Sell Like a Third-Grader: How 2 + 2 Equals More Clients
Still struggling to sell your services? Clients telling you that your price is too high? Here’s everything you need to know to overcome price objections.
Is $500 a lot of money? You can’t answer that outside the context of what you’re getting in return, can you? As a freelancer or business person trying to sell your services, you must put your price into its proper context. If you don’t, your prospects will.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Proposals are for Wimps
Proposal-writing is a common practice in many industries, but is it possible that you might never have to write another one to win business?
Imagine instead a world where you didn’t have to write a proposal to close a deal. What if you could close the deal on a verbal agreement, and then write up a proposal to finalize it?
Suppose the proposal merely documented everything you and the prospect agreed upon during your initial meeting and, by signing it, you were hired?
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Don’t Just “Propose”… Sell!
Sometimes, “selling” is a dirty word to the those of us in the professional services industry, and we do everything we can to avoid appearing like that’s what we’re doing.
… I would do anything to avoid directly asking for the sale—especially if it meant I had to quote a price. Instead, I took the softer, gentler approach and buried the cost somewhere on page nine of my 10-page proposal. But after a few years, I began to grow weary of the “prepare a proposal and hope” strategy.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Creating a Personal Brand: Too Late! You Already Have One
Like it or not, you’ve already branded yourself in the minds of your customers. That can be a good thing or a bad thing…
When we think about commercial brands, we tend to think of a name, logo, or slogan … anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business. But on a more basic level, a brand is an identification mark … like when a rancher or farmer uses a branding iron to mark an animal to indicate ownership. A mark can also be a symbol of disgrace or infamy …
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Prospects from Heaven; Clients from Hell
Sometimes that “client from hell” is of our own making. Here’s two things you can do to prevent miscommunication and misunderstandings.
If prospects are the honeymoon, then clients are the marriage. And wherever fallible human beings are involved, assumptions and misunderstandings are sure to follow. So how do you prevent the relationship, much less the design, from going “straight to hell”?
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Cheap at Twice the Price: Can Raising Prices Really Bring in More Business?
Do higher prices mean less business? Or can increasing your rates actually bring in more business?
Last week, I explored the idea that raising prices can actually increase business. To many business owners, this is counter-intuitive. Most believe higher prices means less people will do business with them. But is that really the case? Some people have too much business because they charge too little. Others don’t have enough for the exact same reason.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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More Business than You Can Handle?
Do you have more business than you can handle? If so, is that a good thing? Here’s how to keep from being overwhelmed by too many customers.
“I already have more business than I can handle” is one of the most common blow-offs you’ll hear when prospecting. The trouble is discerning if it’s really a blow-off or whether it’s true. Some businesses do have more business than they can handle. But why?
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Best Business Entity: Sole Proprietor or Corporation?
Is sole proprietor or sole trader the best business entity when first starting out? When should you consider incorporating, if ever?
Everyone who starts a business is faced with the challenge of deciding what type of business entity to be. Most default to sole proprietor or sole trader. But is that always the best option? When my partners and I set up shop, I talked extensively to my accountant and did my research. Here’s what we found out.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Why Prospects Aren’t Looking for You: The Myth of the Self-Directed Buyer
In my latest SitePoint article, I talked about inbound vs. outbound marketing. In case the difference isn’t clear to you, here’s a quick definition of inbound marketing:
A marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers, where the customers find you through various search engine marketing efforts, social media, or word-of-mouth referrals.
Outbound or traditional marketing would be things like print advertising, direct mail, cold-calling, and television and radio advertising—essentially, anything a company does to find customers, as opposed to “being found.”
It’s become quite vogue to characterize outbound marketing as “old school.” But is traditional marketing really as dead or ineffective as inbound marketers claim?
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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What Will You Do for a Living when the Web Is Dead?
Whew! This SitePoint post of mine certainly generated a lot of controversy, comments, and tweets.
John Tabita
Marketing Evangelist and Blogger at SitePoint.com. Digital Strategy Director at HainesLocalSearch.com. Passionate about helping people and businesses reach their fullest potential and become wildly successful.
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Get Web Design Clients!
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Learn how to get a constant supply of high-paying clients, and all the web design projects you want.
About Me
Thanks for visiting. I’m a Marketing Evangelist, Blogger and Sales Trainer.
I get excited about geek stuff. But I’m also passionate about helping people and companies reach their fullest potential and becoming wildly successful.
That’s why I love helping businesses figure out how to market (especially web marketing) and why I train sales people to be the best they can be at what they do.
