E-commerce/web development agency

Had some slight issues with duplicates with my email list so now have a formula in googlesheets witch will pull the unique emails from multiple sheets.

Focus for next week
Test out my new cold email

@2020vision,

Work more on your sales closing rate.

Make your prospect understand the VALUE PROPOSITION in your services. How the prospects business would move from point 'A' to point 'B'. In short the prospects should be convinced of a good ROI and a clear benefit to their business.

Best Regards.

2020vision said:

Been busy with other stuff but today i just sent out about 1.4k cold emails with a new email im using, trying to take advantage of q4 holiday sales so lets see what happens.

From the email i was sending my conversion was extremely low and bad there was a few people i managed to get interested initial because I offer free consultation. Once I have them some consultation and they ask for my rates and I tell them they ghost me think I need to work on my closing but also find more high value clients who are willing to spend money

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handsomeabhi said:

@2020vision,

Work more on your sales closing rate.

Make your prospect understand the VALUE PROPOSITION in your services. How the prospects business would move from point 'A' to point 'B'. In short the prospects should be convinced of a good ROI and a clear benefit to their business.

Best Regards.

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Thank you, do you have any books or videos I can read for more training in sales?

This week's update

-Been testing out the new cold email
- Also got an email sent to me from a potential client who needs to website built and migrated to wordpress, Just sent her some recommendations as part of my free consultation. She already has someone working on it but hopefully I can close her next week and make some $$$.

This weeks update

-The new cold email is not working so need to write a new one
- Had a few calls with the client and the sale is almost 90% complete just waiting on my freelancer to give me a quote so I can give the client quote. Price is lower than I want but at this point it is what it is.
- Got a £120 pound voucher from google, already played around with adwords before but giving it another try

Any tips of finding leads/qualified leads? I tried the whole sending 1k email a day and honestly it does not work

I too am in London. I had an agency up in Summer 2017 and we signed 2 clients in central London within 2 months. But it was for SEO and PPC, not web development (which I have also secured clients for before). I work a full-time job now and the companies dissolved, but my advice is ditch the emails.

The thing that might be holding you up is your cold calling strategy - what's your current strategy for cold calls? - as in are you playing a numbers game with the same pitch or making tailored calls? Drop me a pm I will see if I can offer any tips!

MrPCP said:

I too am in London. I had an agency up in Summer 2017 and we signed 2 clients in central London within 2 months. But it was for SEO and PPC, not web development (which I have also secured clients for before). I work a full-time job now and the companies dissolved, but my advice is ditch the emails.

The thing that might be holding you up is your cold calling strategy - what's your current strategy for cold calls? - as in are you playing a numbers game with the same pitch or making tailored calls? Drop me a pm I will see if I can offer any tips!

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I dont have a cold call strategy reason being is that Im running this while at the same time working a 9-5 job, it's definitely something I've been thinking of but currently not something that is really optimal

i used to develop my own agency before it got merged with my partners.
my advice is, try to approach peoples on linkedin, HR people, procurement people, talent acquisition people.
even tho they don't need your service, they tends to forward your coldcall (email.chat,etc) to the people in charge.

You need to be earning at least double your income before you quit your current job. Earning 2k a month now isn't 2k time you pay tax and corporation fees etc..

The clients you had interest from why did you not close them? What was the issue? If you know?

Why did you stop working over summer?

Doing emails, cold calls and ppc is a waste of time if you want to get into e-commerce development. I freelanced for 18 years and 10 years I spend doing nothing but e-commerce & landing pages! You want to keep away from marketing side of things unless you want to become a full service industry. You would be better off trying to find an SEO or PPC freelancer and try and refer leads back and forth.

What's your linkedin profile / network like if any? You need to get on there and make your self sound like an "expert" in your field you would have more success than just doing cold emails like the million other companies that mail me daily..

If your in the UK (makes no difference if your not I guess) but you want to get on #ecomchat or AT(@)ecomchat (didn't want to link to future or member on here hence the AT and brackets) on twitter there are big industry names in the e-commerce world that hang out there as well as various department heads. You can learn a lot and network there... I landed a lot of work out of there back in the day.

Finally you need to decide what kind of "e-commerce" guy you want to be and focus on the niche to start with. Are you a shopify, woo commerce (hope not), prestashop, magneto etc etc kind of guy.

Then you want to hang around on them forums and still to build your name up in the community HAVE a complete profile there and spend an hour or two helping out, answering questions, trying to fix stuff.. you would be surprised how many people end up coming to you once you have a bit of a reputation on these forums. BUT pick one and stick to it.

Once you decide as well you got a few roads to go down:

1. Start creating blog content about that platform and your company.

2. Start to work on long tails like "freelance shopify developer London" with a small dedicated landing pages for these.

3. Develop either theme fixes, free theme, modules (paid or free) that fix a small problem or two that often comes up on the forum. Then mention this on your site and on the blog - anything to sound or make you look like the guy or company that is all about X platform and selling subject.

It's a long road to get into BUT I think as well you have entered on the down turn of companies keeping staff internally the way I see it if you can spend the time establishing your self now on the rise of people hiring back out I figure tail end of next year you should be in a good position for that.

Good luck.

2020vision said:

I also hate my job and think it's ridiculous I have spent 4 years in college and now working 40 hours a week for a job that pays shit and dont even like.

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2020vision said:

I have very little experience in running an online business so the learning curve for me is pretty high as I basically have to learn everything from the ground up I have somewhat partnered up with someone I met online so we will see how this all goes. The ultimate goal is to be able to make £2000 profit a month this is about what I make now for my day job and would let me survive living here in London and fully quit my day job. Hopefully by January 2021 I can make consistent profit of £2000 profit a month

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2020vision said:

I come from a tech background and can easily build websites however due to the limitation with my time my partner will be doing this initially or we will be just outsourcing it all together.

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I just want to say this.

Here is the good part:

You have a technical background.
You have a desire to get out of your low paying job.
You have a goal, or at the very least, a vision.
You are working with partners.
You are actually doing things, going by your question about setting SPF records for DO In another thread.


Now, the other part:

Your user id implies you had a vision for 2020.
2020 was a very bad year - the year of death, according to a nine-year-old. It literally was.
You fail only when you give up. Or get distracted.
Reset your goals and continue on the journey.

Anyone can succeed. You can, too. Remain focused. Do not get distracted.

That's all, buddy. If you think it is useful, try to absorb what I said. Otherwise, feel free to ignore it.

The problem with cold emailing is people focus on the numbers of emails they are sending which is not, you might get some results but not so great.

The cold email strategy starts from the process of getting potential emails, not just anyhow emails that would never open or respond to you and also the message you are sending to them.

True fact is you can send 200 emails per week and get a very good response rate of 5% and close 1 or 2 people, you just have to up your game.

You can also check out the cold email mastery course by blackhat wizard from Twitter or The agency course by Matthew Paik on Twitter which I prefer and you can get on track with getting the best out of your idea

I'm in the process of starting my own digital agency since everything else is failing and I get a lot of value from those guys.

I hope we both succeed

thelaptopbucks said:

You can also check out the cold email mastery course by blackhat wizard from Twitter or The agency course by Matthew Paik on Twitter which I prefer and you can get on track with getting the best out of your idea

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Would personally recommend both these courses for anyone interested in creating their agency, they have some good discounts going on too.