The 3 Things Your Agency Needs to do to Sell More Websites

Welcome to Inbound Sales Journey. If you want to hone your sales skills and learn from the leaders on inbound selling, you've come to the right place. This episode of Inbound Sales Journey is brought to you by the Agency Sales System, the online course designed specifically to teach you how to build a rock solid agency sales system inside your HubSpot CRM. Learn more at dotinbound.com salescourse. Now here are your hosts, Ryan and Gray.

Welcome back to Inbound Sales Journey. This week in episode number 91, Ryan and I are kicking off season number eight already. Rye, let's go season eight of the podcast and we're gonna be talking about a topic that we hear about all the time. Talking with, doing about customers, doing about prospects, podcast listeners. This is obviously one of the one of the services that gets sold most frequently and that is websites and how the heck to sell websites. So the snazzy little title that Ryan came up with for the episode here is the three things your agency needs to do to sell more websites. But essentially what this is, we will give you those three things. We promise. It's not just clickbait, but this is going to be not really a postmortem. It's kind of a mid mortem of a process that we're going through right now. Current mortem, Is that a word?

I don't think so.

No, I'm sure it's not. But it will be by the time this episode gets out there and gets shared a million times. Well, that may or may not happen. True for the stars, right? But this is a sales process that we are going through right now at Guava Box. And so when Ryan and I go through these, this is one of the things that we haven't done in the past but have heard this would be helpful. Like what is this like as you're going through the process, what are the things that you're doing actively selling this? And so we're just going to talk about that. Basically going through a sales process with a prospect right now. So I'll set the stage here in a second. And then what are three takeaways from what's going on with that that may or may not work well, but historically have worked pretty well and will help you at your agency close more sales. So this is going to be a mixture of story and lessons. Alright, Ry, story time, let's do it. So here's the background. Got a referral from a partner on the Guava Box side of things for a pretty small website. So we've Talked about the bucket technique before Ryan, do you happen. I have no idea what episode number that was. We'll look that up and put that in the show notes. But we talked about the bucket technique and that's sales technique. But it's also the truth about Guavabox website projects. When we take on projects for the last five years or whatever, Guavabox we've certainly grown the level of websites that we've done. It didn't used to be this way. So maybe last 3, 4 years guavabox would probably take on a couple larger Enterprise isn't the right word. But larger websites like a lot of custom functionality, a lot of work on the design side, the content implementation kind of the full scale project. And those are the websites that are 60 to 120 like the much higher level website projects. Not your classic small business website, the Big Fish. So those are. It's kind of on the upper end and we obviously there are websites that get done that are way larger than that. So depending on the world that you're living in, that neither sounds like a ton or about right. For your agency or small fish or like nothing small fish. I'm just gonna, just gonna keep commenting with fish sizes here. That's. That would be the perch good one. But. But then we've got. The bulk of the business comes in kind of the middle tier websites that are in that 20 to 20 to $50,000 range. And then one of the things that we moved to a couple of years ago was hey, we're not going to take on projects that are less than $10,000. And so then there's a small variety of small fish, little sunfish projects that come in that are in that 10 to $20,000 range. And why did we pick $10,000? Everyone's got some point. We certainly didn't start by saying no to anything less than $10,000. I think initially pretty early on, in the very beginning days it was like hey, $2,000. It doesn't make sense to do work for less than $2,000. And then as we got better, the leads got better, the business improved and also as we realized what went into successful website projects, that number just to continue to increase and that will continue to happen. The $10,000 mark is we have a set of if we want to, if we want to launch a successful website, there's a set of things that need to go into that. A mix of activities and work that need to go into that to make it worth it and to make it actually like to get A good baseline out there for people and the amount of time and effort it takes to put into that, to do it well, and to get it done right. We just can't do that and run a successful, profitable business at less than $10,000. Certainly there's folks who come to us and say, hey, I have this design. I just need it coded up. That's not really where we add the most value, even if it would cost less. So that's kind of the philosophy is we're not going to take on a new project. There is existing work with past clients that we'll do that. Certainly there will be times when that comes in and it's less than $10,000. But that's nice because you already have the client relationship in place. They already trust you. You're just able to scope out the work, give them the price, and rock roll with it. So anyways, those are the buckets. That's all just to set the stage of the bucket. So this referral that came in is in that smaller, smaller, the smallest bucket in the 10 to $15,000 range as far as budget. So we look at that and the first evaluation is, well, I guess first, we've talked about this before, but you need to actually get budget and establish budget early on what is realistic and what is not. And so my approach in that, in a lot of cases is to just tell people right up front. In our initial call, I'm going to try and give you reasons why it may not make sense for us to work together, essentially.

Is that how you phrase it?

Some form of that I've said that exact thing, or. And typically set it up by, listen, I want to make the most of your time and of my time. And so I want to fit. Like our goal from this call is at the end of this conversation that you and I have, we should both have clarity on whether, like it should be, this does not make sense, probably doesn't make sense to have another conversation, or this definitely makes sense to have another conversation. And if it's not, it definitely makes sense to have another conversation. That's not a good sign that this is going to go well. But in order to get there, we need to make sure that we get through a bunch of the potholes here. And so some of the big hangups are, what is the project scope, what's going to be the skill set required to get this done, what's the timeline, what's the budget? And I'll just lay that out for them and say, we're going to Hit on these big things, because these are the things that you need to know as you're doing your research and making a decision. And we'll try and establish those items and have clarity on that in this conversation. And if all of that, if we can't agree that it doesn't make sense to move forward, that's a pretty good sign that there might be a good fit here and we should move forward in the process.

So something that you're doing differently compared to a lot of salespeople is instead of trying to explain why you're the good fit, you're trying to take the opposite approach, essentially, and say, let's talk about why we're not a good fit. And if there's not a great reason that either of us can come up with, then we are a good fit.

Right.

And it makes sense.

Essentially. It's like not really reverse psychology, but that type of assertions and the way that conversation goes.

So to break that down further, the reason I think that you feel confident taking that approach when other people don't is we are, after many years of working hard at a place where if we don't land the $15,000 website project, not the end of the world, doesn't.

Pretty much don't care.

Yeah, don't care.

So.

But the funny thing about this is I think most people would be very afraid to take that approach because they'd be worried if I don't want to be off putting because then I have a higher chance of losing it. But in this case, it's working really well and it's pretty likely that this deal is going to close for us because you're now on, you're going on your third call with her. So let's. I think what might be helpful for people is let's actually break down that first call, how it happened and how you actually took that approach. Because this might be something people are thinking, hey, I have not had success. Whether it's selling websites, retainers, whatever it is, trying to prove value to people. And this is kind of a new concept for me. How did you actually do it to make it work? So let's start here. How long was that first call? Total, Total length of time?

Yep. A 20 minute phone call.

Okay, so 20 minute phone call. It was a little bit of a nice setup because it came from agency that we've been, you know, partnered, quote unquote with for a while. We've shared business back and forth. So. But they weren't like, you know, best buds. And I'm Giving you my highest recommendations. Just here's another agency to check out that I think might be a good fit. So not, not an incredible place to start, but. But better than just a, like a cold call.

Absolutely.

Email for sure. So you had a little bit of a relationship started. So 20 minute call. How, at what point did you bring up budget and have that conversation that you discussed earlier? Was it minute two or was it.

Minute five or six?

Five or six. Okay, so how did it start before minute one to minute five? Was it getting to know you? Small talk. And that's kind of one of the first things you said was, hey, this is what we do budget wise, who we work with, or was there very little small talk? You guys kind of got into business and then the budget came up.

Well, there was relatively little small talk, but kind of before we break down the whole call, the first point that I want to pull out here. So this is the number one thing that your agency can do to close more website deals and just deals in general is. And we're gonna dig into this here as we. Ryan's almost doing an interview here of.

How I'm curious about this and I think this is a different approach that could help a lot of people.

So the point is understand your own profile, like what type of seller you are. And that quite frankly takes experience, but it also takes paying attention to what works and what doesn't work and reading and learning. And Ryan, you've. We've broken down the different personality types of buyers and sellers before and gone through that. So I think understanding enough to know who you are and be comfortable with your style, but understanding also enough to understand the personality type of the person who you're connecting with and then trying to respond in a way that they're going to respond to. So in this call we had maybe a minute of small talk and this is a down to business type of prospect who just want to tube the goals, wants to get right into it. So that right there tells you like when the prospect wants to start explaining their situation and grilling you within two minutes, that gives you a good indication about the type of buyer that they are and the type of personality profile they are. But the prospect here also came in pretty aggressive with. Here's what I want to get out of this from you. I want a proposal. I want examples of your websites that you've built. I want testimonials and people that I can talk to basically coming in and from the very beginning trying to own the negotiation and own the whole deal process. Here's what I want out of you. You give it to me. So coming in very aggressively, so understanding that. That when I'm the buyer, that's not my style, that's not who I am by nature. But understanding that and responding to that set this whole call up for success. So to right away pump the brakes and say, you know, so the prospect specifically said, I'm evaluating quite a few agencies. Here's what I need from you, and I expect to get that by the end of this call. So coming in real hot relative to most conversations that we have. Yeah, pump the brakes on that right away and say, well, hold on, here's the way that this is going to work. Like, in these calls, I'm trying to figure out whether you are not a good fit for our business. So there's nothing that I know right now that tells me that you're a fit to work with us. So that's what you and I are going to discuss and work through on this call. And some of the things that are going to determine that are, what are your expectations? What are you looking for? Do we have the skill set to do that or not? Are we the right person to. Like, is there a scenario where the things that we do really well sets us apart from the competition? And we're gonna look at timeline, we're gonna look at budget, we're gonna look at what the whole project looks like. And quite frankly, just to be upfront with you, I really don't care whether we get the business if we're not the best partner for you. So in this call, there are gonna be things that you may ask for that I'm gonna say, like, nope, don't work with us on that, or I'll just be up front with you and tell you that. So I think just setting the expectations, but coming back in kind of aggressively and just saying, listen, I know you're trying to own the conversation and you want all these things from us, but we don't just give that stuff out. And I'm doing the same thing to you and evaluating whether you're a good fit for us. And if the answer isn't yes, if we don't both believe we're a good fit for each other, we're going to kill this deal as quickly as possible. So that kind of set up the conversation then to get into a little bit of background, and I gave her the opportunity to give me her situation, but then also to ask a couple questions around our business and then answer those in a way that wasn't like just gave her the buckets right off the bat and budget wise and then talked about her situation, whether it was or not a good fit. So anyways, that's lesson number one that I wanted to pull out is just understand the type of seller that you are. So I think one of the reasons that that approach works for me, kind of like here are the reasons you shouldn't do business with us and if I can't eliminate you, then that's our sign that we should move forward. That fits with my personality, so that works well for me personally. But I think that one of the other reasons that that has worked well is that's something that very few people do. So if you're just selling like every other agency is selling, what results do you expect to get? Like, it's going to be hard to stand out in a negotiation. So this is a case where she's talking with other people. No one else has been as bold in saying, look, we're probably not a good fit. And that instantly is going to generate some respect from the prospect. So it's not all right. That's not always the right way to sell the person. But knowing yourself and knowing who you're talking with I think is a. Is a big deal.

Yeah. So I'm not going to go and recap all this because we have an episode on personalities and selling types, but basically when I talked in the episode, I broke it down. And I'm not the creator of the these animal types to define personalities, but it's something that when I went through a training and had the author of this book that broke this down coming, it really kind of made sense and clicked for me. So the four categories of animals are bulls, owls, tigers and lambs. And this woman, clearly, from coming into the conversation and just getting right down to it, was a bull. And the problem is not that a lamb can't sell to a bull, but a lamb can't sell to a bull if they're going to be a lamb. And the reality is you have to know, what am I, what is my personality type like? And then if you're going to be really effective at sales, how can I change to be mirroring of them? Because bulls respond best to bulls. They do not like buying from lambs.

Right.

So if you're going to be a lamb, what's going to happen? The lamb approach there would have been, okay, okay, get all this stuff, I'll gather to you, I'll send it to you. And then you're definitely never hearing from Them again.

Right.

So the reason this is going so well for you is because probably a lot of people are intimidated when they get on the phone call and they're being having demands thrown at them. And instead of taking the approach you did of, fine, if you're gonna, like, nitpick and try to figure out why this isn't a good fit and not a use of your time, let's do it. I'm looking for the exact same thing. And it sounds like from talking not just here on the podcast, but also talking about this in the office, it sounds like that's exactly what she needed to hear to feel confident in moving forward and having it for their conversation. So we'll link to the article. If you guys haven't listened to that podcast about personality selling, I think that would really be helpful for you, especially going through this case. And I'm sure that a lot of people can relate to this story because you're always gonna talk with different types of people. I mean, you have to be flexible. You have to be able to adapt. You have to be able to sell to all personality types. And that includes people who are very assertive. And that's not a bad thing. That's how they are. And it doesn't mean they're automatically gonna be a bad customer. They could be a great customer. And typically, bulls are great because I want what I want. I know what I want. You guys can help me, and I'm not gonna ask like a ton of questions and micromanage. I just give me what we agreed to. So sometimes they're the best customers.

Right?

So anyways, I just wanted to touch on that gray. So you kind of figured that out. How did the rest of that call go? Kind of after you pushed back and said, look, you're coming in aggressive. Here's my aggressiveness. How did it end? How did it move forward and go into call two?

Right. So that set the tone for the whole call. By the end of that call, this prospect was explaining to me why their business was a good fit to work with Guavabox, potentially. So that kind of flipped the whole switch. I think one of the first steps in the sales process, obviously we talk about know like and trust, getting to know each other, earning people's trust, and getting them to like you. And I think that respect has. Is a big deal. And especially with someone with a personality type of a bull, someone who's really aggressive, that who we are. That's what we also, that skews our viewpoint of the whole world and how we think everyone should be. So someone coming in really aggressive, they're going to respect when you have that same kind of straight to the point aggressive response coming right back. And so that helped flip it. But we walked through needs. We walked through some of the needs that this prospect has are quite frankly, things that we don't really do well. And so being really upfront and just saying, honestly, that part of what you need done, we both agree you need that done. And we're not the people to do that. And if you're looking for a single agency to do everything for you, then we're not the people for you. Because it's not that we cannot offer that, it's that we don't offer that at a value that is clearly above what other people do. And it's not what we want to spend our time doing. So we can certainly offer that and offer it profitably to you, but the outcome, the best bang for your buck is not to work with us on that part of the project. So just saying those types of things and being really upfront and honest with people works really well. That certainly is going to mean that you lose business sometimes. But getting that out of the way early, that sets up the whole back end of the relationship and conversations so well, because you've already established that you're not just trying to sell them at all costs. You've already turned down business that you could have in that specific situation, which is instantly going to help earn trust for the rest of the sales process. You're turning away business in those scenarios. So it's not the highest income thing to do right off the bat, but it makes the rest of the conversation so much easier when people already have that background there. So the conversation essentially went through, focused almost exclusively on her situation, talked about how we operate our general philosophy, and ended with, I'm going to get you homework from here. And so that's kind of phase two or lesson number two that I wanted to pull out here. And it's around the sales process itself. This is kind of a combo point. So this could be two and three, but we're mix this into one. We've talked about assignment selling on the podcast before, making sure that you're not the only person who walks away from meetings with any homework to do, but your prospect has that. And we've also talked about sales process and just how important it is to have a sales process. But I think one of the things that gets stressed a lot of times in sales process is you have to have a sales Process, you have to follow it so you can measure it and then change things up as you go. But I think it's really important to understand you are going to have a different sales process for different types of prospects and different types of projects specifically. So on the project side, there's no way that I'm going to sell a $15,000 website with the same length of sales process or same attention to detail. Not attention to detail, but we're not going to go to the same depths on a $15 or $15,000 project that we're gonna go to on a $75,000 project. There's just a lot fewer variables in play. And so the process this is going to be typically to close a deal in this range, that's gonna be a two to three call, typically like a three call close to close a deal. That is just a game plan up front. We've talked about that before. There are times when that's happened in one call, there's times when that happens in two calls. But typically that same two call, three call to close a $75,000 website, if that's the first thing that you're rolling right into, that is going to be, you know, that's going to be more calls. There's a little bit more. There's more people who are going to need to get involved in those situations. So having a different process, slightly different process, and kind of the point that I wanted to pull in is having a library of homework assignments or here's specifically what I need, I can kind of mix and match with the resources or homework assignments that I have to get this person the right stuff to go from there. So this prospect needs to learn about what our website design process looks like if it's a $15,000 website. So having a specific overview of that process to share with them already pre built, it's like, hey, I need you to go watch this five minute video. I need you to read through this eight page, PDF, whatever it is, and then you're going to understand how this works. It's awesome to have that already built out and be able to give your prospect homework to do as well.

So is that the homework?

Yeah, that's the homework is go learn what this process looks like if you're going to do it with us. And then we're going to be able to have a conversation where I don't need to spend 20 minutes explaining that to you at the beginning of the next call. So it saves me a ton of time. And there was a little bit of homework in terms of outlining this prospect's own vision and filling out a project overview questionnaire as well. So a couple things that had more like actively done a couple things that were just learning on the prospect's part. So having a piece of homework to assign to a prospect at the end of every time to help maximize your time and also maximize the potential of winning the deal, that, again, is something that most agencies out there aren't doing or doing really poorly right now. So that's an opportunity for you to stand apart. Most agency owners that I talk with going through a sales process, they walk out of that meeting and they have an hour and a half worth of homework that they need to go do, and the prospect has nothing. The prospect's job is to sit over there and wait until they get an email from the agency salesperson. That's not the way to sell projects, and that's not the way to maximize your time. There's certainly going to be homework that you then have to go back and do, but it shouldn't be all on your plate. That's my take on it. So that'd be lesson number two that I have. And then lesson number three is I would encourage more people to experiment with how they get detail. So call number two, quick breakdown. All the homework's done. We do a quick review of the homework, and basically we break down, here's the exact budget. Here's what if I had to do this off the top of the dome, here's how I would allocate that budget. And so that's just straight up value to the prospect. That's great to have the insight from somebody who's been doing this for seven years and done a couple hundred projects to be able to hear that. And then how does that line up with what we've talked about and have gone through already? And where would I want to start? So basically at the end of call number two, then is finalizing, here's what if we were to do this project, here's how I would anticipate this deal going down. And just basically the back and forth of, okay, what's the process going to look like? Is that the right process? Did you have other thoughts? And so by the end of that, basically have a verbal agreement on, here's what this is going to look like. Is there anything that's going to. Assuming that we can do all this at this price point? And here's what you walk away with at the end. Is there anything that would prevent you from moving forward with this on the timeline that we've talked about. So basically have a a verbal agreement at the end of that conversation of what this is going to look like. And so then lesson number three is experimenting with how you then present that to that person. So there are a couple things that a couple documents that we send over in the we don't do. We don't put together proposals and send that out to people. All the proposal ish stuff should be done by the time you're actually putting together contract. Like you should have work that out verbally already in 98% of cases. That should be the case. So we'd already gone through and established here's what the process would look like, here's the rough timeline. Now I'm just going to go back and make sure that we can do that. Get timeline, get final pricing and all that information. So put together a project Scope document, which is a templated document that we put together, put in all the details of the project itself, a contract with all the legalese, the payment terms, the timing and that type of stuff. So share that stuff with the prospect. But also shared a slide deck of here's what a normal kickoff meeting is going to look like and then an overview of here's how your project is going to break down. Here's exactly what we're going to do when and answering any final questions. So because I was tied up and unable to get get on a conversation again right away, sent that over in video format. So I think that's something that more people could experiment with. And so that's kind of lesson number three is experiment with how you wind up closing these deals. Are you using video in your proposal or contract phase or are you doing that on a call? You definitely need to have if you are going to send something like a video overview over or just a contract document, you need to pretty much have things locked down verbally before you do that. I think we've talked about this before, but you don't want to be shooting over a proposal blindly and not having a clear here's the next step. It's fine to send it over right before you jump on a call or whatever, give them a little bit of time to discuss it. There's going to be different decision makers who are involved as the case here. So having something in a video form when not everyone can show up to a meeting at the same time, really helpful. So I think just figuring out what can we do to give this to people in as personal medium as possible, that's been really helpful. For us closing business. And I think that's something I'd encourage more people to sign. You jump on all these calls, you're doing video calls with people, go to meeting or whatever you're using, and then all of a sudden we get to the stage where people are just about to make the big commitment and there's this big emotional battle happening inside. It's like, here's a, here's a cold PDF for you to look at and tip you over the edge. It's like, wait, what happened there? So avoid that mistake of everything. Super personable and relatively informal. And then all of a sudden the way that you close is to go least personable and least and super formal. And I just, I think there's a disconnect there.

Write it on a napkin and hand it to him instead.

That's what I'm saying, the napkin technique. No, I'm just saying figure out a way to not kill the whole vibe of the negotiation conversation by all of a sudden closing with, here's an 11 page contract to read through.

Well, yeah, and I've talked about it before. The thing I like to do is you can create a PDF, you can have it like the contract and everything written down, but don't just send it to them and have them read it and then sign it and get it back to you. Schedule a call to go through it with them. And that way, even though it's a little bit more formal of a document, you get to make it a little bit more personal by walking them through it. You get to answer any questions that they have. You get to make it a little bit more fun of a process than here's an official contract. Sign and date. Give us your money. Great, we'll start.

That's the way to do it. Because there's no doubt, I mean, I'm not saying people, hey, you get 60 seconds to look at my contract and then you either sign it or you walk away from it. That's not the point. Certainly there's gonna be cases where different people need to review the contract. Sometimes a big website project that needs to go through a legal department and they're going to look at terms or whatever. That's always annoying, but that'll happen sometimes. But you don't want that to be the only way that they receive that. We're not asking them to make a decision right on that call, but you want your opportunity to present that, to work through that with them. And hopefully you already have pretty much a verbal agreement at that point that as long as these terms all are down on paper, here's what we're moving forward with. What you don't want to do is just you don't want to shoot over a proposal right off the bat. Then you're just into a bidding war with other people and you've lost all control of the process at that point. That's all I have there. There's the long, the super long winded version of how this process is kind of going down and a couple points that I wanted to pull out and share on the podcast here.

Yeah, long winded, but at the same time probably pretty different than what most people are doing. And good because it was effective. And we're not saying, hey, be really aggressive with every person every time, certainly. But if that's. And there's a lot of buyers that that's how they buy and frankly how they appreciate being sold to. And so don't be afraid to give that a try. I think you laid out three pretty good things to think about, Craig, to help sell more websites. And so if you aren't implementing some of these tactics, try them out. You know, if you get someone that's really aggressive that you feel like typically that hasn't been great for closing in the past. Just be upfront with them and try to the approach instead of saying, well, let's try to see why we shouldn't work together and if we can't come to a good agreement that we shouldn't work together, then maybe we should work together and move forward from there. So some things to think about as well. If you guys haven't heard that personality episode again, I think you guys probably benefit from that. If that's not something that you've thought about, are used to trying to figure out what who's the type of person that I'm selling to and how can I mirror them so that they feel more comfortable throughout the sales process was one of the biggest things that helped me become better at selling. So I definitely recommend checking that out as well. So that'll wrap us up. Gray Episode number 91 in the books. Next week we're going to be talking about how to upsell existing business. And this is something we've been asked a lot about tactically. Can you guys help us figure out how we can upsell more of our business? What approaches you guys have taken, what's worked in the past. So we're going to go through that for you next week. As always, if you guys are listening and poking around itunes and want to leave a review, comment that would be great. If you guys have questions, things that you want to have us cover for you, just send us an email ryanbond.com and greatduenbond.com be happy to read those, respond to those as quickly as we can for you, but certainly would love to hear anything that you guys want. A lot of our episodes come out of listener feedback and things that people want us to talk about. So that's been been helpful for us to create good ideas of what to what to cover here. So until next week, good luck selling and we will be back then.

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