Treat Your Website Like It’s Part Of Your Sales Team- 84

Here is the Transcript for Episode 84

Caleb Baumgartner: Welcome to Local SEO Tactics where we bring you tips and tricks and to get found online. I am producer Caleb Baumgartner. Is your website showing outdated stock, missing calls to action? All these things and more can be hurting your business. Bob, Jesse and Sue explain how to take your website from an online brochure to a member of your sales team to maximize your ROI. As always if you have questions for the Local SEO Tactics team, contact us. You could win an Intrycks T-shirt. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show.

Jesse Dolan: Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan with another question and answer format here with Bob Brennan and Sue. Sue, we’ve been asked in the last few episodes where you are virtually and we’re just joking right before we started recording. Bob asked where in the world you are and you are not on this planet right now according to your background. What’s going on there?

Sue Ginsburg: That’s right. That’s right. I’m somewhere in the Milky Way, floating around. The significance is the topic we’re talking about today can truly transform our listeners’ business so that they are shooting stars and that is why you see the background behind me today.

Bob Brennan: Nice. Nice.

Jesse Dolan: So Sue is the shooting star then I think Bob is what she is saying –

Bob Brennan: I get it. I believe it. I’ll give her that.

Sue Ginsburg: I’ll work on that.

Jesse Dolan: Right, right, right. No I’m just joking around but I guess like I said on the last episode too for anybody if you’re listening to this on the audio version of the podcast, we do record these as well via Zoom. You can check it on YouTube and see what we’re talking about. You can also see Bob and my’s mug too for what it’s worth. With that aside Sue, why don’t you go ahead and kick us off.

Sue Ginsburg: Okay. So to become a shooting star. We’re talking about is your website part of your sales team, which part of your sales team is your website and can it be. What I want to talk about today is making sure that everybody understands the powerful sales role that your website can play and I’m not talking about e-commerce here, I’m talking about your website acting as a selling tool for your business.

What we find is why isn’t … I guess to answer the question, why isn’t every website acting as a strong selling tool for every business out there? Well to start with, the lack of understanding of the role that your website can play. Maybe people don’t realize that it does have the capacity to be a strong selling tool for your business.

It also could not be building SEO into the website from the start and not realizing that that can never change. It could be you have an outdated website and it isn’t up to par with where your business is and therefore can’t be selling everything that your business is selling as it’s outdated. Could be businesses that put up a website and never look at it again and I think we all know some of those and maybe we’ve even been one of those. Your website can be missing calls to action, you can not be … Not be found for the things that you want to be found for so that makes it pretty hard for your website to be selling those things for you. Lack of engagement, lack of interaction on the website, not asking for the sale. A lot of different reasons, each of them valid in their own way, but the bottom line is we want you to review your website with this question in mind: is my website acting as a winning salesperson for my business? Because it can be and if it isn’t and you want it to be then we can help you do that and what’s the result of that? Essentially you’re adding a sales channel to your business by making your website into a powerful salesperson for you and for your business.

The story that I’m going to start off with before I ask Bob and Jesse what you have to say about this is many years ago I was working with a law firm in Scotland, a really good marketing firm, but their website had no interaction or it was not interactive at all, no calls to action other than the contact us page, and essentially was what you hear people say an online version of their brochure, which back in the day, there was a time and a place for that. That time has long since passed us.

So we worked on it, added some downloadable papers, checklists that will be helpful to the ideal visitor, their ideal client visiting the site. Some simple things, five questions to ask when you’re considering hiring a lawyer, ten things your website needs to be in compliance with privacy laws, et cetera, et cetera, and it made a huge difference by essentially training their website to be a sales tool and a lead magnet for the clients that they wanted to attract. I know that people think of Jesse, Bob and the Intrycks team as being SEO experts, you may or may not realize that that’s also a … There’s also a place for that in rebuilding your website, retooling your website, and at any point in the life cycle of your website, you can make it into a powerful selling tool for you and for your business. So Bob, Jesse, what’s your experience seeing websites as online brochures versus selling tool and/or transforming them from an online brochure into a powerful sales role for the business? What do you see? What are you seeing?

Bob Brennan: Well it is. It’s a very powerful tool and I think where we’ve made mistakes as a business in the past, Jesse and I own a couple small businesses, is we failed to get our team involved in the process. When I say the process, all kinds of areas in terms of design, in terms of converting calls, in terms of really … The beauty of the internet is you can really pinpoint the type of work you want and be strategic about that. Letting your team know the direction that you’re wanting to go, in other words if there’s a certain type of business that you want to get, working with your team and having that collaboration and having them understand that, “Okay, we’re going to either … We’re going to redesign and shoot an initiative for SEO for let’s just say Kenworth Truck Repair because the Kenworth dealer in our town is charging $175.00 an hour and is backed up for three to four weeks. Therefore we can charge $175.00 an hour and say we can turn this around in 24 to 72 hours,” because that’s what the market …

Literally if they’re calling you first because you’re at the top, you can tell them, “We’re $175.00 an hour, just so you know, we can turn your truck around in 24 to 72 hours or … Yeah, 24 to 72 hours,” and you’re going to want to call the dealer after this conversation and find out where they’re at because I understand there are two to three … You know what I mean? But you’ve got to get your whole team on that cycle because hey, now we’re really getting calls, but then when you get the calls, this is how you’re going to convert them. That’s where your expertise comes in, that voice of the customer, understanding the pain of the customer.
So I hope that kind of is an example with how you need to get the website as part of your overall team solution. That can be very difficult if you have an outside firm that’s just dealing with the owner and the owner said, “Okay, do this, this, and this,” and now the outside firm does some of this stuff, but the rest of the team isn’t closing the loop on that. Does that kind of make sense?

Sue Ginsburg: Totally.

Bob Brennan: So we work with a client that does work in the truck repair industry and it’s … Jesse actually works with him more than I do, but you can kind of speak to that environment a little bit Jess as far as what that looks like. What is your role in … How do they do their meetings?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, I think framing it up like you are, what’s running through my head. Sue is … You’re talking about your website being part of your sales team and you’re … As you’re extrapolating on that, it is part of your team meaning that there’s other people that are involved on the collaboration on it, right? It’s not this standalone magical thing. So within the construct of collaboration with the customer and the client like you’re saying, it’s basically the website is kind of the terminus point for all of your marketing. If you’re pushing out email newsletters, you’re pushing people to your website then as the next action to take. Learn more, go here or in Sue’s example, download this guide. Go here.

You’re always pushing people to your website from the other marketing you’re doing, but then there’s also the other side of the inbound marketing when people are searching for something and having everybody that’s involved with your sales team be a part of what’s on the website, why does the website exist, what role is it playing I think is really speaking to what you’re saying and the clients that we work with that are more in that spirit have better success because their website isn’t just … Like you said, what that third party should it be. If that didn’t align with the type of business that the client is trying to get, there’s going to … You’re going to be disjointed there. Then there’s also the type of client that we run into and if there’s anybody listening, if this speaks to you, I think this is a pretty important part that people miss.

We hear all the time, I’m kind of making a generalization here and Sue, I’m sure you see the same thing. You’ll talk to somebody about, “You should really maybe reinvest in your website. Maybe give it a fresh coat of paint or redesign it or do some SEO to in, any of these things.” They’ll say, “Well, not really. I don’t get my business from my website. I get my business from word of mouth referrals. My little black book or everybody knows me.” Things like this, right? My website’s not important. The thing I always tell to people is, “Okay. Understand that,” and usually as an aside it’s like, “Okay, looking at your website I can understand why you have that impression too because you obviously haven’t paid any attention to this.”

The thing to really open your eyes is to say, “Okay, so maybe your website isn’t a big party or sales team right now. For what you sell and what you provide, do you people go online and look for it?” If the answer’s yes, then, “Okay. It’s not so much that your website can’t be a part of your business or part of your sales team. It’s just that it isn’t right now because it’s not been on your radar. There are people going online right now today looking for your products and for your services probably in your area. If they’re not finding your website, that’s why it’s not part of your sales team. You can make your website be what they bump into. You can have it be part of your sales team and it can bring you new business if you choose to.”

I’ll tell people the same thing, let’s just say … I guess as more of an analogy, if I don’t have a salesperson on my staff, well salespeople aren’t part of my sales strategy. Just like if my website sucks well the website isn’t part of my sales strategy. Well guess what? If I had a salesperson, they’re going to be selling and now that it is part of my sales strategy so it’s not so much that it is or it isn’t, it just needs to be part of your sales strategy. Again, the qualifier is if people go online to Google and look for your products or service, is that a thing that happens, and if the answer is yes, then your website, like Sue’s saying, needs to not only exist but maybe it would need to be updated or redesigned, optimized and then kind of to your point Bob, bring in the rest of your team. Check with the voice of the customer, check with the voice of your employees, and make sure the website is providing this overall sales function, lead generation, answering questions and things like that.

At the end of the day, and I really like your shooting star analogy Sue because the cool part is if you’re sitting there and your website is not part of your sales team right now, you’re going to see results. You know what I mean? If it’s not on your radar, just not producing, you throw some money at it, not as an expense but as an investment, it’s going to return that back to you and it will become part of your sales team.

Sue Ginsburg: Jesse, I’ll add to something you just mentioned. Even when somebody recommends a service to me, orthopedic surgeon or whatever it is, we all ask our friends, family, trusted advisors. When I get that recommendation, the first thing I do is go online, still going to go online. I’m looking to see, “Oh, did they hear me right or did they think I meant orthopedic shoes?” I don’t know, I’m always going to go online and check out the recommendations to see do they do what I do, what are the reviews saying, whether it s somebody who I fully, fully trust or not, I want to go see what they have to say on their website and at least help me want to call you, despite whatever you put on your website.

Jesse Dolan: Right, it has to align. Just like Bob was saying, it’s got to make sense in all those areas to really be part of that team, so … I think we’re pretty good, I’m kind of answering it. Did you have any closing thoughts Sue or anything else to add to it?

Sue Ginsburg: I have my thought starter for this episode which is a quote from Albert Einstein, everybody knows who he is. “If you want different results, you need to do different things.” If you remember one thing and one thing only from our discussion here today, it’s for most businesses, a website is the biggest marketing investment that your business is going to make. Don’t just put it out there and forget about it. That is not a good use of your investment and presumably you’d like to get a good ROI on that. The way to do that is to be strategic about it, to get your team on board like Bob said, and do what you can do to make that website be your best salesperson. Because that is possible. It’s possible, it’s viable and the smarter you can be with doing that, the more it’s going to pull in prospects, leads and business for you.

Jesse Dolan: That’s perfect. I want to add one more thing, Bob. You always say this, I think it’s relevant for everybody here too. The other cool part about your website, as part of your sales team and compared to the rest of your sales team, your website is never going to go golfing during the middle of the day. It’s never going to call in sick, it’s never going to party too hard on Super Bowl Sunday and not be there on Monday. You make this investment like you’re saying Sue, it just works. It just works for you the entire time. It’s always selling, so …

All right, super topic. Thanks for posing the question Sue and kind of firing off the information to get that discussion going. Everybody else out there, if you have something you want us to talk about, a topic, a question, something you’re looking for answers on, let us know. That’s what we’re here to do to kind of bring that to light and talk through with you and give whatever expert advice we can give and help you out. If it’s something that we don’t know, we’re going to tap into our friends and our experts and bring that answer for you too. So go onto LocalSEOTactics.com, go down to the bottom left corner, click the link that says submit a question, you can submit it via our form and just type it in there. Or if you would and we would rather you do because it’s much more dynamic and fun, record that. Call in, we have a phone number. You basically call in and leave a voicemail and if you do that we’ll use it on the show to ask the question, so Sue can take a couple minute break and not have to read it. We can just play it and get you on the show. Then also if you do that, we’re going to mail you off one of these awesome Intrycks T-shirts which I’m always modeling so check it out at LocalSEOTactics.com, bottom left corner. Any final thoughts from anybody? Good to go?

Bob Brennan: Good to go.

Jesse Dolan: It’s like a typical Zoom meeting where people always ask that. So we’re good, we’re good. All right, thanks for tuning in everybody. We will catch you on the next episode. Take care.

Bob Brennan: Thanks.