What am I doing wrong!

[Purpleblaze]

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Hi Everyone!

I need a little bit of help in the way of marketing. I have posted ads on Gumtree and I have also been emailing businesses. The problem I’m finding is that I will receive an initial reply from businesses that seem to be interested and asking for a quote but once I reply, I don’t seem to receive a reply again. It has happened numerous times.

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s my technique when replying. I have a web design and development business. I find with websites there is many different variables when creating a quote. So I normally ask what kind of website they’re wanting and give examples of 2 different kinds that we do. After that I don’t receive a reply! Sometimes I haven’t even got to giving a quote yet!

Can someone please give me some tips or point me to some great reading?

Thank you!

[LisaK]

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Hi, We do web design and development also.
How are you replying to the reaches ? By email ?
Email is a very impersonal type of communication.
Look at it from the prospective clients point of view. They are probably contacting several businesses(unless they were referred to you), you need to be memorable. Give the prospect a call and get in communication with them. Find out what they need and want and what their budget is then you can give them a ball park figure on the phone and set up a time to see them or tell them you will send them a quote with a time limited offer. Something like you’ll add logo development for 50% off if the quoted is acted upon in 1 month, week or whatever works.

[PaleoGuy]

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When you email set a specific time you are going to call and follow up. Just to make sure they got your email and if they have any questions. Get on that phone.

[Purpleblaze]

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Thanks for your replies! So you recommend I call them rather than ask any questions regarding budget and what they’re after by email?

Would it be best if I give them the option to discuss over the phone or through email?

Also I noticed, when it comes to budget, no one really likes to give an amount. Is that pretty normal?

[Zava Design]

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Who is your target market? Specifically.

“Everybody” would be a very incorrect answer.
“Small businesses” wouldn’t be much better. What kind of small business? What are their distinguishing characteristics? You need to be able to describe them accurately enough that someone would form a mental picture of them.

After you’ve identified your target market, then where is it that they’re looking for a service like yours? Is it really on gumtree, or is it via some other channel?

And once you’ve identified that, what is your USP that will encourage them to contact you, and to take the time to find out more about what you can do for them? From your website you don’t really offer something that makes you stand out from anyone else.

And speaking of your site, it doesn’t really present your work or services in the most favourable light. It’s a big chunk of purple, but where’s your clean message of what you can do for me? Where’s your work front and centre showing me what you’ve done for others?

At the moment you’re not delivering enough in your own site to convince most potential clients I would say, so that’s an area to start. Though you need to identify your target market and USP before you plan how your site could be improved.

[PaleoGuy]

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Never ask their budget. You set your prices and then you sell yourself. Price then won’t be an issue.

[Zava Design]

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PaleoGuy, post: 150081 wrote:

Never ask their budget.
I don’t agree. It’s one of the first questions I ask, and if they’re hesitant about providing a budget (they always have an idea) then I ask a series of questions to gauge their budget range.

[kathiemt]

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Is it the ‘cold calling’ businesses you email that are doing the responses you mention? I get tons of emails from SEO specialists and web designers wanting to rebuild my sites and/or do my SEO for me. And I mean I get a lot of these. I’m afraid you’re probably just another voice that these people are receiving.

You need warm leads. If you’re not getting them through Gumtree then you need to consider other avenues for advertising. Facebook, Google Adwords, a newsletter and/or blog. Perhaps interview a client and add that as an article in a blog post. Get your existing clients to tell others about you. Although that should be happening anyway when their visitors see the websites you’ve built for them.

I find that word-of-mouth referral is what works most of the time for my own services. And people can find easily me on the web. We get a lot of web based requests for work to be done.

From what I can see, your Facebook page hasn’t had an entry from you since October last year. You could be using this to showcase your work and offer specials. Your Twitter account has been barely used. Probably best to get proactive on that, or remove the link and replace it later. Again, Twitter can be used to showcase your work as you complete another job. Let other people see what you’ve been doing. But you do need to increase your followers list – to do that start following a lot more people. Check to see who your follows follow and so on.

Your work is web based so you need to be active on the web to draw people in. But don’t leave it there. Do you go to any networking events locally? I highly recommend you do to let people get to know you too.

[LisaK]

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Purpleblaze, post: 150078 wrote:

Thanks for your replies! So you recommend I call them rather than ask any questions regarding budget and what they’re after by email?

Would it be best if I give them the option to discuss over the phone or through email?

Also I noticed, when it comes to budget, no one really likes to give an amount. Is that pretty normal?

Yes I would always call as soon as I get the reach. If someone sends me an email I try and call with in the hour, just a light call to start off I say something like ‘hi I got your quote request is this an OK to talk ?’ If they say yes (and they usually do) then I ask them some questions and get them to start talking about what they want, their business and their business goals. This establishes your interest in them rather then trying to get them interested in you. If that makes sense.

People like to talk about themselves and their business espl if they are the ones parting with the $$s.

I usually ask them what their ball park budget is.

The main thing is to make yourself ‘real’ to the prospect not just another company or name. Use good communication to do that and you’ll get more closes for sure.

[Gizmo]

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I would follow up ASAP with a call and investigate their needs over a personalized phone call.

[Rainer]

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I learnt a long time ago to always enquire about the clients budget. In doing so I’ve stopped wasting both the clients time and mine. Its an uphill battle to sell someone something worth say $2000 if they only had it in their mind to spend $500.

[arvoApp]

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I would also ask for budget, if the prospective customer doesn’t have an idea, I’ll try to help her frame it based on the business requirements.

As with websites cost could range from $0 to many thousands so it’s prudent to find out what the expectations are and how much the prospect would be comfortable to pay.

[PSmith]

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Give the client at least three options.

Start with a landing page for them (lowest price), then move onto a micro site and lastly a full CMS / ecommerce web site.

The idea here is to get the client to start talking to you, don’t provide all the information at once as this will allow the client to make a decision immediately (usually based on incorrect or assumed information) and do not provide too little information that the client looses interest.

Rather than focusing on what you can build for them, try focus on the results they can expect for the work you do, i.e.:

Landing page – We can create a targeted ad words campaign to test your product or service. The expected result is “X” amounts of leads and monitoring of potential clients actions via adwords clicks, Google analytics…etc.

Micro site – We will then create a target ad words campaign to generate more clicks on different keywords that speak directly to the potential customer. During this phase we are trying to see the potential size of the audience, and if we can side sell them on other products and services you offer.

Full site – This is where we cater for all the different types of existing and potential clients, and utilise the techniques we perfected in the above two steps to create an SEO and SEM optimised website to maximise your ROI.

Try focus on providing a solution, rather than a service.

The above example is purley based on a person looking to build a web site to attract new clients. It would be different again for a brochure style web site approach and specific function based web site approach.

Hope this helps in some way – PaulS

[arvoApp]

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PSmith, post: 150446 wrote:

Try focus on providing a solution, rather than a service.

Spot on. It reminds me of “solutions selling” workshops I attended in a previous corporate life.

[Zava Design]

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…and also the difference between a race to the bottom competing on price for a “product”, and actually contributing to a business’ bottom line with price being a secondary consideration.

[Author]

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