Just Say "No" - To Clients

I was sat talking to a guy who owns an electrical contracting firm this week.

He has a web site that contains information about his company's services, just like tens of thousands of other companies.

I asked him about how much business his web site generates and, (I suspect this is common with many service businesses), he hadn't a clue.

In fact, he was of the opinion that his web site was just a waste of money - something that you had to have in business, but he wasn't quite sure why.

His domain name is the same name of his business and he has it printed on his business card of course.

What did surprise me was that his email address was listed on his card as a Hotmail address.

Somebody who makes that mistake needs help in my opinion.

An email address can drive visitors to your web site.

If I receive an email from a nice domain, I will usually visit the web site just out of curiosity, as long as it's not a Spam email of course.

Anyway, we got talking and he asked how I managed to get visitors and business off the Internet.

I showed him several different web sites of mine that advertise a service for one company.

Each of these sites have a domain name that reflects just one of the services that the company offers.

Each site is devoted to that niche service area and links back to the main company web site.

So, we have say 15 web sites covering niche services within an overall service group.

The main web site lists all services offered of course, but then points the visitor to more specialised information from the satellite sites.

What that does for the main site, is shoot it up the search engines because the sites that link back to it are extremely relvant and contain very specialised information and content.

So, we sat and did a few Google searches and the electrican was very impressed with our 50+ top 5 placements on Google for various niche services.

He then asked what good that did and so I showed him some of our recent enquiries - some for a few hundred pounds worth of services and a few that will become major accounts worth several hundred thousand pounds.

The next question was, "How do I get to the top of Google then?"

Was that the right question?

It's the reason I don't have clients - only "partners".

I am telling this story today because I am often asked how I go about getting clients.

As I mentioned before, I don't want clients.

Clients are demanding, expect the earth and usually place little value on what a supplier has to offer.

So, what I do is simply get chatting to people like the electrical contractor, because he owns a business and would like more clients of his own.

If the penny drops, he will ask me to do what I did for my other partners.

He will have no involvement in building, running or promoting a web site - he has his own business to run.

He won't be buying domain names, writing content and building an online network, he'll want to leave that to somebody else.

What can you charge for a service like that, that delivers new corporate clients?

Answer: Anything you like!

My preference is a percentage of the sale - ideally leading to a percentage of the business.

That's why I ike the word, "partner".

Can anyone do this?

YES! But, you need the following tools in order to get started:

• Undertsanding of domain names and why they are important
• A good grasp of copywriting - write to sell, not to tell
• Knowledge of search engines - how they work, how to manipulate them
• Low cost paid search knowledge for early, fast track results
• A web hosting account with many unique IP addressess
• Thorough understanding of your "partner's" business - I like to work in the business for a week or two to obtain this- it's fun and it's easy.
• Outsourced web design skills

Opportunity is all around us - right now, on the doorstep.

It's there for me and it's there for you - you just have to learn to recognise it when it comes knocking.

You also have to have to learn to say "NO" to clients - it's so empowering!!