The £250,000 Click!

Today, I finalised my largest ever contract from a single Internet enquiry. The initial value for supplying services is £250,000.

I have to do some work, as the contract is to conduct a few hundred asbestos surveys, but it's in a lovely hot country, where I can take my wife and kids for holidays at the same time.

Remember, with services, there is no product and very little overhead.

I can also do the work at any time I please, so it really is a wonderful contract to have secured.

To think, I only do that work to get me out of the house and to keep me sociable!

It all came from a click on one of my web sites and ours was the only company asked to quote by this particular organisation.

This goes back to copywriting and targeting the words precisely for a particular audience.

Still I see too many companies concentrating too hard in the wrong areas.

Instead of gently building interest and trust, they simply try and tell their visitors how great they are. Their web sites are online brochures. Brochures don't sell. Can't sell.

My approach has been to give away information via an autoresponder. In this case, I supplied sample surveys, information I wrote myself about the asbestos regulations and what's invoved in conducting the survey.

It's amazing to me how many people in business fail to explain what they physically do for their clients. I have yet to find another surveying firm's web site that actually tell people what happens when they are onsite. As that's the services that's being paid for, it's a pretty obvious thing to include.

That information is sent by email over the course of a few days and in that time, the person charged with gathering the information is usually sold on the service.

Bear in mind though, that the person tasked with getting the information isn't always the buyer.

That's why I try to empower that person with more information that they could possibly need. They then do the pre-selling for me so that all I have to do is agree terms.

The last email in the sequence usually asks what they thought of the information and if there are any other questions they need answering.

You know you have got an autoresponder set up correctly when people send replies!

If you've ever bought anything online from one of the myriad of gurus (I wonder if the collective term could be called a gaggle of gurus), or joined their mailing lists, they usually just tell you how great they are and push their back-end products. Relentlessly.

I've never liked that approach so I do it differently.

Instead of writing about what I (or the company) can do for them, I simply explain what needs doing and why. It's all written in a completely independent and objective style that doesn't even talk about what we can do for them until perhaps the very last paragraph.

Maybe that's just a British sales approach. Sure, I ask for the order and I ask often, but not in an "in-your-face" type of way.

If I'm ever affected by the recession that's coming, maybe I'll trn my hand to consulting or copywriting for services businesses - the market must be enormous.