If you are a sales executive or a business Development
Specialist, or an SEO consultant working for an Online Marketing Agency, you
might have met that savvy client who has SEO background and cannot accept your
“we will make your site better” speech, but needs professionally explained
procedures and techniques without being too jargoned at the same time.
The language of an SEO consultant is different from that of
the business decision maker buying SEO services. To more successfully sell SEO
services, consultants can become more fluent in both languages. More directly
addressing the points above will curry favor with business decision makers and
likely result in more, and higher value, sales.
Hence, here are some statements, I read in article, you
might hear from hard clients, when you are approaching them with your sales
proposal or during your presentation’s meeting, to put in mind doing your SEO
Sales Pitch
1. SEO
budget and SEO results
Please don't ask me my budget first thing in the
conversation. If you can work with us to deliver ROI, I can deliver budget. If
we can't work together to deliver ROI, I can't deliver budget. Since you're
unlikely to discuss results this early in the conversation, I'm unlikely to
discuss budget this early in the conversation.
While you are unlikely to guarantee results, you probably
want me to guarantee payment. Let's discuss how we can structure an agreement
that will work for both of us. Unless you've made a very strong case for
results, I'm more likely to hire you on a project/deliverable basis than a
monthly retainer basis, although various structures are possible.
2. The SEO
Mission and Vision
Ask me about my business goals and objectives. If you don't
understand them, dig into them with me. If you have suggestions or
recommendations about my goals, feel free to propose alternative business
goals. But before moving on, let's make sure we're both aligned here.
3. Be a
family member
Ask me about my existing results. These may be confidential,
but I'll tell you what I can, or ask you to sign an NDA, and then tell you what
I can. Plus, based on the questions you ask, I'll have a better understanding
of how you approach SEO. And of course, knowing such confidential data will
make you part of the family.
4. SEO Services
Let's get clear on whether this is an SEO project, or an
SEO/conversion/usability project. Although the teams need to work together,
each of these areas requires different skills. I often have teams working on
these other areas already, and I am looking to add specific SEO expertise into
the mix, not broad web site optimization expertise. If you want to pitch me on
these other areas, let me know early. In general, I'm looking to bring your SEO
expertise into the mix and really want to focus on SEO.
5. No hats
please!
I told you our numbers and stats. So please it is your turn
to discuss your tactics. Don't tell me "it's a secret". Secret means
black hat. Black hat means trouble with google. Trouble with google means I
won't hire you. I'm not going to hire you because I hope you know what to do.
I'm going to hire you because you've convinced me that you know what to do.
Tell me which tactics you've had the most experience and success with and which
will most likely be applicable to our situation. You'll qualify yourself by
working openly with me and gaining my trust about your tactics. Once you've
gained my trust, you have to show me you can operationally execute these
tactics.
6. SEO
methodology
Discuss your methodology. Tell me what steps you'll be going
through during the engagement. Bring samples of the reports and deliverables
you'll use and provide during the engagement. You probably have planning and
measurement reports that baseline current results, address keyword selection,
plan on-page factors and track ongoing results, among others. A sample project
plan would be nice too. If your only competitive advantage is your methodology,
and you're unwilling to discuss it, I'm less likely to be convinced that you'll
be able to deliver positive results, and less likely to be able to interally
sell your capabilities. And I won't know if your methodology is better than the
one we're already running internally.
7. Who is
the SEO team?
Tell me who is going to do the work on this project and put
them in front of me. No sense in having the A-team pitches me, and delegating
the work to the C-team.
8. SEO
in-house training process
Tell me about your in-house training process. This helps me
understand that you (a) have a sustainable business that can withstand employee
turnover and (b) have a method of keeping up with any of the latest changes in
SEO tactics. It's okay if you're a one person shop — then only (b) is
important.
9. SEO
speaks numbers
Without breaching client confidentiality, liberally use
examples in your discussions. Statements like "we changed X on a commerce
site, and that drove up traffic by Y, and we think a similar tactic could work
on your site" helps me better understand the experience upon which you're
building knowledge. Be specific about which knowledge is based upon your teams'
testing, which knowledge is based upon reputable third party testing, which
knowledge is based on accepted folklore, and which knowledge is an educated
guess (that you think is worth testing).
10. SEO
estimates
Estimate business impact. Let me know some of your initial
thoughts or recommendations, and the upside we might get from implementing
them. Tie this into past improvements you've seen. I know there are no
guarantees — there rarely are. Google may change (a little bit). So, when you
provide estimates, estimate low. Under promising and over delivering always
makes everyone happy.
11. The SEO
Cost Vs. Return Formula
Engage me in a conversation about our costs of
implementation. Some high impact recommendations may be very expensive for us
to implement. Some will be less expensive. I need your inputs on the return
side; you'll likely need my inputs on the cost side.
12. Seo Action
Plan
Prioritize. Let's run through the ideas, prioritize those
that have "big impact / low cost", and execute those first. Together,
we'll create a top 3-5 list to help me see the fastest, largest ROI, up-front.
13. SEO expectations and realizations
Tell me when you expect to see positive results. You might
say some version of "I need to look at your log files to see how often the
pages we are working on will be crawled; we'd expect to see results within 2
weeks of the pages being crawled, which may happen 1 month after the changes
launch". Or you might say "With a previous client, we used a similar
strategy and generated results of X within Y weeks of launch."
14. Criticize
SEO wisely
If you point out shortcomings in our current SEO efforts, do
it constructively. You're going to have to work with the people you're talking
to. Good: "You guys have done really well with your in-house efforts. I
have some ideas on how to build further on them." Bad: "I don't know
how you missed these really basic things". You're selling not just your
expertise, but also your ability to make friends with us and work with us. In
the medical profession, they call this "having good bedside manner".
All other things being equal, good bedside manner trumps.
15. When you
talk about such shortcomings, please also share the results we can expect from
addressing them. You may find that we already know these shortcomings exist,
but have chosen not to prioritize addressing them because of poor ROI. Or, we
may learn that you've identified some new areas that do have upside
opportunity, which further bolsters your credibility.
16. When is
a good time to talk about cost?
Generally, you want to sell the business value you can
deliver first, then talk about cost. Once I'm confident about the business
results we are likely to achieve, I can start estimating value and ROI. Is
(Probable Value of Results) > (Cost of Consultant + Cost of Managing
Consultant + Cost of Implementing Changes)? I am responsible for allocating limited
resources and money to areas that will deliver business results. Having
discussed the above with you, I can start comparing the return Cost of
Consultant will give me in SEO with the return I can get from other marketing
or conversion generation activities. Now I'm ready to think about allocating
budget and to talk about money.
17. Catch the Small
fish that can Catch the Big one:
Sometimes you will find yourself, as an Seo consultant, not
addressing a decision maker, like CEO, CMO, or a marketing director. You may be
pitching an influencer who could be a junior SEO technician, or a marketing
specialist, or maybe someone from the technical guys who created the website or
designed it. These guys might get interested quickly but unless you give them a
strong reason focusing exactly on the benefits their websites will have if they
recommended you and spoke on your behalf to their decision makers.
