How to get better and more confident closing in person (or over the phone I suppose)

Hi Everyone,

I've been building and marketing websites for small-medium businesses for about five years full time now. In the last six months or so I've tried my hand at buying some domains (for example one was a kitchen renovation related domain) and doing some SEO (doesn't require too much if you can write well and have a bunch of local sites you can use for one way links). So, now I have four sites consistently in positions 1 or 2 (occasionally 3) in the organic results, even added two of them to google local business, will be adding the other two soon).

They generate a good amount of leads (I pass them on either for free or for $30 a lead to one existing client in the same industry) both through the contact form and by phone (skype to go). The thing is, I haven't written up a really compelling sales pitch for any of them yet (I am a copywriter first and foremost) and I know when i do, the leads will increase even. But even at current levels, they generate at least as many enquiries as a full page yellow pages ad ($20k AUD a year here, so about $19k USD). I have clients in the same or similar industries that get slightly less traffic (mainly using adwords as they don't yet want to pay the larger upfront for me to do SEO while adwords makes them money), because I went through my sales copy process.

Anyway, I know these sites are worth quite a bit but my weakness has always been closing (most of my closes are down in person, although I'd like to close smaller deals over the phone more often). I still get plenty of work as the product often sells itself, I present the benefits well and have a good point of differentiation (actually focusing on sales copy to stand out from their competitors). What I'm not good at is closing the sale in the presentation meeting AND pricing my services/packages more in line with what their worth (which would still be offering enormous value to my clients).

Any advice on what do to with the domains I own and have developed and how to go about selling and or renting them would be much appreciated, as would any advice, books, articles, audio programmes would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Dan

 

Make sure you know what you are talking about and what you are selling is truly beneficial to the customer. If you do, you'll come of as confident.

 

Hi zbode,

Thanks for the feedback. For regular sales meetings talking about the how what when and why I do things differently, it flows naturally, I feel confident and I do have a high sales to close rate. The problem is I know I could be setting my prices a lot higher and still have my clients make their investment back quite quickly. I suppose part of it is the fear of loss being stronger than the fear of gain, even though I'm sure many of them are expecting higher prices (especially if they get quotes from others, which of course many do), as my pitch really is unique and I make my clients money (like I'm sure many people here do).

I tend to get most of my business through soft closes either on the day or shortly faster using assumptive questions like, when would be be free to pencil in the content workshop? But I really should be charging at least double, part of that is approaching larger businesses and part of it is just being a better closer on the spot. I have the contracts and I'm just finishing the process to sign up for 'ezidebit' which is an Australian company that allows small business to have clients fill out direct debit authorities (works wonders for him). Even with the smaller of the businesses I deal with, charging double to develop them a great looking site, persuasive sales copy (very very few small business websites have this) and set up and manage ppc search for the first four weeks is very reasonable and ads up to less over the course of the first year than they are spending on yellow pages ads and newspaper classified ads (even radio and tv for some) and will deliver far more business and prospects that are pre-sold (competing not just on price from the get go). After the first year, it's even cheaper, having paid for the website (I do allow payment plans, usually a minimum 1.4 deposit).

Still, need some good material on how to close in those situations where the prospect is hooked and visualising what it will do for their business.

This is especially true for these sites/domains I've built up myself and want to rent or sell (I want to sell at least one, partly as I could use the money and partly to prove to myself that I can do it).

Anyway, again, if anyone can recommend books or audiotapes, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks,
Dan

 

Experience is probably the key to selling good! You have to experience a lot of selling before you can become good with it

Think of it as learning how tomake sites

Just continue dont stop cause it seems you are doing quite well

 

Dan - are you on Linkedin?