Offline Sellers: Here's a Price Negotiation/Justification Tip Worth Its Weight in Gold

Recently, I posted this in another thread, but felt it really deserved it's own thread.

A lot of you doing offline stuff may have never sold anything before so you may be struggling a little bit with price negotiation or justifying your prices to your potential client.

In fact, some of you may even not be doing offline selling because you wouldn't know how to justify the price of your services and this is holding you back.

This will work for you if you want to provide websites, auto-responders, rent a site to them, or SEO services. Really, just about any type of services you want to market to offline clients, this will better allow you to get over just about any price objections.


I used to sell Yellow Page advertising.

People who buy display advertising, depending on the population and distribution of the phone book, can be paying thousands of dollars per month for their phone book advertising.

Let that sink in for a minute. There are local companies that are paying thousands of dollars per month just for phone book advertising alone. One of my yellow page clients was spending over $5,000 per month on yellow page advertising alone. They were in every single phone book in the area and the surrounding area. I'll get to this more in a moment.

In reality, they don't even have quantifiable ways to measure whether the ad is giving them ROI or not, not like website statistics can.

Don't get me wrong, plenty of studies show that display ads in the phone book do work. These companies wouldn't keep their ads if they didn't feel they weren't doing them any good. I'm just trying to help you guys who want to try this justify the cost to the business owner you approach.

When you are offering services to offline clients, the best people to contact are people who are in your phone book. I'm not talking about light listings, which are just the name and phone number. You want to go for those that have display ads. Here is a break down of who is paying the most:

If the company included some type of magnet with the phone book, they are paying a crap load. It's usually a plastic surgeon or law firm that does this. I'm talking HUGE MONEY. Especially if you live in a mid-large city.

The front cover. The companies on the front cover are paying the next highest rates.

The back cover

The inside front cover

The inside back cover

Then from there the cost is dictated by size of display ad and whether it is color or black and white. A full page color ad costs more than a full page black and white ad.

Your best bet is to find the companies that have the biggest display ads under their heading, because they are paying a decent amount per month for that ad.

Most likely, they'll have a website displayed in the ad. If not, just check to see if they have one. They may have had one made after the ad got published in the phone book.

If they already have a website, this shouldn't discourage you, you can offer them lead capture or SEO services, or any other services you want to offer. In fact, seeing they have a website is good news, it means they know they have to be on the internet to stay competitive.

Most likely, they paid big bucks to some web design firm who only made them the equivalent of a billboard in the middle of a desert for thousands of dollars. You're there to help offer them a way to put heavily trafficked highway next to that beautiful billboard in the desert they paid thousands for.

Also, chances are, if you live in a mid-large city you probably have several phone books. Check to see if they advertise in more than one. If they do, that's even better yet. Especially if they have a display ad in every single one. They're paying a lot of money per month for that advertising.

Knowing that they advertise in the phone book is great ammunition for negotiating. Especially if they have ads in more than one phone book. If they try to give you a hard time about your price, you can just look at them with a slight smile and say:

"Look mr business owner, I know you advertise in phone book x, y, and z with display ads. (If you really want to drive the point home bring the books with you and have their ads marked with a paper clip, pull out the phone books and open them up to their ads in each phone book) I know you're paying a heck of a lot more for these ads per month than what I'm offering you here. The difference is, I offer you quantifiable results unlike these ads which offer you no way to measure your ROI."

They'll respect you for doing your homework. If you really want to know for sure, call your yellow page directory and ask them what the rates are for the ads. They probably won't tell you, they'll probably want to set up an appointment. That's okay, meet with a rep, after all, you are a small business yourself, you may actually want to consider yellow page advertising some time down the road. Get the rates from the rep at the meeting.

HTH

P.S.

The same ad in the phone book goes up every year. It's called "rate." Every year the ad the business had the previous year goes up a small percentage. So, don't be afraid to work "rate" into this business model.

If the company buys any of your services for a year, don't be afraid to go to them and tell them the rates are going up for this year. Especially if they've been getting good results don't be afraid to do this. If they advertise in newspapers and yellow pages, they're used to rates going up yearly.

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