budget and you need to know what's hot and whats not and at what price.

      I admit that some people are very stingy, they don't see the value in paid services like Adwords, but you need to show them case studies and just how much benefit it can bring and what it can do for site health. Tell them the more they spend the more they will get back. If you sell these services then I would give them a good deal too, not just 3 keywords for $60, give them 30 keywords for $100 or more.

      Converting clients from other companies is alot harder, this is where you need a good character, rather than asking them "How are most of your customers finding you if you don't mind me asking?" is insulting quite frankly, if you asked me this I would tell you to bog off!. To do this you need to know who your competitors are, how much they are charging and how sucessful they are.. Give away free trials and a no obligation offer, show them fact and figures and the ROI they will get.

      To be a real whitehat seo you need to be a business person, so you need to understand web design, advertising, marketing, graphic design and have a wide range of skills including skills not related to seo like accounting, bookeeping, sales, logistics, business economics and business development, tax and employment laws, all the things that affect online and offline business'.

      On a final note, be an opportunist - there are plenty of people ****ing clients websites rankings up right now. If your smart then you will capitalize on this opportunity. Fire out ads like "Hit by Penguin? Get you site back today!"

      Go to the Google webmaster forums, sign up a few fake accounts and when people turn up bitching leave your link, say they helped you and can get your site back, same with all other webmaster and business support forums. Give them a free on and off page website analysis report, don't give them too much info, just what you can do for them..
  • Banned
    Personally I started selling SEO services only 3-4 months ago and only online at the WF, I do this from my home, I don't have a fancy office but I did manage to hook some large clients. It took a little bit of time though, when I launched my ad I only made like 1-2 sales a week for the first few weeks. My first client was an offline client, he recommended me to 2 of his friends/colleagues that have already placed repeat orders.

    When you provide a good service that works it can go like crazy, people see what I sell, like the types of links and in return I get contacted by small and medium SEO companies and SEO'ers who are just tired of doing it theirselves and outsource their whole client base and/or websites to me.

    Now ofcourse you can say offline clients pay better, although that is true I have nothing to complain, it's all about being able to organize and outsource to the right people that you can trust. And ofcourse triple checking the delivered work the first dozen times. I remember when I contacted my first offline client by phone almost a year ago, we had a long chat but it didn't turn into a deal but personally I think that was cause of my lack of sales skills. The client had questions that I couldn't answer properly.

    That's why it's very important that you know what you are talking about and that is why it's not possible to give a student some script and that's it. I am pretty sure that if I start to do some research now and phone 5 clients in the right niche that I will close a deal. My tactic would be a lot different then starting with $500 for 1st month and $200 or so afterwards. Instead I would offer them the first month for free and increase the prices along the way.

    Lately I had someone contacting me with a huge travel site. His idea was to spend $200 for a few months and then turn into some maintenance mode. I was like really?? You have a travel site that targets the whole world. Once I get you rankings for certain keywords and you start to make money you should keep expanding the budget more and more and more. The more you make, the more you send to me (yeah good for me ofcourse) but also good for the clients as there are 100.000's of kw's to target. People should change their mindset from the maintenance idea to expanding mode.
  • Read cashvertising. Good little book that may give you some hot one liners. It helped me
  • Lots of local businesses are hurting. To them "SEO" probably sounds like vaporware. There's no guarantee they'll rank. The only guarantee is they'll have higher expenses.

    You need to reduce their risk. Do this with a free trial for one month, or a greatly reduced package. Once they're in, upsell them.
  • You should really look into the copywriting section on this forum. Or search some free stuff on NLP. And include psychological triggers into your script.

    Talk about the effect your service will have for them. It should all be about your potential customer.
  • Banned
    I don't do SEO for offline clients but If I did, one of the first places I would be looking for new clients is the state business license registry, then I would sort that registry database by the newest original date (not renewal date) for each business license.

    The business that needs the most help with traffic is the guy/gal that has recently started up a new offline business.

    Most new business fail within their 1st year, why, because they don't have traffic. Show them how you'll deliver traffic.

    Get a proven sales person, friends don't count, this is business.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • Wow, a lot of responses here. I would thank each and every one of you if I knew how...maybe I can't since I'm a 'new' member.

    Keep in mind I didn't roll out of bed yesterday with this business. I've been in business over a year and a half and my company is profiting! Well, it's profiting as a whole. The telemarketing part of this venture is a complete failure with virtually zero sales over the life of 40 salespeople. I do not have any problem with people cancelling on me (no more than the next guy) and like I said before, we get businesses ranked on Google but most importantly we bring in phone calls and new business to our clients. (My clients are very happy with our service but they never deliver on their promise to refer us to other business owners)

    When I say my company is dying I mean If the business was a person, the telemarketing office is a malignant cancer trying to kill it by eating into my revenue and my time while not producing a single dollar in return.

    A few of you are suggesting to bail out of the office and while I see the merit in this advice, I just can't see it happening. I waited over a year while building a decent customer base to get in here and I would be disheartened to move out. Instead, judging from the ideas you kind people have proposed to me, I could re-fashion the office into a different type of sales space.

    I already have a guy who just started going out door to door and he has had good success for his limited time out there. He needs a home base to report to and my apartment will just not do. I am going to be implementing a mailer campaign next week and whoever I assign to that will need a space to work. Again, not my apartment.

    I could see half the space for telemarketing set aside for new sales ventures such as door to door, mail, email, forums, ebay (as some of you suggested) but there still remains plenty of room and resources in this office for telemarketing. Is tele-sales really dead? Where's John Durham, isn't he supposed to swoop in by now to assure that it's alive and doing better than ever? I heard he's locked out of the forum while he writes a new WSO and juices up his telemarketing forum..
  • Go for it.. It's not like you need to get rid of the office per se, but you will be struggling to invest extra in marketing costs, expansion and development but if you act fast and take action now then there's hope.

    No offence meant, I though I would give you a few ideas, most of my experience comes from online sales in retail, particularly computer engineering and also offline marketing and networking. I have never needed to use telemarketing or a phone unless I'm providing support and survive pretty well.

    Regarding the telesales, maybe there are some experts like John Durham, but like I said they are very experienced and choose their prospects and niche carefully. At the end of the day you need to focus your efforts on what pays off.

    Converting half of your office sounds like a good idea, 2 computers and a small design and development team that can source clients, answer emails, basic web design and ebay listings with reseller hosting etc, you can keep them busy by just throwing up sites geo/niche and flogging them off cheap, then attack with the seo services, recurring hosting costs etc.

    Good luck, would be nice for you to report back in a few weeks that your banking it
  • You need to revise the way you are getting clients. Cold calling with your current script isn't working, and you know that. Heck, if you called me with that I likely would hang up on you too.

    Second, why did you dive in HEAD first into this without scaling your business the right way? First figure out the systems that are needed in business, and then scale accordingly. While I respect your cojones, getting yourself into the overhead like you did obviously wasn't a smart move.

    You need to take a good look at what companies that are successful in this space ARE doing. Then replicate, and improve upon that. I'll be honest, most SEO companies/services are a joke and provide little to no end value to the client. Provide more value, and get yourself a NEW angle. And you can crush it in this industry.
  • It might be a good idea to do your seo optimization to reach the top of google for the seo services. If you have a team.

    Some web 2.0 sites have authority like blogger, squidoo. You can have your team create post on those to start getting traffic to an offer.

    Create a squeeze page offering clients information. You never want to move into an office wrong strategy, at least in the beginning.

    You want to keep everything virtual, hire people in the Philippines to do quality work dirt cheap. Get your clients from doing your own seo

    You can also use ebay to get clients. I bet you never thought about that one. It's possible and still under the radar, so you can get a nice cliente going without having to hire sales people.

    Another thing you can do, you can look up websites that are doing well in the serps to find clients and send them a letter then follow up with a call.

    But you can hirer someone in the phillipines for dirt cheap to make your calls.

    You can find tons of clients in the WaRRioR FoRUm. You can list your services or participate in post to find clients galore.

    You can get enought clients in the warrior forum to keep you entire 40 sales people on staff as customer service....

    The warrior forum is vast.... indeed....

    Hope that helped....
    • [1] reply
    • Here's a tip if your doing telemarketing;

      Insurance Over-Payments

      There's alot of people that have overpaid on loans, such as personal loans, business loans up to 30% more was added to their premium without their consent.

      Here in the UK, the laws have changed and these additional fee's have been deemed illegal by the government, such as payment protection insurance and other additional cover.

      All you need is a list of people that have taken out personal or business loans, there are some people selling this information, then filing against the insurance brokers.

      The average payout is £2500 but can be as much as £10,000, with a 25% commission. Responce rates and conversions are very high, maybe you're in the wrong business
  • Stick with your outside salesmen and RAISE your damn prices! And stop selling SEO and start selling positioning instead.
    • [1] reply
    • I think with prices it really depends who your clients are, some business' will pay a $1000 for a text link and buy hundreds of them..

      moredigital.com is a good example of a sucessful brand reputation, social media and postioning company.

      There's no reason why you can't pull in $20k per month doing local seo with cheaper packages either, different strokes for different folks..
      • [1] reply
  • Rebrand as an integrated marketing agency and include social media marketing and email marketing. Rebrand as a 'positioning expert' as Rus said.
  • Banned
    I would say in providing SEO service, tel calling is not effective, the effective way is to create a service website, should look professional website, optimize it according to your region for example, keywords:

    Toronto SEO
    SEO service in Toronto
    Cheap SEO service in Toronto
    Affordable SEO service in Toronto
    Search Engine Optimization in Toront
    Search Engine Optimization Toronto
    Advertising Service Toronto
    Web Design Toronto

    optimize few of them which are less competitive then you can start receiving response and it is the greatest way to sell seo services, believe me.
    • [1] reply
    • Spot on! built from the ground up as a real local business using local seo which, happens to be the very thing your selling and the comments about rebranding, when you do this people will be looking for you.. (think Sear Interative)

      @warriorfellow Now I'm confused? you build and rank local sites, but you don't do it for yourself? :confused:
  • somehow, it is better for you to get their AWARENESS, TRUST, and RESPECT before they could decide to involve or making a deal with you.

    it is currently not just about create new transcript, but you also need to be smart to start your action. sit down and write out everything you already know about your prospective client, or think you know about it then write out the details.. attract their AWARENESS and TRUST by doing this before you made a call.

    it works for me, I believe it will works for you too.
  • What's with all the negativity towards cold calling? :p We need Jason Kanigan in here!

    Cold calling works pretty well for me...
    • [1] reply
    • LOL you must have the "outgoing, arrogant, vain, outrovert personality" not saying it doesn't work, but for an seo company there is time better spent elsewhere..

      Like ranking your own websites for instance.. Is a good start.
      • [1] reply
  • The OP mentions hiring 40 telesales staff, many of whom quit after a day or so. The question is why hire inexperienced memebers of staff? Hire someone good and pay them the proper rate.
  • The issue with the cold callers you have been getting sound like they aren't properly qualifying you. You clearly don't have the need and before they even get into talking about "SEO" they should find out whether you actually need more traffic/business/customers...whatever. Another thing is is that these cold callers seem like they are needy and not confident which is another reason why you wouldn't want to deal with them. Instead of them trying to push all these different services on you it's probably best to they first find out if you actually need anything... which clearly you don't. If I were cold calling you I would probably qualify you out pretty quickly based on the "need" factor.
    • [1] reply
    • They can be really irritating and waste alot of my time, even though I'm on the TPF they still call, I don't blame them they're just trying to make a living like the rest of us.

      If you can "figure people out" better than the rest then you will be more successful because you will be wasting less of your own time, but most of them won't lie to you, they will tell you like it is.

      It would actually be good to have a product for every circumstance, so if they haven't got the time of day to scratch their own arse then offer them time management products, virtuals assistants, telephone services, email services, anything that can save them some time and be more productive.

      Agreed, if your not using websites then you're missing out but it's not essential to running a business, there are many other things that can bring in paying customers.
  • Also not every business needs to have a website, but a lot of people will agree that having one is like your resume to a prospect or client.
  • Here is my 2 cents:
    - To me these are some of the good channels to get clients: YouTube, Webinars and LinkedIn. If you don't know how to use them, try to learn
    - You have to have something that differentiates you from the herd. I have companies that perform SEO as part of their services, their websites have over 50 Google first page rankings for high-competition keywords, and yet I get 2 emails/day in those websites offering SEO. All the same BS. Don't go for channels everybody does and don't offer the same thing everybody offers. If you are offering SEO, you should convince them why you are the best one in the industry. Why you give them something nobody else would and what is that something.
    - Your pricing sucks. That's too low and many companies (at least in the US) see that as a sign that you can't deliver. Don't concentrate on the best pricing. Concentrate on tweaking your offer in a way that seems so different and better.
    - Possibly change your pitching point from SEO to something else. G Places is just a sample. When you got the client's attention then up-sell. SEO is commodity. It should be either a new service that doesn't have that many competing companies, or SEO with a whole new package. I can't elaborate on this one more, because that's what we do, but hopefully you get the point.
    • [1] reply
    • I think with prices, the people that have been in the game longer will know how to price their products better, as Rus Sells has already mentioned you can't really determine the cost of a job from whether it's an estabilished business or not.

      A new start-up may contact you and say she is starting a clothing business and wants to rank for the keywords "discount women's clothing", in these cases you have to find the right balance between matching their budget and helping them to progressively grow their company while covering your own costs.

      You need to remember that everyone is different (even in US!) some will see your prices as too high and some will see them as too low, so you need to work out a way to make everyone happy and while doing this you need to factor in you own costs carefully. Over time you will get a feel for what the most profitable jobs are and will focus your efforts on that area.

      Similarly you will find people that think your prices are too high and have high expectations, in these cases you can never please them. You will get a feel for who these people are over time.. you will also get people that are outright trying to scam you, so you will need to learn from this one too..

      That's why I say if you market your services to meet the needs of everyone over a wider range of locations then the chances are you will find alot more customers.

      On the other hand I feel customer attrition would be one of the key metrics an SEO company needs to take into consideration when analysing their customer base. I would say gross attrition is probably quite high so you need to find ways of tying your customers into contracts over a longer period of time. i.e; reseller hosting.

      In this case I would say it's a good idea to use loss leaders for new business' and upsell the SEO when you find out more about their target audience and with estabilished business' simply don't tell them anything but use a good website script that's going to tempt them into contacting you, then you can design yourself a quote sheet so you can work out the costs more effectively.

      In all honesty it's probably going to be harder and more costly for you to convert well estabilished business' than it is to find new customers (start ups) or retaining existing customers and each one needs a different approach with regards to the pricing structure. Although looking at a client to determine costs is a bad idea, it could be used as an indicator, in particular the clients budget and their target audience.

      I've used average pricing structures in some of my business' and it is quite effective, so I round a job up or down depending on the information they provide and they will fall into several categories 1|2|3|4|5|6|7.
      • [1] reply
  • Do you think you grew to quickly as another point of view. This can happen in all kinds of business and now your overhead (office rent) is eating up profits bad. Maybe you should pull back (downsize) a bit while you build you clientele.
    Just a thought.
  • [DELETED]
  • Banned
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  • Your sales team should be doing 3-4 sales every few hours. Set a threshold that they must meet every month (say $50,000) and if they don't meet it, get rid of them.

    Furnishings? Whats more important, a leather couch or your business?


    You should not be offering SEO so cheap. $149 per month? Are you kidding? Who are your customers? Homeless people?

    HUGE mistake.

    ALWAYS get them on a 12 month contract. Otherwise where's the sustainability?

    You should be closing them over the phone. Get them on a 12 month contract, and if they cancel out the contract, they have to pay out the remainder of whats left owing.

    You're killing yourself. And you're taking everyone down with you. You're offering FAR too much, for FAR too little.

    Can you blame them?

    That's never going to work. I have a script here that I can give you (I dont want to post it up on the forum. PM me)

    That's even worse.

    The solution is to contact a successful seo company and ask them what they do differently. Even if it means calling them as a potential client and listing down the questions.


    You're doing it backwards. They should be coming to you, not you going to them.

    Rule number 1 - Rank your business website FIRST for strong terms like "seo", "search engine optimization" etc and the leads will come.

    What you do with them from there, sounds like it needs a LOT of work.
    • [1] reply
    • This is a very long thread. I am just going to chip in a few cents if you dont mind. Recently I have been day dreaming and I got this idea of generating leads for dentist.

      If you are an SEO company dealing with real business, I am sure your clients need leads for sales. So what is every lead worth to them. What do they sell? Where I come from, telemarketers or sales people probably make USD 30-50 per sales. But they do this base on cold calling. People like myself when I get a phone call from telemarketer, I would say "not interested" most of the time. So that is bad for your business.

      Suppose if you can get a dentist to agree to get your services to generate leads for them, at a agreed rejection rate say 10-20%, you could negotiate a fee for each lead that you send. Then you can put up SEO, PPC, whatever your expertise are and generate genuine leads for them. After you are done with one client, ask for referrals and happy customers will likely tell their business associate about your services.

      An angle to that would be teeth whitening. The dentist get to keep the clients for life (maybe) as long as their services is good

      Hope that helps.
  • If you're struggling to get leads, have a read of these two posts.

    50 Ways to Find More Clients in Your SEO Business Part 1

    50 Ways to Find More Clients in Your SEO Business Part 2

    Another powerful way is to contact businesses already paying to rank via PPC.

    Or, contact people ranked on the 2nd page and offer them first page rankings.
  • This belongs to the offline marketing forum.

    My advice - don't chicken out, you should pick up the phone too, feel the rush, optimize scripts, train new assistant, and all of your company should run as MVP.

    Good luck.
  • GET OUT OF SEO - DONT LISTEN TO ANY ADVICE HERE
    your pocket book is empty, its an uphill battle,
    do something that will make you money,
  • since you are good at SEO, just optimize your website for those SEO keywords which will bring you more targeted visitors interested in your SEO services instead of cold calling.
  • Hi,

    For the calls that DO get your attention, what is your closure rate?

    How do you present to them, how do you convince me that I need YOU?

    What are your credentials?

    If you don't have any decent clients on your portfolio then nobody will take any notice. You might want to do some free work for a local government organisation, school, college or a renowned local business so the local community can relate and word starts to spread via mouth (the best way).

    Your 'no contracts' policy is terrible. I know where you're coming from but SEO is something that takes time as we all know. This needs to be educated to the client. We used to tie the client in to a 12 month contract and estimate the kind of traffic they were to expect in the first year. We did clearly state that they should start to see some movement in about 3 month or so (depending on how competitive the keywords were). Once they exceed this, a second year renewal was a piece of cake and our retention rate was amazing.

    One of the other things you can do is become a specialist in a particular niche, that also seems to work well with some of the agencies I used to work at.

    Oh and your script is atrocious!

    Hope that helps and good luck with everything
    Zaheer
  • What about RED HOT COPY

    I hear she is very good at writing copy. May cost, but considering your bleeding money right now, what could it hurt.
  • Banned
    Change your script to this:

    Hello ___, How's your day today if you don't mind me asking?

    Great. Glad to see that you're enjoying yourself. Today I'm just calling to enquire about your business practices and to see whether you would be interested in expanding further with our help?

    Something similiar. Point is. SPEAK WITH THE CUSTOMER ABOUT THEIR LIFE, MAKE CONVERSATION, KEEP THEM ENGAGED AND HAPPY TO TALK TO YOU.

    Don't just go straight into "hi u want to buy seo". DOESNT WORK!
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