LawrenSmith.com

Elderly Gentleman Needs Help

Posted on 28. Dec, 2009 by admin.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Lawren and I need some suggestions from all of you.  I will try to not make this story too long.  I was on the phone with this individual for about an hour.  The story goes like this.  I have been working with a gentleman who has a website that sells water heaters.  He paid a lot of money to have someone or some company optimize his website so that it shows up high on the search engines.  The problem is he has not made a dime and he is frustrated; especially after spending so much money on getting the website and then paying for this SEO service.

He is in his 60′s and retired.  His wife is also retired and they both live alone.  He wants to use his website to make some additional income.

This past Saturday, he called me and told me his current situation.  What I am about to tell you is essentially how our conversation went.  First he told me that he was getting 100 leads per day.  I immediately got excited for him because many people cannot even get 10 and I told him this.  He told me that the individual who had helped to optimize his website did something and this lead to an increase in the number of leads.  But, something told me to dig a little further into what he meant by leads.   As it turned out, the leads were not prospects in the sense that someone has put in their name and email address in a webform, the leads were hits on his website.  I found this out when I asked him “Do you have a form on your website for your prospects to fill out?”  His response was, “What’s that?”  Just based on this I knew he was experiencing a problem most new network marketers encounter.  Even I encountered this when I first got started.  Put up a website and wait for the visitors to come and purchase your products.  It never happened and out of frustration, I gave up.

Next, I explained to him that most people will not make a purchase the first time.  This is why it is important that you build a relationship with them and one of the best ways to do this is to use an autoresponder.  He seemed to know what an autoresponder was.  Then I told him he could write the sales letters himself or pay for a service to do this for him.  He then wanted to know how he was going to get the letters into the autoresponder.  I offered to help him, when or if he decides to use an autoresponder.

Next, I asked to see his website.  It wasn’t bad. It displayed and explained some of the products on the site; your typical ecommerce website.  He was using PayPal to handle the purchases made.  But the website was also very busy, meaning, while it was focused on water heaters, the information given wasn’t.  It explained about the various water heaters, what they can do, the price, and so on. There were tabs here and there and this kind of setup within a website will, often, case the prospect to immediately leave.   I preceded to explain to him that he has only 3 seconds to catch the attention of the prospect.  If you are unable to do this, then you have lost them. I then added, that because he does not have a webform to capture the prospects information, he has given himself just one opportunity to make a sell and the odds are against him that this will happen; especially for a person like himself who is new to running a business online.  Because the site had so much information on it, it more than likely it dissuaded the prospects from looking further. Thus, those hits on his website were probably people browsing.  They took a look at his website for a bit and then quickly moved on to the next website.  He agreed, but he wanted to know what he could do to solve this problem.  I told him that it would be best to use a capture page, where the information presented is focused on one topic, not too long but not too short.  It gives just enough information to lure the prospect in to put his or her name into the webform.  I added that aweber has a way for him to easily create a webform and use the “raw code” to place into your website. (I am pretty sure I lost him here, but he didn’t say anything).

After explaining to him about capture pages and showing him one of mine so that he could get a better understanding of what a lead capture page was and actually see a webform on the capture page, I asked about what keywords he was using.  My reason for this is I wanted to determine whether the keywords were money keywords or browser keywords.  Often this too will prevent you from making money because most browsers are not looking to buy anything.  When we entered the keywords to see if we could find his website, we could not find it anywhere on the first page for any of the keywords he mentioned.  This very much upset him.

Once he discovered this, he was ready to get off the phone and talk to his SEO dude.  He said that he took notes of everything we talked about and would probably call me to get more help from me.  I replied that I would gladly help him.

In retrospect, I am willing to create a capture page for this gentleman and help him get his funnel setup at no cost.  It isn’t because I am not busy because I am an extremely busy person, but when I see a situation like this where an older gentleman is being taken advantage of, it very much upsets me.  Thus, I help him and we talk for about an hour at a time with me giving him pointers.  We have talked about 3 or 4 times now.  I still don’t see him doing anything with my suggestions, which is ok.  At least he has the information and if or when he becomes overwhelmed and extremely frustrated, we will get started with setting up a sales funnel for his business.

My question to all of you is this.  First, do you think I am handling the problem correctly?  Second question is do you see anything else that might benefit this sweet man.  At this time, I have kind of run out of ideas because, thus far, he has not done anything with my suggestions, but is always pleased to get my help and even takes notes.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much,

Lawren

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