How to sell services to local businesses
How To Sell Websites To Local Businesses
0:00 / 0:00
Timecodes:
most of the advice that i see about
selling websites to local businesses
first involves finding local businesses
that don't already have websites that
makes it a lot easier to offer than one
so the pattern for doing that is you go
to google and then you search for some
kind of a local business category like
accountants near me then you click the
more businesses button and now you're in
the google business directory looking at
a bunch of local accountants and what
you'll find is some of those listings
will have a little website icon in the
listing and others will not so if you
want to call businesses that don't
already have websites you call the
people that don't have the website icon
in their listing and the phone number's
sitting right there right so that's a
pretty easy way to find a lot of
businesses
in your local community that don't
already have websites so if that sounds
cool you know go ahead and give me a
thumbs up for that thank you for doing
that it definitely helps people discover
the video but it also makes me really
happy so you can know hey lee's over
there smiling because i just did a
thumbs up so thanks for that but here's
the thing about all of this
what you you end up finding when you
reach out to businesses that don't
already have a website is that you tend
to find businesses that either don't
value the site very much because they
might say something like god we get all
of our leads through our facebook page
or something or maybe they just don't
have the budget to afford a website
which is why they don't have one right
now and even if they could barely afford
the website then they probably don't
have the money for the marketing package
that comes after that so you end up with
kind of small budgets thin margins one
and done projects
and it's
and it's difficult to grow a profitable
business like that so what i would
prefer to do and what we've had much
more success with is landing clients
that are more established where they
have a larger budget higher margin work
they buy the marketing plan so there's
recurring revenue in it but the but now
the problem is they already have a
website so like how do you overcome that
because you sort of traded problem for
problem whereas like some businesses
they don't have a website but they also
don't have a budget or they do have a
budget but they do have a website too so
how do you overcome the hump of selling
website overhauls or upgrades because if
you can do that then you can also get
the marketing plan that goes along with
it and now you have a high ticket high
margin recurring revenue client and
that's awesome
well here's the analogy that i've come
up with to try to explain how we do this
so i was doing a coaching session last
week and and this one seemed to resonate
with everybody so i wanted to share it
with you too
so
i live kinda near the chesapeake bay so
i'm in virginia and like every summer i
used to have my parents and grandparents
and everything have a little cottage
right on the mouth of the potomac river
where it feeds into the bay
and it's and when you go into the bay i
mean it's a big but it's a surprisingly
big body of water like you go out there
and you can't see land on any side it's
like you're in the ocean it's it's so
broad there
and but i have two friends
brad and paul and brad has this little
john boat that he uses to go fishing he
just goes a couple miles off the coast
and catches you know like croaker spot
fish stuff like this little little fish
but it's a lot of fun and you know
whatever nothing wrong with that but
then i also have this other friend paul
and he has like this like ocean going
like professional fishing boat
but he's he's kind of he has anxiety
about going out into the bay because i
mean it's like it's way out there so
like if he's by himself or
if if the weather might possibly get bad
or any if anything goes wrong he just
doesn't want to go out there like he
prefers to kind of just stay pretty
close to shore even though he's got a
boat that could go way out his boat's
way better than brad's boat right
so what if i was trying to sell
paul's boat like a better boat to brad
what would i do because they're both
sitting at the same place catching the
same fish so even if brad did buy a
nicer boat so that he'd have a boat like
pulse they're still catching the same
fish right so like that's not a very
compelling pitch unless you just wanted
to appeal to brad's sense of
happiness or something like that by
having a better looking boat or
something but it doesn't really change
the results of the fish that he's
catching right so what would be much
better if i said hey brad if you were to
go all the way out into the bay you can
catch rockfish out there there's a big
fish they put up a great fight it's a
ton of fun plus you know it's more food
you know it's like all the all of these
benefits for why you might want to go
all the way out to the bay to catch the
fish and then you say well in order to
catch fish like that you're going to
need a boat like paul's so that you can
get to the bay right so i'm not selling
the better boat i'm selling the better
fish right the better experience but in
order to achieve that better experience
you need the better boat
and what i'm not doing is saying hey i'm
noticing all of these deficiencies of
your john boat compared to a
professional fishing boat and therefore
you should upgrade to the professional
fishing boat but that's how almost
everybody sells website upgrades like
you do a site audit you say it's not
loading as fast as it should or it's not
mobile responsive or there's some
technical problem with it
but so what it's like as long as so what
if you fix all of those problems it's
still sitting there catching the same
fish right it's still the john boat and
the professional boat in the same spot
so what you want to do is you want to
sell the trip out to the bay
not the website itself so you would say
something like
what if we put together this marketing
package and we get all of these um
different directories referring people
into you and we put an email opt-in on
your site so we have a lead magnet and
maybe we even have that go into a
webinar so maybe we host a webinar on
your site and then we follow up with an
email sequence after that so we can kind
of keep nurturing the leads and and so
you just go you just kind of lay out
this whole marketing plan that would
drive more traffic get more leads
convert more clients and then you say in
order for this to work we can't do it on
the john boat we can't do it on this
little site like we need to make some
upgrades to the site so we can get to
the bay right you can't take the john
boat into the bay and you can't take
this little website and do all of this
other stuff so in order to get the
results you need to have the better site
right but you're not selling the better
site simply for the sake it's the
happiness or the coolness of the better
site you're selling the better site for
the sake of the better results and when
you position it that way
you end up with with great clients that
aren't that aren't so stressed out over
every single penny that gets spent so
you have higher budgets
almost everybody buys the marketing plan
because that's really the whole point
it's like nobody would say well yeah go
ahead and upgrade my boat but i'm just
going to stay here
right and i'm not going to go i'm not
going to act like paul and just have
this awesome boat and never go out to
the bay like nobody wants to spend money
on anything like that so instead
you've got this awesome plan recurring
revenue high ticket products high
margins great relationships you're
driving results it's very fulfilling and
it's very profitable too so like that's
the overall
shift that we make to sell website
upgrades you don't sell the better site
you sell the better
fish so to speak if that analogy makes
sense
and another thing that's i think really
important about that is like how do you
convince the client to believe that you
can get those results right because it's
one thing to just say to brad hey if you
buy this boat like paul's you can go out
to the bay and of course he believes
that the bay is there and of course if
you had the boat he could get there but
when it comes to web design and
marketing it's not quite that crystal
clear it's like okay well
how do i know that you can get these
extra results coming even if we did all
these other things how do we know it
works and so i put together a whole
nother video because
it's it's just not the same as it was a
couple of years ago so check out this
next video and i'll show you why web
design has totally changed and some
practical steps over what to do about it
so people believe that not only can you
give them the better boat but you can
actually get them to the bay so check
out this video and i'll see you over
there
