These 3 questions are taken from my ‘website worksheet’, which is a worksheet that leads have to fill in before I’m willing to talk to them.
It acts as a qualifier, filtering out people that are just quote finding or tyre-kickers. It also provides me with the basic information I need to see if I want to talk to them and providing they’ve got the budget, what I’d talk to them about.
I’ll often run my first consultation session off the results from my worksheets. But there are 3 questions on the worksheet that you need to ask no matter your process. These questions are designed to do a few things.
First, even though they sound obvious, it’s further proof that you’re thinking of their business in a professional manner by asking them. Second, it’s very hard for a customer to ask you for a discount or to argue against your decisions if they answer these questions.
Finally, these 3 questions determine how business focused the customer is and how important they see the website as a tool. Often, customers have asked me after the worksheet is completed “can my website actually do this stuff?”
So let’s get into it.
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1.Do you want to generate more leads for your business?
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Why I ask it.
Straight out the gate here with a question that should have an obvious answer. I like asking questions with obvious answers, particularly because whenever anyone says “well that’s obvious isn’t it?” I’ll ask “is it? If it’s so obvious why haven’t you written it down as a goal, with a metric next to it?”.
We ask this because it sets the tone for the types of sites you build, the type of marketing you’re capable of and the type of business you run. You aren’t a run of the mill website person. You’re someone who can generate leads for their business with a website.
How people have answered it.
“Uhh… yeah. I guess so. Can my website do that?
Yup. It sure can. You’re asking me to build a site that has the ability to generate leads. It’s important that I know how many you want, where you’re collecting them from and what you’re doing with them.
Many business owners don’t feel they need ‘leads’. They hear that word as a dirty sales word from the 80’s.
Coffee is for closers.
The truth is that you can call leads whatever you want. Subscribers, email list, database, prospects. Get your customer used to the idea that a website NEEDS to generate leads for it to generate a return.
When you can ask it.
Ask this question early as you can and get a number. Find out from your potential customer how many leads their business needs to survive and how many the website can generate.
Remember that leads don’t grow on trees. What it boils down to is that you need to ‘buy’ them. If your customer needs 100 leads or subscribers a month, how are you going to do that for them? Also, do they understand that you need to make constant investments to get leads from a website?
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2. Do you want to close more sales for your business?
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Why I ask it.
Many businesses haven’t thought about their close rate. A close rate is how many leads you have, compared to how many buy from you.
For low-value products, that process might be quite short. A few emails and a sales page.
For other customers, a sales cycle might need months of work. The reason we ask this is because websites can provide huge benefits to businesses looking to increase their close or conversion rate.
How people have answered it.
“Well if I had more leads I’d make more sales. But if I increased my conversion rate, I wouldn’t need as many sales…”
Bit of a thinker this one. We are told that the more leads and subscribers we have, the more sales we’ll generate. This hypothesis has a flaw however, because it could be your close rate that’s causing problems.
For example one customer, in the finance sector, was making $100 000 a month through his sales team. At the time, it took him 2000 leads a month to generate that number. Which gives a value of $100 per lead.
However, each CUSTOMER was worth $1000, so his conversion rate was 100 sales out of 2000 leads, or 5%.
Rather than just generate him more leads (of which he was already struggling with the influx of calls and emails). Now, we deliver ~500 leads a month and he converts 100 again. Roughly 20% of all calls now result in a sale.
When I’ve asked it.
I have asked this question up front, however usually only to people who are clear that they want a website to be a business tool.
Most of the time, I’ll ask this to customers that have already got a lead generation program in place. If you ask a customer “how much does each lead cost you?” and they have an answer, then ask them if they want a higher close rate.
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3. Do you want your website to pay for itself and generate a return?
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Why I ask it.
Okay, I admit that this question is a bit of a trap. It’s a trick question designed to let me remind customers that they want a return on their investment.
Very basically, there is a tipping point for any investment. You need to start putting in OVER a certain level before you’ll see a return. For example you’re NEVER going to see a return on a £500 website. There aren’t the resources to be able to generate a sustainable payout.
However, if customers ARE willing to get a return on their investment, then you know that they’ll understand you need to put in X before you get Y.
How people have answered it.
“Of course I want a return. What kind of R.O.I. can I expect from a project like this?”
By this point, I’ve already got a good idea of how much their customers are worth to them. For example, if we charge £20 000 for a project, and a customer is worth £2500. I only need to find 8 customers in a year to pay for the website.
Once it’s paid off and at ‘break-even’, a website can continue to generate leads and sales by further investing into traffic and lead generation.
When I’ve asked it.
Usually I’ll ask this during the consultation and discovery phase of a project. I also get them to sign a document with these three questions answered. That way I can refer back to them and use them when the customer might be difficult.
Takeaway
So there we are, 3 killer questions to ask any WordPress customer. Don’t feel that if you haven’t asked these yet, even to older legacy customers, that you can’t. You can ask these at any time.
Are these questions a waste of time? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below if you’ve asked these before or if you can think of other questions to ask.
