When you get to your sales appointment...

Don't sell. Ask. Then LISTEN! THEN sell.

So what do I mean?

I am a member of a lot of forums online, and it seems that alot of threads are started asking the same questions. How to close the client, how to this, so on and so forth. I understand that alot of people are nervous. But in sales, all you really have to do is UNDERSTAND the clients problem, and provide a solution.

So the question is, do you really understand their problem? Do you ask them a routine set of questions you have developed? Do this, and you would be rewarded with a wealth of information from the client. For instance, I had a client that responded to an ad I had placed regarding social marketing.

When I got to the appointment, I sat down and asked them why? Why do you want to do social media? This allowed me to find their pain, their wants, their needs. And in the end, Text Message Marketing was a more appropriate strategy for their business.

Point is, listen. Don't be a SALESMAN. Be a problem solver, a person they can go to. Clients will throw money at you hand over fist if you solve a problem for them in an efficient, quick, and affordable manner. They will then call you for solutions to other problems, and just ask "how much?" and "Where do I sign?"

I am not trying to make this sound over complicated, because sales is really easy, it just takes balls. Sure, you are going to piss people off. Yes, you will get kicked out of appointments every now and then. But, you have to be aggressive. Remember, if you are doing your job correctly, you have the solution that they NEED. If you are truly trying to help, you will be successful.

Potential clients can tell when someone is just trying to sell them something. You are helping them.

I hope this make some sense. If not, ask away and I will clarify

I'm kind of nervous at the moment as I'm about to rank a site for a local search term and then rent it out like The Dark One did. So thanks for posting this, soon as I hit the #1 spot I've got to drop a pair and go do this shit.

So what are some good questions we can ask to get them talking?

Well, for some questions, you need to find out their pain. Every business has pain of some kind. Ask them about their current marketing efforts, ask them how it's working for them, ask about their website and how it's performing, etc... You will somehow, some way, find a pain, and you hold the solution for them.

We start off by finding out what they are doing right now. What have they tried and who else have they talked to.

This way we have an understanding of what they are looking at.

Then we find out if they have been tracking their site data. I would say about 70% of the companies that we have talked to are not tracking info.

So then this opens the door for you to be a teacher to them on why you need to track and so on and the more you show them the more they start to trust you.

If you know how the other companies in your area price and how they market to customers and try to close its easy to get them to close with you when you give them real numbers and you take time to show them things.

Most large seo companies dont take the time to set down and show the customer stuff about whats going on.