First of all, keep the topical suggestions for content coming by email or blog post. It keeps me inspired and I’ll try to address as many as possible via future blog post.

Recently, I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking for advice on two specific ways to get more SEO clients:

1.) Cold calling
2.) Phone scripts

I think each of these is deserving of its own post. But I’ll start with cold calling first since I’ve got some experience in this area.

The Cold Call Kid

After graduating high school, I was employed at a call center hawking cell-phone plans for about two weeks. It wasn’t the worst job I’ve ever had. But it wasn’t a place I wanted to stick around longer than a couple weeks either.

My training consisted of a two-hour presentation on the history of cellular phones from a 20-something in baggy cargo pants. The cargo-clad gentleman was quite knowledgeable about these new fangled devices (it was the early 2000s) and for the next two weeks I could explain the difference between analog and digital cell phones in glorious detail. At the end of the training, I was given a cold-call script and list of possible objections I might encounter on the phone.

Then after a 30-minute break for lunch, the 20-something with cargo pants figured I was ready to hit the phones. I was led to my cubicle, put on my head set and the back of my throat dried up as I began to make my first ever cold calls.

The cell service for sale was very straight forward. There was a the base $40 per month cell phone plan, an upsell $60 a month, and down sell $20 a month option I think only offered about 20 minutes of call time per month. It was recommended that we position the $20 per month level as an “emergency phone.”

The Harsh Realities of Cold Calling

My first couple of hours went well. I made three sales almost right away and a regional manager who happened to be visiting the center said I was a natural. I almost fell out of my chair when a woman who after explaining in detail all the reasons she already had trouble making payments on her existing cell phones, decided to go ahead with the $20 per month option after I recommended it as a security phone in case her daughters phone battery died. My future was looking pretty bright and this cold calling thing was cake.

Then reality reared its ugly head and I didn’t make a single sale for four more days. I was confronted with answering machines, angry “prospects” who were eating dinner when I called, and people who were just plain old content with their current cell phone.

It was frustrating, demoralizing, time consuming and I can totally see why some of those old timer sales guys hate their lives after enduring years of this stuff.

Fortunately for me, I was trying to sell something simple: A cellphone. It’s a product that everyone gets and needs. The reasons behind search engine optimization services are less obvious to the average citizen.

Selling Simple Services VS Complex Ones

To say that trying to sell a complex service on a call call is difficult would be an enormous understatement. Selling something simple like cellphone plans is hard enough. SEO services are more complex and cost prohibitive making it harder to break through to a sale.

Here are a few reasons I don’t recommend cold calling for SEO clients:

- Lack of understanding about complex SEO services.
- Already have SEO services and are happy.
- Don’t feel they have a need for your services.
- People don’t trust cold calls.
- People are annoyed by cold calls.
- Legal ramifications.
- Not positioned as an expert.
- Time consuming.

In any case, figuring out a better way to attract more qualified prospects and create better solutions for customers will deliver a better return on your time than cold calling.

Next, we’ll cover phone scripts to use with prospects that are interested in your SEO services.