Stopping Buyers Remorse Before It Starts (3 Tips)

Rob  00:08

All right, welcome, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And today I have a special guest along with Lane. So let’s start with lane. First. Let’s make sure that we get everybody straight here that Lane is joining us on on the episode today. Once again, I can’t believe I’m so happy. How are you?

Lane  00:24

I’m doing wonderful. Rob, how are you today?

Rob  00:25

I’m doing well. I’m happy to be here. I’m glad you are Yes. And then to quit today, we also have a special guest. His name is Kelly Kennedy. And Kelly, how are you today?

Kelly  00:35

I’m excellent. Thank you,

Rob  00:36

Kelly, you wrote in and reached out and said, Hey, I have a question. I’m not really sure how to handle this. And so can you give us a high level? Here’s what the issue that you have a question about, and let’s see what we can do to help you. I know it relates to buyers remorse.

Kelly  00:48

Absolutely, you know, this is probably, you know, not a bad issue to have. Nowadays, it’s an issue that I need to solve. And I need some help solving it. There have been on a few clients recently. And I’ll get them on the call Salem and we’re both excited, we’ll have you know, one or two phone calls, I think I can really help them. They’re excited for me to help them. We get them to pay an onboarding fee, which is kind of a hurdle that lets me know they’re committed, which is about 350. US I’m Canadian, by the way, that’s I’m saying U.S. And what happens is, it seems like, you know, a month into us providing services, we provide blog articles, two things happen that lead to them to cancel service with us. One is overwhelmed, I can tell they’re completely overwhelmed in their business. And we seem to be on a pecking order of priorities, we seem to not be even close to the top. So they they cancelled services with us, or two, they run out of cash. So my question is, you know, what can I do in the sales process to make sure that what I’m bringing in the right type of clients that will do that? Or potentially keep the clients that may do this? You know, what, what can I do with these clients to you know, stop buyers remorse from happening?

Rob  01:56

That is a good question…how do you stop buyers remorse? Lane, do you understand the question?

Lane  01:59

I understand the question that I’m hoping you have a good answer.

Rob  02:01

Well, I think that’s a good question. That’s it’s a really what comes down to is buyer’s remorse. And I think it’s really good, Kelly, that you’re thinking of this in terms of not so much how do I stop that from happening? But what can I do earlier in the process? Because I think you’re absolutely right, buyers remorse if caused by something you do earlier in the process. So let’s get started.

V/O  02:19

You’re listening to The Slow Pitch Podcast, a podcast about selling less and closing more.

Rob  02:27

We’re talking about buyer’s remorse. And so several questions come to mind. Because I think what can you do to prevent some of these things from happening before you close the deal? So there’s a few things. But I want to ask you a couple of questions before we get there. And I think the first question I would ask is, if you don’t mind it, let’s let’s talk round numbers. I don’t need exact numbers. I know you probably have multiple tiers, I know you have other things. But let’s just give our audience here a little bit of an idea of what would it generally run, so maybe an average ticket size, or a normal ticket size that maybe this happens with or that kind of thing?

Kelly  02:59

Approximately $500 US a month per client.

Rob  03:02

Ok, so by paying for that service, what they’re getting for is a series of blogs that they can use, correct? Correct? Yep. Okay. And so in your sales process, when you talk, or you ask the questions, and you’re having a conversation with that potential buyer, how are you positioning or asking about how important this is? And what are the values that they’re getting? So what is running through some of the questions that you would ask somebody in your sales process that would say…

Kelly  03:28

Yeah, you know, asking me that question makes me realize, maybe I’m not asking those questions. Typically, those calls are, you know, they know what we provide, they’ve already kind of determined that there’s some value there. So typically, how these calls go, where I asked them, you know, a bunch of questions to learn about their business. And generally, we both kind of get excited on, you know, the prospect of you know, where their business might goes, I try to make them the hero, and we get quite excited.

Rob  03:55

When you say excited, who’s excited you are, or they are? (This might be why there is some buyers remorse after the sale)

Kelly  03:58

I would say they are more so. But I’m also excited, too, we have a new client, you know, I truly believe that I can help these folks. But in terms of really selling home, the point of what the value our blogs are going to provide them that maybe I should back up and say what the value of the blog is to our clients that there’s two primary values that we provide with our blog articles. One is authority building. So these are experts in their field. They just want to build authority in their space. And two is SEO. My assumption, and it’s funny now that we’re talking about this is that, that they already know the value I don’t need to continue to sell. Okay, do they though? That’s that certain thing?

Rob  04:37

No…how do you know? How do you know that they know the value of that?

Kelly  04:40

Because they they’ve already decided to buy or they’re very close to buying that. That’s my, my thought process. At the time. I’m not sure if that’s accurate. I’m thinking it’s not.

Rob  04:53

That’s okay. Listen, this is totally normal. And I’ve run into this myself. So I don’t think this is unusual. At least every week. I’m having somebody having the same thing…a conversation where this person, I think they understand about the value where they know what they want, they know why they want it. And then they don’t close or they close. And then they’re like wishy washy when they want to start. And so that can happen to anybody. Right? So don’t worry about that. So but you mentioned, you know that your value is in the authority building and in the SEO and so everybody knows SEO? is search engine optimization being found by Google and all the search engines, that is the value that there is, are they looking for that? Is that what they’re calling you for reaching out for you for primarily? Yep. Okay. And in the question, when you and I’m going to ask you some questions that I’m going to assume that you’re asking, so let’s maybe just roleplay it real quick. You’ve called me, let’s reverse back then let’s, let’s, I’m calling you, can you, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say, I’m gonna buy this, I have a website, I need to get some SEO, I need to build some authority, like, I need to make myself look like I am the person to talk to, right. So I’ve called you, what are some of the questions you would ask me? Just in general? Like, let’s walk through that?

Kelly  06:02

So the first question, I asked them, How did you find us get an idea of how much they know already, but the services we provide? And then second, I’d be like, Well, tell me about your business to get a good sense of what they’re doing. And then the third question would be okay, well, you know, what are you doing right now, when it comes to content, you know, blog articles, social media, you know, white papers, all that kind of stuff to get a sense of kind of their knowledge base. And then I would go into a bit of a, I wouldn’t say to pitch like, well, this is what we do for our clients. And this is the value that we provide you and then we’ll go into the authority side, and then the the organic traffic side, and then I’ll tell them kind of where I think they are on that spectrum before those blog articles that we would write for him.

Rob  06:42

Okay, so, out of roleplay, did we know? So I’m constantly what? That’s okay.

Lane  06:45

I usually try to get other role plays, too. So.

Rob  06:49

Yeah, he tries…says, “I don’t know…” So, so I’ve called you, I want to, you know, I found you on Google. And I assume, you know, you were ranked pretty good. I thought, well, you must be good at this. So you know, how do I get started.

Kelly  07:03

So the first thing that we would do is do an onboarding fee. So we would take that right now. So I’ll send you a credit card form to fill out. And what I’ll do is I’ll take about six to eight hours, and I’ll do a deep dive into your company. So I’m going to look at, you know, your your industry, your company, specifically who your main competitors are your geographic location, like I’m Canadian, but most of my clients, actually, although my clients at the moment are in the US. And then I’ll come back with kind of a plan that I think, you know, for the next six months, this is what I think we need to do.

Lane  07:33

What are the time requirements for your clients? When it comes to obviously, you say you there’s six to eight hours of, hey, let’s let’s learn but ongoing on a semi monthly basis, weekly, monthly basis? What’s the time requirements? Could that be buyers remorse?

Kelly  07:45

Yeah, great question. Maybe I’ll clarify the six, eight hours is just on my side, not on the client side. But ongoing requirements for them. It’s quite minimal. We try to automate everything will even post it to their website. So we have clients that are very low maintenance, that they don’t even review the articles we put them on on their website for him. We have other clients that are a bit more high maintenance, or they’re in industries that they need to be so that we might get a couple rounds of edits. One of the clients that we recently lost because of buyer’s remorse. Actually, I think it was the time commitment that he was having issue with, even though looking at it was quite small, he didn’t have time to review the articles and get it to a place that he was comfortable with it. And that was one of the main reasons that he dropped. He didn’t tell me that was the main reason, but just because he was Mia all the time when I was sending him his content. That’s kind of how I read it.

Rob  08:33

You could tell Yeah, all right. So there’s a lot of good information in what you just shared with us. So first of all, when I asked the question as a caller, and I call you up, and you’re telling me, here’s the next steps, I’m excited, I’m ready to get started already. I’ve already done the research. And you’re absolutely right to think I’ve done the research. I know what I want, I know that I want to buy, you’re absolutely right in thinking that. I think what I what I would rather you do is I would rather you believe it or not. This is why we call it The Slow Pitch. I would rather you slow them down. And you say well, hold on here, US you say that you’re ready to What do you mean, you’re ready to go? Well, I’m ready to go. Because of x, y and z. Now they’re selling you right? If they don’t tell you good reasons as to why they should buy right away, then they’re not really going to be a good person to buy, they’re not going to buy I mean, or if they do they’re going to have more chances of buyer’s remorse. Let’s say they kind of answer your question, but you’re not really satisfied. And, and honestly, at that stage, that level, I would even push back and say I’m not I’m not so sure you are ready. Because I don’t I don’t think you understand how much time effort and work that is to get that done. What you’re what you’re saying, How long do you think it took me to get my site to be at the level where you could find me as quickly as you did? How long do you think that took me? And then they’re going to tell you Well, I have no idea that’s your job or I have no idea. Or they might say it might take a little while. Well what do you mean by a little while? Is it like is it a day is it a month is two months is it six ounces a year? Right? So you You’re asking these questions, you’re making them work through their mind, and making them fully understand what it really takes to get there so that the value is even more so than what you’re charging. So if you said to me, Listen, it’s at least six to eight months to get a good progress on getting your SEO is in really good shape based on where you are, and where you should be it to be hyperlocal, and blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, that you have your specs that you need to get it to, if you have that conversation, and you say, it takes at least six to eight months to get there. And here’s how many hours each month it usually takes to do all these things. How does that sit with you? Like, you know that that’s gonna take some time? Are you okay with that? Are you worried about how much time it is going to take you client to work? on your end? Are you are you are you comfortable with, you know, two hours a week working on editing, this stuff that we’re looking to send you or whatever number hours is right? Even if it’s 30 minutes, it’s still 30 minutes out of their day. And we all know, everybody’s day is like running 100 miles an hour. Right? So how do you how do you position that? So some of those questions are going to generate some questions in their mind, like, how much work is this? And how much time is this absent.

Lane  11:09

So, I’m wondering if personality type doesn’t play into this as well. So it can so like the the client that he just didn’t have time, somebody he might maybe he’s a, he’s a high D or something where he’s got to be in control. And he can’t just let you be the master of the content and let the content go. So he doesn’t have he can’t let go. And if he doesn’t have the time to do it, then he’s got to bail. So maybe that influences how you approach those questions as well to kind of learn what the personality type is. And then you know, okay, well, if you’re a high D, you don’t have time. But whereas if you’re maybe an iron s and maybe you’re happy with just letting the letting you post the content and letting it go,

Rob  11:46

…and you can’t see this, but off the corner of my office here on my board, here, I have the disc profiles on one of the things that the high D has as an issue, it’s really what’s based on is the fear of loss of control. So that is why the high D personality might be in that situation where they’re feeling like, I can’t give this to you, I can’t, I can’t let you take this control. But what they really want is somebody that’s going to take control for them based on the information that the high D gives. In other words, the high D has to feel like they’re in control, but they allow all the other things to happen. They’re still feel like they’re in control, like this is the direction we’re going. These are the topics I want to talk about. These are the things I want you to get into. This is bla bla bla bla bla. Okay, great. You’re just doing menial detail work? I don’t have time for the details. I don’t want to the details. And yes, they’re gonna have to read through it, will they have the time to do it? No, probably not. Do they have to understand that maybe the detail in the exact wording isn’t as important in an SEO article as it is when you’re having a conversation with somebody in front of a real client. Right. So yeah, so personalities can definitely play a role. The other thing is, is asking the questions, I think the questions that you’re asking early on, instead of letting them push you into a sales position. So in other words, when they start pushing you to say, Well, okay, I’m ready to get started, or how much is it gonna cost? Or, you know, those types of things? I want you unless you’ve unless you’ve gotten all the answers you need, what I really want you to do is start to ask a lot more questions, that should be a feeling in your gut, to say, I’m not answering that question yet. Okay, it’s too early. Like, it’s kind of like when you go on and on your first date, you’re, you’re not going to ask for too much on that first date, or yet, like you’re going to get to know each other a little bit. That’s what this whole thing is early on. It’s all about getting to know each other first, before you just tell everybody all your secrets or all your information, right? So that’s, that’s what this is going to be all about. And so your questions about what you’re going to be providing to them, they should start to stem around questions that would make them understand what your value is, and then why they should be buying, but then them having to figure that out on their own. So if we were to flip that, and you called me and said, Hey, I’m ready to buy, I would say, Well, how come let’s just play it out? How come you’re What do you mean, you’re ready to buy? What do you mean,

Kelly  14:00

I’m ready to buy? Because I know that I need to increase SEO, and you guys have a good reputation for that.

Rob  14:06

Okay. So why was talking me through? Where are you at with SEO? Now? Why do you think you need to still do that?

Kelly  14:14

So we don’t have too much in terms of SEO content on our website, we know that content is key, are king over time. So we need a bunch of content, our unique visitors per month is a is probably around 150. Realistically looking at our peers in the industry, we need to get up to 1000

Rob  14:32

Oh, 1000…How quickly do you need to do that?

Kelly  14:34

I need to do that within the first two months.

Rob  14:38

What if I can’t do that in two months?

Kelly  14:40

Why wouldn’t you be able to do that in two months?

Rob  14:44

Well, I’m not really sure I you know a lot of this is a little bit of pre work that we have to do before we can really get all this stuff in line and know that we can get to where we need to go. There are some things that we can do to get you ranked or showing up earlier, but that can be a very variation of what we’re talking about. So I guess how can we guys haven’t done this so far? Where are you guys to? What have you done so far to get there? And, and what are you working on now to to fix this?

Kelly  15:12

You know, I think it just comes down to being really busy. You know, we’re a startup we have, you know, a lot of things going on. And this is something that, you know, we’ve always known that we needed to do, but we’ve always had other things that we seem to have focused on first.

Rob  15:26

So on a scale of one to 10, you’ve you’ve done one, which is we’ve basically launched the website, we have no other information or content other than, hey, here’s where we are, to 10 is we have several months weeks, almost posting something once a day, once a month, once a week, whatever, it is very consistent. We’re Where are you on that spectrum? Right now? Would you say?

Kelly  15:48

Probably a two to three? Realistically, three?

Rob  15:51

Okay. And that’s mostly based on time? Is that what you’re saying? Your time? Okay. And how much time do you think it’s going to do for us to do this work? And then for how much time do you think it’s going to take you once we do our part? How much time do you want to be able to do?

Kelly  16:06

You know, that’s a great question. I think that I could probably commit a fair bit of time, but realistically, looking last three to six months. I’m always putting out fires, it seems like

Rob  16:16

Yeah, you know, the other day, I talked to somebody, and they said a fair bit of time. And when I heard that, I asked them and they said, Well, I can spend at least an hour a day on it. And then the other person told me a fair bit of time is an hour month, so I’m not sure what a fair bit of time means to you

Kelly  16:29

Realistically, probably an hour a week I could spend on this.

Rob  16:35

Okay. And if it if it took you more than that, would that be an issue?

Kelly  16:40

I want to say no, but potentially, depending on the fires I’m putting out…Yeah.

Rob  16:45

So an hour is realistic, I think on our side, because I think what we would end up doing is looking at getting the information and then you would have to just read through and give us your notes. So in our could do it. It may be more some weeks, I mean, in some ways could be less, right. So just understand that that. So let’s let’s play this out here a little bit. Let’s say we already started working together. I guess the other question I should ask is, had you not decided to work with us? What was good? I mean, you’re already probably doing everything fine. Now your business is probably working. It’s it’s, I mean, you’re probably making sales, I’m assuming Otherwise, you wouldn’t be calling to spend money on something like this. Right? So, you know, why do you feel like you need it now?

Kelly  17:25

It seems to be one of those things that you need to have it but it’s not one of those things you need initially. To your point, you know, we built this system to generate revenue, build the business. Now we need to bring in clients through other channels and content and organic traffic is one way to do that.

Rob  17:41

Yeah, but it sounds like it’s you know, it’s not a pressing issue right now. Yeah, you want to do it soon. But even if you didn’t, I mean, sounds doesn’t sound like it’s an urgent thing you have to do right now, does it?

Kelly  17:51

No, no, I wouldn’t say it’s urgent. Okay.

Rob  17:54

So why did you call today, then?

Kelly  17:57

It’s an investment that I think that we need to start making. It’s a high leverage activity. high leverage more on the back end? I think they what do they say the that content, the you know, the best time to start? It was, what, 10 years ago, building content? Time is today. So let’s just kind of get the ball ball rolling on it.

Rob  18:18

It’s funny, it’s almost like you read my blog. Yeah, I was like, that’s kind of what we think. I think you could all you should know, long time ago. But you know, what, if you haven’t, now’s the time, right? So I get it. So if, if let’s fast forward, then you’re already you already got all the content, we’ve been working on it for x number of months, whatever that number of months is, you’re now ranking? How does that even impact your business? I mean, maybe it doesn’t even impact at all.

Kelly  18:44

You know, that’s a good point. You know, not all organic traffic is the traffic that you want that, you know, to sales, we would need to make sure that in that content, there’s, you know, the call to action, you know, there’s a part in our funnel to bring in new clients. So people know exactly when they’re reading the content, you know, where we would like them to go with the next step.

Rob  19:06

So how, like, if like, again, if you fast forward, well, how would you think it would even impact your business? Would it? Would it It impacted at all?

Kelly  19:13

Yes, I don’t think we would do it unless we would see some actual results in terms of new clients, new, you know, monthly recurring revenue, all that stuff. But again, totally conscious of the idea that organic traffic in and of itself is not a lot of value, other than I don’t know what you call it, but it’s awesome to see wicked analytics, but at the end of the day, bringing cash in doesn’t really matter.

Rob  19:35

True. All right. So like, let’s assume now you’re you’re at a number in sales. What do you think? How much more sales? Do you think you’re going to bring in, let’s say a month?

Kelly  19:44

I have no idea. I have no idea and you know, I haven’t attached dollar amount to this. Or a timeframe, you know, when I would see that,

Rob  19:53

Well, that’s tough because I you know, I don’t know what it does for any business. You know, some businesses that it can range from, you know, you can see a 50% business percent change in some business and then you can see 5% on another business, it really depends. It depends on, you know, variables outside our control. So I guess I’m trying to get a feel for what your expectations are, too. I know you want to increase your business, I don’t know by how much. Are you looking at a double your business through those we look into? You know, what do you think? And what are you trying to do?

Kelly  20:22

You know, if I can get a return on investment of, you know, over time and totally get that there would be some time to let the content soak online before this would happen and kind of refine the funnel. But if I can get a return on investment of three times, I think that would be reasonable.

Rob  20:36

Okay, so three times. That sounds like a gut feel number.

Kelly  20:40

Totally gut feel. Yeah, I haven’t put a lot of thought into this until we’re having this conversation.

Rob  20:45

Okay. All right. No, lean, quick. Sidebar, is Kelly, a visual and audible or a kinesthetic person? I’m thinking visual. Okay. And Kelly, I think you’re a kinesthetic more than the visual, but also visual. Which one? Do you know which one you are,

Kelly  21:01

I don’t really know the definitions, I can get a general

Rob  21:04

A general idea is somebody when you so when we are in for conversations and sales, one of the things I look for, or I watch for are key words. So I just use one of them as watch for or look for, that’s a visual person, I’m a very visual person. So when I talk, I will say things so that it see is when I said when I look at it this way, or if I see that, or, you know, it looks like this number is out of whack that that kind of thing, versus an audible person is going to talk in an audio type terms. So yeah, that sounds pretty good. You know, I it resonates with me, I can hear that, that I hear you, you know that kind of they’re more audible type people. But then when somebody says, you know, I can’t get a grasp on it, I don’t have a good gut feel or, you know, something you just said earlier made me think I wonder if that’s what you are. And so I My gut feeling is is that you’re more of a kinesthetic because a couple times now you’ve made comments that are more gut related or feeling related like intuition into Yeah, like an intuition or like, you know, like something you can grab onto. So in the conversation is like, yeah, that’s a number I can grab onto or so you have to think about your if you’re a kinesthetic, you’re less likely to say to somebody who is a visual, how does that look to you? Right? You’re gonna say How does that feel? And they’re gonna be like, it feels? I don’t know, it feels like, you know, Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. So you have to say to them, if they’re visually say, does that look, does that look right? Like it should? Or do you see what I’m saying? You know, that type of phrasing will make a difference to somebody you’re suddenly resonating with, or they feel more like you get them. Okay, one more layer. Yeah, it’s one more layer.

Kelly  22:36

I read a lot of content and listened and stuff. And I haven’t heard it phrased that way. I totally get it like that. That makes sense. I’m going to be watching for that. Now. Any resources and all this kind of sidebar, any resources?

Rob  22:47

Well, there’s Yeah, if you just started looking online, and you started searching for visual, audible and kinesthetic type that you’ll find stuff out there. But it’s, it’s fascinating. And you don’t want to overuse it, right. So if somebody’s a visual, you, they give you several clues. And all you do is speak to them in visual clue, it’s not going to feel natural to them. And it’s not gonna feel natural to you. So, but it’s subtle, and when you use it as when you need to use it. So when you’re in that point where you’re going through numbers, that’s when you’re going to want to just kind of put that in there. So for you, if you’re talking about if I’m talking to a kinesthetic, let’s say, I would say let’s let’s, you know this number here, how does that how does that grab you? You know, does that make you feel like that’s, you know, that all of a sudden, no, I’m like, yeah, all of a sudden, you’re there, you get it, we’re related, we on the same page. So that’s something to keep in mind. Right? So I like to thank you. No, no worries. And so, you know, backing up a little bit here and going into this this conversation, I think if we go back into the roleplay, I would start to ask you going fast forward, and you know, you haven’t given a really good idea of, of how much this is going to make any difference in your business, I get the feeling. I’m not sure it’s really any difference. I mean, if you can tell me a range, what you think it will be, that’s great. If you can’t that’s okay. And not everybody can any ideas or any guesses

Kelly  24:05

In terms of you know, what we needed in terms of a return?

Rob  24:09

Or what you’re expecting even…

Kelly  24:10

I think my expectation would be over time that I could reasonably attribute $1,500 a month for the content I’m producing.

Rob  24:20

So it’s three times let’s say, if we’re going to charge 500 Or if we’re charging a different numbers, what you’re saying is $1,500 increase a month now, you know, I don’t want to assume anything here. But is that a, is that a really good increase? Or is that a not a good? Like, how, how much would that how would that affect your business? If you had a $1,500 month increase? Would that make any difference?

Kelly  24:41

Month over month, it probably be about 1010 to 12% month over month growth, you know, not enough to write home about or call my mom or dad and you know, be excited but overall compound you know, each and every month, that would be material over time.

Rob  24:56

Okay? But that doesn’t sound like it’s that big of a deal. So maybe it’s maybe not even time to even do this, maybe you maybe what if you hired just an intern and just had him write some stuff for you

Kelly  25:08

That somebody thought, well, maybe going on a freelancing website. I don’t have the time to train these folks to, you know, get to a place where I’m comfortable or confident or have that level of trust in what they’re writing. So I’d rather pay that premium to have somebody that, hey, this is what you do you have the process to make sure that it’s high quality.

Rob  25:32

Okay, that’s, that’s a fair answer. And so what you, when you think about somebody like that, what I’m doing is, as I’m saying, Here’s some money issues, or direct dollar equations that we can use and tribute to, if they’re successful, and then their time is another measurable thing. So how much time do they want to and have the have to be able to put toward this, so the thought of hiring an intern or hiring an employee to do this, and now they have to train them, I don’t have time to do that, that says, That speaks volumes to me, number one, their time seems to be very, very tight. Now I need to make a decision, do I want to work with this person, because their time may not be as good as I want it to be. So this may be something you may need to address during your sales conversation to say, you know, a lot of times, there’ll be a requirement in the beginning, especially where we’re gonna have to have a conversation to three times in the week, each one of them maybe half an hour to an hour long to get us up and running to make sure we’re getting it to where we want it to be, or whatever that number is, right. But you’re gonna have to ask that question. Are you comfortable with that that much time? Is that going to be something you can can afford to do? I mean, I’m not sure sounds like you’re really busy.

Kelly  26:33

Yeah. If if the upfront time investment is, say, an hour a week or two hours a week, I’ll make that commitment for the first couple of weeks.

Rob  26:41

Absolutely. Okay. And what what happens if I, what happens if you just you know, the first week you do it the second week? Gone? You never show up? Again? What happened? We only do then,

Kelly  26:50

It’ll never, it’ll never happen, because I’m gonna pay 350 bucks. If I’m gonna go steal, it will be the third week, not the second week.

Rob  26:57

Gotcha. Okay. So all right. So I see. So if you if you ghost me. There were there. Were over. Right. And it’s all done.

Kelly  27:07

Yeah, I guess that would be the case? I would I would hope not. So because I would

Rob  27:10

So, you hope… you’re hoping you would just pay me a little bit, work through a little bit of conversation, never really see what we do. And then you would just, you know, you wouldn’t do that to me, would you?

Kelly  27:19

No. I wouldn’t do that. Yeah.

Rob  27:22

I know you and do that now. But at the time commitment, it becomes a big deal in the beginning. And it’s not an easy thing to be able to commit to. So understand that. That’s one of the first components, that’s going to be a little bit of a roadblock for, for somebody that’s like, like you who’s busy, there’s a lot of things that are going to need to be inputted from you to make sure that we’re where we need to be and get to go. So just understand that ahead of time. So what I’m doing is laying groundwork, right, I’m putting some money in their head, I’m putting some time in their head. I’m getting commitments from them. They’re committed. Okay, if during that conversation, they’re like, Dude, I don’t have time for this. You know, how much is this? It’s not that difficult. Can you just give me the numbers? Yeah. What do you do that?

Kelly  28:00

I don’t know if it’s good? Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah,

Rob  28:03

I would definitely shut it down and say thank you for calling. But you know, you can call the other guy down the street. Yep. Give them a call. Okay, yeah, you get well, they’re just not as good as I am. But do go ahead, you can call them they’ll do that for you. I’m not doing that. And a lot of times, I’ll even use the phrase, there’s two types of people out there that call me there’s, there’s a kind of person that says, I want to have out full control, and I want to do everything, I’m gonna tell you what to do. Step one, step two, step three, we’re gonna go through all these steps. And this is what I want from you. And on the other end is, I’m here to help. I’ll plug in where you need me to do and give me the feedback, give me the information. But I really want you to do and guide because you’re the expert here, what gender you want, and what it does, it gives you a feel for what kind of a way the relationships gonna go later on to if they say, Yeah, I kind of want to give you the information or you get a sense that that’s what it is, you’re going to know whether or not that’s going to make any difference for you whether or not they’re going to go shoe or not, too. Right.

Kelly  28:55

Okay, that’s a great question to ask,

Lane  28:57

Or if you double your rate, because they’re gonna be a pain.

Kelly  28:59

Yeah, actually, I’ve done that before. It’s very,

Rob  29:01

yeah. So we’ve all done that, right. You know, what the worst part is? Here’s the here’s the worst part. How many times you’ve doubled your rate and gotten the job a lot? Too many times? Yep. Why is that

Kelly  29:10

One you probably never ask. Enough. You can always more than correct. And then the other reason? Well, I think, you know, the psychology piece is that they, they, they like the idea that like, this guy’s an expert, he knows what he’s worth.

Rob  29:24

Yeah, there’s some of that. And I also think, you know, the one that is leaked cares least about the relationship is the one that’s kind of in control. Right? I mean, they I think the one that’s like hey, you know, doesn’t matter me I don’t care. Here’s what the number is, are you gonna buy it or not? Basically the attitude right without saying it, they will come back almost every single time and to the detriment that I sometimes when I when I do projects, and I priced them out and I find that they are going to be a pain and I raised the price from what I thought it would be when I was first putting numbers together in my head to the time we actually get to sit down to the table and go okay, here’s the numbers what they are, and even if you double or triple whatever those numbers are those people buy. And you’re like, why are they buying this is crazy, but it’s because I don’t care if I get the job. And so that makes a big difference. So I think that’s that’s another component. I think that can add to this a little bit sometimes.

Kelly  30:13

No kidding. Yeah. It’s one of those things that it’s not intuitive. Like, especially if you’re starting out, like you never want to lose business, right? I know, you get to that point where you have that confidence, and you’re willing to lose them. And then you’re like, why is this not? Why is this actually working?

Rob  30:27

Well, and there’s a, there’s a need to transition. So if you’re just starting out, and you need a book of business to show, there is nothing wrong with discounting your price to get your book of business. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, Listen, I’m starting out in this business. These are the things that I’m doing. I just need to build a book and I need to show off what I can do. I want to show off what I can do for you. Is that okay? Yeah, that’s totally fine. I’ve done that hire people because of that. And they’ve used me as their example to other people. And that’s okay, too, right? That’s totally fine. But then there’s a transition time how far and how long down the road, you go before all of a sudden, you have to go, Okay, I’ve proven myself enough. Now, I don’t need to prove anymore. There’s no more need to prove why can’t I just charge x whatever is 2345 times whatever it was I started out at, because it started out when I charged them. $100 and it should have been 1000. Right? So whatever that number is, doesn’t matter. You have to know when your time to transition is. And it’s probably much, much sooner than you think. So just keep that in mind.

Kelly  31:24

And your first experience going through that is amazing when it first happens. light bulb goes on.

Rob  31:29

Is you are correct. Yes. Lane. Did you have any other questions or thoughts?

Lane  31:34

None? I don’t know. Other questions right now.

Rob  31:37

All right. So we’ve kind of talked about all these different things. But I think one of the other elements that kind of feed into this a little bit is being able to recognize the value that they’re replying to their own life in their own time in their own business. So in that question and conversation, you’re finding out how does it affect them to the point of their business? How is it affecting their business, you’ve, you know, if they brought in $1,500 a month, more every month, forever and ever in the future? Because after a while, once you get SEO going, it’s you know, after a year, you’ve you’ve established pretty well that you’re there, right? Am I wrong? Or is that pretty accurate?

Kelly  32:10

For the most part, for a large part of our clients? But to your earlier point, like we we just don’t know, we’ll do everything we think we can. You know, we’re the experts in the area, but sometimes it doesn’t work.

Rob  32:21

Yeah. And I’m sure there’s there’s some analytic stuff that you can see on the back end, or you can get into and all that, that’s all good. But to say this is the number of dollars that were that were attributed to, unless you said use this code in a particular posting wobbled, right? There’s no way you would know, right, but I get that part, I think, in general, people understand content is king content needs to continue to be put on the on the site. And by doing so you’re going to rank better over time, if it’s the right content, the right way of doing things. And I think then over time, they start to see the value of that piece, they understand that inherently, you just have to bring that out of them, so that they can apply dollars to that both in the dollars that they’re spending, or that they’re gaining from their sale, also, from their time that they’re saving. So imagine fast forward, and you’re eight months into this. Remember those two hour meetings, guess what they’re now they’re 10 minutes or 15. Right? And not not maybe they’re maybe they’re maybe they’re 30 minutes, every two, three weeks, because it’s so much we’ve got it, we’re on a roll, we got things going. It’s easy to get up and running. And we get these things posted on a frequent bit more frequent basis, or we we know your business well enough, right? So there’s some time savings there. And that if you ask them the question, so that they tell you, and they understand that that savings is there as well in time, and they’re still getting the postings going that over the course of the year, you know what happens over the course of the year, you’re now 1500? Out? Let’s fast forward this if I asked you all right, now let’s continue on, let’s say you’re still $1,500 a month without anything else in you continue to pay for our services. So you’re netting out X number of dollars, is that something worth something? How long do you plan on staying in business? So in a year, the second year, how much more money are you bringing in? And do you think it would say the same? Would it stay at 1500? Would it grow? Would you raise your prices? So you start asking those questions. Now you see the value now you’re like, Whoa, this is not the value for the month to this month, next month, the value is over time, I’m going to be bringing in 10s of 1000s of dollars every year extra may not be able to directly attribute it, but it’s going to help, it may be well worth close to 10s of 1000s every every year after the first couple of years, right? So now I’m looking at nothing. All right? I’m spending a little money but I’m getting some extra money and I’m making a lot more of it. What’s the what’s the problem? And what you need to do is then ask the question, how does this affect you personally, so let’s fast forward a year to three years in the future. All these posts are working. The money you said was happening? What is it? How does it affect you? Okay, yeah, and you’re the business owner? What does that mean for you?

Kelly  34:49

So you’re actually asking me that question. So you’re asking me as the business owner, what would that mean for me? Well, that would mean for me. That one my my company is is growing, I can start bringing in people means more time for me, once I start to offload a bunch of activities, and then I can do more things with my family going and those vacations paid for kids college, etc.

Rob  35:14

Exactly. That’s worth something. Totally. So now when you’ve had that conversation, okay, now, you now know in their head, they’re already putting themselves in this position of I know that they their business is going to grow, I’m going to be able to spend more time with my family, because I’ve got somebody working on this a little more time is financial, I’m just gonna be better off. Okay.

Kelly  35:34

I like that idea that reframe, you know, we could make the idea that this is what you’re going to get each month, three times or every quarter. But if you kind of frame it over, say, a year or two years and kind of overarching benefit, like that’s, yeah, I can totally see.

Rob  35:49

And you notice, if you notice to the question that I’m asking is not Hey, did you think about if we charged you 500 a month, and it’s making you $1,500 a month, that’s $1,000. Net, blah, blah, blah, blah, I’m not using any numbers, I’m not telling you any numbers. If I’m selling, I’m not telling you at this point, I’m not telling you anything, numbers wise, you’re the one telling me, I’m using your numbers, I’m not going to use my own because I need to know what’s in your head, the more that I understand what’s in your head for numbers, the better my chances of understanding whether or not my numbers are going to work. So now I get to the end of this, and I go, Alright, I know I’m gonna they’re gonna need $1,000 Give or take a month based on a $500 a month program. All right, Kelly, do you think we should talk a little bit about some numbers here at all?

Kelly  36:27

Sure. Yeah, let’s, how much is it gonna cost me to, to, to get started and then ongoing?

Rob  36:32

Yeah. So you know, a lot of people look at it one of two ways, they do look at it as a cost sometimes, and other people look at this as kind of, it’s a little bit of a double edged thing, it’s, you’re gonna save a little time, and you’re gonna have a little bit of an investment to, you’re gonna have to put some money into this to get some money out at the other end, right. So by investing in this, you’re going to find that our numbers typically range somewhere between the 507 $150 range, we also have a program that’s 1000 1500. I don’t know that that’s mean, I don’t know if that’s even something that you would even entertain there’s another word range above that even that’s, you know, two to 3000 a month. I don’t know if we, which one of those areas kind of fit to what you were expecting.

Kelly  37:13

I guess what I was thinking of was probably upwards of $1,000.

Rob  37:19

Okay, so here, I was looking at this thinking we were going to be having you. I’m out of this roleplay I thought you’re gonna spend 500 points. I thought that’s what it was going to come down. Right. And now you’re telling me it’s 1000? How much am I charging?

Kelly  37:32

Well, that’s a good question, I guess. Change that up?

Rob  37:37

I guess. I’m using their numbers. Yeah. Yep. I know, that sounds weird, Kelly. But here’s what here’s what’s happened more times than not. I have sat in meetings, we go through all these questions, we go through all the stuff they’ve framed in their minds, they’ve got whatever those numbers are. And I give them this choice of range. And they almost always pick the middle one. Totally. Yeah. And I don’t know what that is. And I don’t know why. But they do. And also, by the way, so when I try to do is I try to use the movie theater theater concept, which is, the lower price is low, the middle price is what it is. And the highest price is a little closer to the middle price than it is the distance from the middle to the low. Does that make sense? So 500, and then seven to 1000. The next one’s you know, maybe 1500 to 2000. So that difference is smaller, going from one to the other. I tried to do that I was doing enough. For this one, I set her now. But when you try to do is put that top one a little closer to the middle, and the middle, a little further away from the bottom. And what that does is your brain does this. I don’t know that I want the cheap one. Because I don’t I don’t feel like that’s going to be good enough. The middle one is the middle into high one. I can’t make that leap. And it’s not that big of a leap. Yeah. And some people though, I’ve had it where they just leap to the next one the top and they go you know what I was gonna do this, but I’ll do that. So the numbers are what you’re basing it on is what they know that they can afford. And if you say to me, Hey, I think I was thinking that 1000 And up range. That’s about the right range for me what I was expecting. Okay, why? Why did you pick that? That’s my budget. Okay. Why did you you came in with that budget. Why did you how’d you get that? How’d you get to the number?

Kelly  39:09

I’m just looking at, you know, what we could afford with her current sales?

Rob  39:13

Okay. All right. What do you got to do now?

Kelly  39:18

Well, tell me what I can get for $1,000.

Rob  39:22

Oh, okay. See? Okay. All right. So that’s a good point, we should probably do that. So the 1000. And we list off some of the different things that we would do, right, we would go through, these are the elements that we would be working toward, I don’t know if that fits with what your expectations were. And some of that would be based on what we talked about and what they’re trying to get accomplished. So some of those questions are also based on what are they trying to get done? What are they trying to do? Obviously, ranking is one thing, but timeline, where they want to rank how they want to rank what their keywords, are there any information that they can give you. Okay, these are the things we’re going to be focused on. Does that make sense? Yep. For sure. You’re basically writing the estimate for you.

Kelly  39:57

Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ve never really thought of it that where you can read anything like you’ve blown my mind from? Okay, here’s my question for you on that specifically because like, I might be leaving a lot of cash on the table on my website, like we do have traditionally the three options, and we put the most popular and the third option, and you’re right, like 95% Go to the mid option, we have $1 amount there. Should we get rid of that dollar amount?

Rob  40:25

Well, that depends. Do you want them to automatically buy without interaction? Okay, you want to interact? We do? Yep. Okay, then I would remove the numbers.

Kelly  40:36

Okay. Yeah, I can totally see that. Never thought of that as an option.

Rob  40:40

I’m not even sure I would list off categories or, or packages, I would say we have a series of packages that we would want to customize for your business and let them tell you what their package needs to be. And you price it accordingly.

Kelly  40:56

Okay, I totally am on board with that.

Rob  40:58

Yeah. So that’s what you’re doing. Now we’ve gotten to that point. And you said, $1,000, we go through all those things. You’re like, yeah, that fits. Okay. Let’s fast forward to that point. And I say, Well, what do you want to do now? Because we’re back to that point, what do you want to do?

Kelly  41:10

Let’s get started. Let’s, let’s start off.

Rob  41:13

Okay. Are you sure?

Kelly  41:15

Yes, I am. Sure.

Rob  41:17

Well, I, it’s probably a weird question for me to ask. You’ve gone through several questions with me. And I think we’ve gotten a lot of good information. And we’ve shared a lot of information together, my biggest concern is that we walk away from this conversation, you feel good now. And I, what I don’t want you to walk away thinking is that it’s different than what we just talked about, we’re gonna go through, here’s the numbers, and we’re gonna put it all in together and paper. And so that there’s something to review. And when you do that, you need to review and put in your estimate a little bit of the conversation you had in terms of an estimate. So typically, what I’ll do is I’ll say the values that you are the thing, basically, you’re talking about the problems or the things you’re trying to solve that they’re going to be included in there that are specific to them. So if they’re saying they’re not ranking on Google, and they need to do it in this amount of time, your estimate is going to say, Our goals are going to be to achieve a better ranking on Google in a certain amount of time. And if that’s where you feel like you can do and, you know, at this point, you’re also looking for this, this and this, and this is solving this, and this is going to impact the business based on the conversation we had by about this percentage about this much, or this much more business or this dollar amount, whatever that number, so you’re customizing a little bit that way. And what they’re doing is they’re looking at this and when they read it later, they’re being refreshed on what you guys just talked about. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And before you go through that estimate, or before you go through that, you need to have that conversation as in like we did when we started this conversation today. Has anything changed? Yeah, I mean, if people listening didn’t hear that part, but before we started this conversation, what has anything changed since we spoke last? And you said no, typically, it will be a no, but every once awhile, I have somebody that goes, Yeah, you know what we were thinking about this too? Can we add that? How much is that, okay, now we’re gonna change some things does happen, but allows you to ask those questions and allows you to make sure that you’re getting exactly the information on paper is matching what they’re expecting to see on the paper. And in your conversation, at the end, you should be very clear about what they should see on this paper, I’m gonna go through, I’m gonna, we’re going to me and all that bullet points, boom, boom, boom, you’re going to list those off to them over the phone or in person, wherever it is. And then you gonna say in the end, that we’re going to price it in this range. And I you know, the exact number, I have to put it together and figure out what that’s going to be. But based on our conversation, it should be within that range. And, and by the way, when you give them the range, the lower number, it should be as close to that number as possible. You know, your number is going to be you can price it out as $1,000, you might say, you know, $1,000 to $1,500, because they’re never gonna expect to $1,500 If you say a 1,001st, right, so they’re always gonna go to the low end. So always your low number is the best number for you on each of those tiers. Okay, okay. Yep. So then when you go through the estimate, you’re gonna review all that stuff. Again, you’re gonna bring them back into that mindset of how the value of them is, how it’s affecting them how it’s affected personally, and even that conversation about you know, you mentioned something about your family and being able to spend more time that’s all going to be a value that’s hopefully going to help help bring this and we’re looking forward to helping you get there. Right. And so then you it basically your, your, your present hate presentation of, of your estimate is, is it should be a non event. This should not be a big deal. That should be everything is expected. Nothing new. Nothing new. Never bring anything new to the table. Listen, I don’t know how much this helped for you today, but I hope it helped.

Kelly  44:37

This has been great. You know, I think I expected a lot from this call and this podcast, but I got more than I expected. So thank you guys for helping.

Rob  44:45

We’ll listen. I appreciate it. Most of it came from Lane, but I appreciate ya. Thanks, Lane. Yeah, that was very good.

Lane  44:51

I type in the background. I tell him he’s just reading a teleprompter.

Rob  44:56

That’s exactly what’s going on all the time. So Nope. But Kelly, I appreciate you coming on, I appreciate your question because it is a common question. And a lot of people have that the buyer’s remorse usually stems from something that happened earlier in the sales process. And the other thing that you can always, if you haven’t done enough is to bring them in at any given time in your process, you feel like that’s gonna happen, you always bring them back into those questions, and bring them back into those pain areas where they’re trying to figure out numbers and so on, and then bring them back forward. So you can get them to understand Oh, yeah, that’s right. You know, sometimes you, we have short term memories, and that’s okay, you’re going to bring them back there and bring them back to the forward and off, you’re off you go again, when you’re getting ready to sign if you feel like they’re going to have buyer’s remorse, and you’re you’ve got everything written out. All you have to do if you have this happen frequently than I would ask every time is, are you sure you want to do this? And it’s a weird question to ask. But they’re gonna look at you like, why wouldn’t I be? Well, I don’t know. I mean, before you sign, tell me again, why you want to do this. Make them tell you. Yeah, totally. Yep. And then when they call you in about two days, and they go, You know what I want to, I want to cancel the contract. How will they ever do that? You’ve asked them once during the sales process, just before they signed you ask them again, I don’t know anybody that would be bold enough, or want to just be a jerk enough to go you know what I know. I said that twice, do you but I don’t care what I said, I’m not going to I want to negate negate our contract, that’s just not going to happen. It’s rare to have it happen if you’ve asked him twice, and very clearly asked him. So that’s why you want to do those types of things. So I’m glad that it helped. And I hope to help somebody else out there. I appreciate you being on our show today, Kelly and until next time, everybody remember, slow down and you’ll close more.

V/O  46:30

Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s 608-708-7569. Or, you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More?

Rob  47:20

Thanks, as always, for listening today. If you’d like this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today as always by Johnny Polakis. And we were produced by High Gravity Studios. Music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on TheSlowPitch.com And we’ll be back with another episode soon.