There have been a couple really good threads by Redhill and 7878 about Google Places and Reputation Management, a big thanks to them starting and contributing to the threads. They have been a big help.

I am new, as many people are, to the offline business and I would like to start a discussion strictly on the selling points of the two most talked about topics here on Google places and reputation management.

If you are experienced in offline selling could you explain what you talk about during your meetings with potential clients?

Any stats you might use, selling points...etc.

Thanks

Google Places (reviews) and Rep Management are really emotional sales more than anything else. Even though theres definitely an economic incentive to fixing a bad rep, you're going to want to pull heart strings of the company owner. the company is his baby and it's being attacked.

Reputation Management, that's what I would like to know more about.

Suggestions, articles, books. If either of you know any please do share as I would like to go into business of offline marketing where I approach clients, but have very poor idea on how to close them easily.

As for straight seo google adwords is a great tool. Take average cpc x the number of projected clicks p\month and it gives you a nice baseline number to base the value of your service on. For instance in some cities "widget sales" might be $10 p\click. If you can expect 5 clicks p\day over 30 days that is $1500 IF they spent $ on adwords. Now if you can get them in the top 5 they likely will have just as many clicks if not more. This is just an example depending on the niche they can expect far more than 5 clicks\p day if the exact searches are high enough.

Taktical is absolutely right; Reputation Management is a mostly emotional sale. However, dont neglect being prepared and do some homework before your meeting. Bring copies of poor reviews you cut and paste into a document with a link to where the original complaint is. Do keyword research on their primary target words - where do they rank? How do his competitors rank on those same words? How are his current site onpage factors? Bring some general reputation and seo statistics [i.e. did you know that approximately 76% of all searchers never go past page 1?]. Push all the pain buttons you can, and you be his pain medicine.