Pre-Sale Discussions

Pre-Sale Discussions

One of the largest disconnects happens when the client does not understand what you are doing. They just know they pay X amount of dollars per month and that they should expect results 4-6 months down the road. This might work for a lot of clients who don’t care, but the majority will want to know what is going on. It is up to you to educate them fully and get them to buy in to what you are doing — which is using the best SEO practices to make them more money.Related:http://www.bestseotools.cc

Here are some pitfalls that you don’t want to fall into during the pre-sale discussions, which frames out the process of working together:

1. The client doesn’t read your proposal, welcome emails, or listen to your demos.Related:http://www.bestseotools.cc

You have to make sure that the client is listening to you and that you are explaining everything clearly in this stage. They have to know what you are going to do for them in detail.

At Visiture, we do live screen shares, where we show potential clients our program. We also make sure to engage them with questions to make sure they understand. Sometimes, potential clients might not understand what you are talking about but don’t want to speak up.Related:http://www.bestseotools.cc

2. The client doesn’t understand what you do.

This could pertain to a number of things — from link building to putting calls to action in information. Really dive deep with the client, show them how SEO works, and more. I like to ask the potential client their skill level or knowledge about SEO on a scale of 1-10 and then discuss our program based on how advanced they are.

3. The client doesn’t understand that it takes 6-12 months to get good results in SEO.

You should always try to frame the process so that the client will expect the work you outline to get done, but, other than that, they shouldn’t expect any results for 6-12 months.Related:GroupBuy SEO Tools

There is a right way to look at SEO and a wrong way. You want to make sure that your client is looking at it the right way ― as a compounding customer acquisition channel. If they think they should see major improvements in four months, they will probably be disappointed, they will waste their money, and they will not be very happy with you.Related:GroupBuy SEO Tools

4. The client is too used to their previous engagements with other SEO companies.

Unfortunately, I see this one a lot. Potential clients get stuck in their ways, thinking that all SEO companies are the same, and some have magical powers to give them instant rankings after 30 days. This cannot be further from the truth.

My counter to this is to really hammer home how much our company is different and how our services are different, and show how our engagement works. If you do not differentiate yourself from their previous engagements, then you will be the same to them.

5. You don’t include details in your proposals of your scope of work.

This is another huge mistake that SEO companies can run into. They try to simply do things to make it easier to understand and faster to onboard accounts, but all this does is create a higher turnover of your SEO clients. Spend the time to really get to know your customers, write detailed proposals/SOWs, and create custom proposals/invoices.

Spend more time in the discovery and onboard phase because that is what it takes to make your client succeed. If you must, make them sign longer contracts, but show them that you do it because you are spending the time to get to know them.