014 – Paid Discovery for SEO Projects

00:00.00
Jeff
Well hello and welcome to the W P Seo show I am your co-host Jeff joined here by my co-host pete hello pete how are you this lovely day.

00:11.84
peteeveritt
I’m very well. Thank you Jeff I’m getting over a bug that my son brought home from school and yeah, well you spoke to me like 48 hours ago and honestly after our call my voice just gave up when I handed up sped talking like this for the rest of the day. So i.

00:28.21
Jeff
And like halfway through you’re like um, kind of. Should we record today I’m like no you sound terrible. Ah.

00:34.88
peteeveritt
I was so pleased that was that was a no and just to ah you know just to so add salt to the wounds I’ve come in today to to do this recording and my good camera isn’t working so I’m on my cheapy little logic tech thing. So yeah, hey so if I look grainy. Well, some people would say that’s a blessing but there you go area how you fact, thanks ma’am.

00:52.15
Jeff
Ah, you you sound better but you’ll look worse. So go figure you know it is what it is I’m good I’m usually 1 the one that’s complaining about being sick and sniffly or whatever am I got nothing today I’m I’m I’m good. Ah.

01:07.81
peteeveritt
Well, of course you’ve got your you’ve got your special Thanksgiving kind of haircut thing going on. You know you? you’ve been you’ve been scalped

01:12.65
Jeff
Oh yeah, yeah, well you know, actually Thanksgiving did I I think I was still pretty disheveled on Thanksgiving I looked back at the video I edited a video from last week and I was like oh boy I’m really glad I got a haircut finally but. Yeah, the yeah, the the Mrs wanted to do do family photos or her mother wanted to take family. Her mom’s a photographer so she got like her whole family together and she’s like oh we’re doing family photos so I had to shave and look presentable and I thought it was like like 8 or 9 of us like we got over to their house for this and there was like 30 people there like. And so many people were there well I’m like ah do we have take pictures with all these people but now we were in out like an hour and and now you guys get to look at my fancy semi-shaven face nobody nobody cares about this? Ah ah.

01:57.65
peteeveritt
There you go there, you go? No no absolutely not nobody does care. But anyway it’s good to it’s it’s good to it’s good to talk. It’s good to share a bit about what’s going on in life. The universe and everything So and guess what we didn’t start this week talking about the weather which was what was going in my mind.

02:10.68
Jeff
Um, it is and and now we are though. Ah, let’s give it.

02:17.56
peteeveritt
When you stop looking. But now we’re talking about the weather. The other thing let’s skip over the weather. The other thing that dawned on me while you were talking was that so so when we’re recording these things for for those of you listening literally before the show we say okay who’s starting it. You start it and I start and some weeks it’s me in some weeks is is Jeff. And the thing that strikes me when I’m doing it which I could see going through your eyes was I’m saying the word co-host quite a lot. We. We need to find a better intro. So if anyone who’s got any any sort of ah we we could ask chat Gpt I suppose. But if anyone’s got any good suggestions of how.

02:45.82
Jeff
You.

02:56.91
peteeveritt
To introduce us without using the word co-host and co-host quite a lot then that would be quite handy I think because.

03:00.21
Jeff
The yeah write us a better intro. We’re down for it. I don’t mind at all because I mean I I mean to actually get semi-serious I think that that’s a reflection on our business relationship and friendship and everything because. Even when I say like I don’t want to say I’m the host of the podcast because I’m not I would say you’re more the host but I also wouldn’t say you’re the host like you know we’re both. We’re pretty equal here and then the same thing with the business right? like I hate saying oh I’m the founder of because I’m a co-founder like it just it doesn’t feel. It feels like I’m doing you a disservice if I say I’m the founder. And then if I’m the cofounder it doesn’t feel serious enough I don’t know.

03:35.36
peteeveritt
You I yeah you see I know I completely agree with you I kind of get round it by saying you know? So um I work with Seo hives that I co-founded with or you know he’s just past but Jeff patch that I founded.

03:45.81
Jeff
Are.

03:51.34
peteeveritt
Ah, seo hive with kind of thing and you can get around that a little bit but it’s just it was just interesting as I was say yeah as obviously it was your turn to start and I I could see you having the same thoughts and sort of panic that goes through the back of your eyes just as your. Hey what? welcome to the W P Seo show I am your co-host Jeff and then you realize you got to say co-host again in just a minute and then and I’m joined by my co-host. It’s like well obviously if I’m a co-host. He’s also a co-host and anyway now we’ve spent 4 minutes talking about co-hosts. So um.

04:22.16
Jeff
Yeah, unfortunately though sorry I’m I’m interjecting or cutting you off, but we do have some housekeeping and that is instead of asking everybody to go and write a review or 5 stars and Itunes or anything that I’m going to thank the couple that we’ve got you linked me last night to the review to the page.

04:25.00
peteeveritt
Anyway, fun.

04:40.76
Jeff
We’ve had some reviews on the podcast I didn’t even know they’ve been there for a couple weeks and so I’m embarrassed that I haven’t even looked at it didn’t I just wasn’t expecting if I’m being honest I read your message at like 2 a m last night like I woke up and and I saw that and I was I couldn’t get back to sleep I was so excited I was so happy made my day. Thank you, thank you.

04:56.90
peteeveritt
Or you should have said because 2 am your times like 10 am m mine I I was awake I was at work. You know we we we could have done this like hours ago but hey there you go. Ah.

04:59.38
Jeff
You were awake. Yeah, well yeah, but then I would have been doing the podcast like this that nobody wants that everybody likes my normal chippy demeanor Chippy I don’t know chippy.

05:15.13
peteeveritt
Ah, chippy chippy right? Okay there we go act extra points if we can get the word chippy into the introduction of the podcast. Perfect What who we do.

05:21.49
Jeff
There you go hey Pete Guess what we have a show to talk to do.

05:30.48
peteeveritt
I’m pleased. You went for that segue because I’m thinking I got nothing here. Well today today we’re we’re talking all about paid discovery. Um why it’s a good idea how to do it kind of or but I so you know advice on how to do it. Maybe not a. Defined agenda. But how you know how we would approach it and how we have approached it indeed. Um, so um, where where do you want to start.

05:52.32
Jeff
How we have approached it.

06:01.56
Jeff
I Mean what is paid Discovery I Guess right? I mean we should probably clarify that just to make sure. Um I probably have very poor definitions. So I’ll start and then let Pete clarify my my poor definitions but I mean I think it’s as simple as right. It’s. Getting paid to figure out if you’re going to work with a client or not I mean you know and I don’t look at it from ah from the standpoint of like profiting I look at it a way to maybe have a client put their money where the mouth is and also cover your time to determine. You know to do the work that’s going to go into figuring this out.

06:35.32
peteeveritt
Well I think ultimately I think that’s really the key point which is that doing what we do, you know? if if you’re selling Seo to a to a client and if you’re if you’re not an agency that’s listening to this please don’t tune out now because it might help you understand a little bit about. How agencies put their pricing together and to determine what’s fair and what’s not but the it. Yeah and as that’s true. We. We’ll talk about it in the context of Seo but it is bigger than Seo but doing what we do requires. Ah.

06:56.77
Jeff
Um, and is bigger than seo. Sorry.

07:07.71
peteeveritt
Background level of understanding to understand the true scope of work. It’s not as easy as saying Oh Well Seo Costs X because you don’t know where you start where you’ve got what you know what? the definition of success is the way you’re going to finish. And what the competition levels are like or all of that kind of stuff you need to you need to figure that out and it’s not really fair on the agency to have to do all that work Unpaid. It’s also not really fair on the agency to do that work and then discuss it with the client. And basically give away that strategy for free. But then as as you mentioned it’s also important to make sure that the client is ah serious about taking this on and you know that they that they’ve got some skin in the game, etc, Etc. So Hence Hence Paid Discovery really does sit as a very good kind of medium for that to happen.

07:57.82
Jeff
Yeah I’m sure I’ve lost a terminology but I can go I think back to college and taking a I took a class on persuasion which sounds real slimy. But you don’t realize. How much of our day-to-day lives just as like I’m I’m talking about as a business person just as a consumer like we are being manipulated or persuaded or marketed to it’s all the same thing. Um, but there was a big one and that was when you can get a and I’m not even trying to be like sleazey his guy. But when you can get somebody to cough. Something up. It makes them feel Invested. You know if if if they pay even just $5 to enter a club. They’re probably going to stay at that club longer than the ones that are all free on the bar on the street like that’s a really stupid example, but it’s probably true.

08:44.60
peteeveritt
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s absolutely true and look I mean this this works in a whole load of different scenarios. We all know that if you run a free webinar for for something and you get 100 people to sign up if it’s free but only a very small percentage of them will actually turn up on the on the day and time of the webinar. If you charge them $10 for it whilst it’s not a lot of money. It’s not really about you profiting out of it a far higher percentage are going to turn up because they have paid for it. They are invested in it with you and all of a sudden you have a more meaningful discussion because you’ve actually got people that want to be there rather than people that just. I’m free. It Tuesday it too. So yeah let’s let’s do it? Um, so yeah, that’s you but it works in lots of different ways. But that’s that’s basically the premise why discovery is a is a good um, a good sort of mechanism to have the other thing we have mentioned this before.

09:20.50
Jeff
Um, yeah.

09:38.82
peteeveritt
Have talked about how through my agency in the Uk if I’m selling Seo I very rarely sell Seo to brand new clients and that’s because selling a retainer whether it’s Seo or development work or copywriting or whatever it might be. Selling Seo selling a retainer to a new client is a bit like getting married on the first date There’s a whole load of kind of stuff that you need to make sure fits in order for you to have a peaceful life whilst you’re running retained agreements and therefore I sort of don’t do that. At all if if somebody comes to me for a project and I like the client then we might talk about retainer if somebody comes and they are looking for a retainer I say well hang on a minute we you know let’s let’s just take a step back. We’ll we’ve got a couple of processes you need to go through First. We’ll run those as one off, we’ll all make sure that we’re all happy with how this is working and. Who’s working with who and then subject to that? Yes, absolutely we can talk about a retainer so that’s um, that’s just my kind of way of looking at things and by doing that I have far less a far lower churn of retained clients than I did before I put that process in.

10:46.90
Jeff
Yeah, it I’ve seen and and again outside of Seo just and in other areas too I have seen time and time again. The ones that kind of come in blazing but not actually doing any discovery or doing any sort of auditing or whatever they leave just as fast. They can leave just as fast. And ah I mean you know you might maybe it’s just that that style of I don’t know you know what I mean like well if they if they come in that quick. They’re gonna they could possibly leave in the same style but they didn’t they didn’t get invested. You didn’t do the work.

11:19.91
peteeveritt
And they didn’t get invested and I’ll tell you the 2 scenarios that happen most if you don’t run paid discovery which and both of them burn the agency one is that ah let’s face it all the work that you do in the discovery has to be done anyway. At some point. So if you don’t have the discovery phase what happens is you end up doing that within your first month of your agreement but also doing the first month of the agreement’s work as well. So by the the first experience the first experience the client has of working with you is. They are they see this like massive groundswell of work happen then you get to month two and all of a sudden well you’ve done the discovery work. So now you’re just down to the deliverables that the client’s paying for and the experience to the client is well hang on a minute a a a while ago, you know last month they did all of this on top of. What they’ve just delivered now and instantly your service kind of seems like it’s it’s not as valuable as their first impression was if you see what I mean so that’s the first The first thing that can happen and the second thing that can happen is that agencies say right? Well, we’re going to do all of this stuff free in order to get the. Quote correct to give to the client then they’ll have the meeting with the client and the client won’t like the price but you’ve already given them the consultancy which they’ll then take somewhere else and say oh well, we don’t need the keyword research and we don’t need speed tests and we don’t need this because I can provide that on email. The previous agency that we’re talking to provided that um and all that you’re really doing then is.

12:50.67
peteeveritt
Making it far easier for the next agency to do their pricing and get you know argue a price that ah may or may not be agreeable with the client as I say both instances you get burned but you’re leaving yourself open to either of those scenarios happening without doing a discovery process be it paid or unpaid but without. Doing a discovery process First of course as I say we always suggest that discovery processes are paid and that your time and your strategy is paid for as a as a product. Um, now that doesn’t necessarily mean though that a discovery session is a sales session. That’s that’s different ah, when we’ve discussed this in the past we’ve talked about having a goal for the discovery session and having a purpose to the discovery session. So the goal ultimately is that you will agree on a strategy so that you can provide a quote for an Seo retainer. That’s your goal as the agency walking into the room or connecting to the Zoom call have you do it. That’s your goal but that’s not actually what you’re here to talk about right now. What you’re here to talk about is to put a strategy in place that the client because they’ve paid for it could take somewhere else because of course once they’ve paid for it. Yeah, it’s kind of up to. Is kind of up to them what they do with it. However, the way you’re going to deliver this is in such a way that you prove that you know what you’re talking about you are the trusted expert. You’re now invested in this together because they’ve paid for it. You’ve put the time in for it and at the end of it because they’re so delighted with what you’ve done.

14:23.40
peteeveritt
The discussion about the the Seo retainer just becomes the the next formality that’s going to happen and you know before you know it. Everything’s agreed and and off we go that really is kind of the the plan but it yeah you’ve. It’s not a sales session. It’s not a session to sit there and pull up all of your case studies about where we did it for this Client. We did it for that client this this client’s now turning over nine figures when they came to us they were only doing seven that’s a discovery session isn’t the forum for that kind of stuff so you do need to be aware of what it is your. Actually entering into when you join a Discovery call.

14:58.50
Jeff
Yeah, you know we we started by basically outlining that you know it’s a good way to figure out if a client’s a good fit but it’s actually an even better way to demonstrate your expertise and and you know this whole came up because just the other day I was reviewing ah a presentation and peep put together for 1 of our clients.

15:05.77
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

15:16.19
Jeff
And it was just so jam-packed with exactly what we’re talking about that. Ah it blew me away even though we’ve done many of these and I’ve seen many of them. It was just like man this is valuable and but but the but the whole point of it was.

15:23.94
peteeveritt
You’re too kind. You’re too kind.

15:34.95
Jeff
It’s like what you were saying there. You didn’t give what you didn’t tell exactly what hasn’t happened you or you didn’t say what what they need to do you basically outlined the General. What’s happening where the problems are and how we’re going to approach them. It wasn’t here’s the solution you can implement it by clicking this. That’s not that’s not reality. It’s a. You know it’s ah going to be ah, a multi-step process and you outlined it and you’re able to describe it and it’s boom. There. It is you know I mean great value for a low cost and I positive that will work with them for a long time.

16:03.66
peteeveritt
Yeah that’s and and that that’s it it ah? ah it all has to be rooted in reality. It’s it’s essentially a situation report but it’s it’s you being paid for your time to put that situation report together so that you have the understanding of. What is the current state of the website. You know how healthy is it is there any dev work that’s needed in the background you and I once had a client if you remember sign up to Seo hi for our content pathway and they signed up a 1 page site with no blog and we had to go back to the agency and say that’s great. We can take the money off you each month. But. Where are you going to put this content that we’re creating for you and hey presto we gave them a refund I don’t think they ever did come back but it was you know.

16:49.35
Jeff
Yeah I think that was like ah it was like an H teamm. It was like literally a page. It wasn’t even there was no wordpress no blog functionality or whatever I mean like we can solve problems but that was a little of ah.

17:00.47
peteeveritt
Yeah that’s but that’s a little beyond the scope of what we of what we do, but you know it it is that um I mentioned that as kind of an absurd example, but it it is that kind of fact finding what what is it? You’re going to be bringing into your business. What are the tools you have to work with. Because let’s face it if that if if we were an agency and somebody brought that to us wanting us to start generating content. The discussion would be well. That’s fine. We can we can look at content but before we do that we have to build you a blog so we either need to rebuild the entire website which in this case is 1 page but into a platform that that we can blog through like wordpress. Or we need to build something that’s going to sit alongside this and host it on a subdomain and the costs would be this Xy and z um, so you know you can’t you can’t always take it as a given that just because somebody’s asking for what you do that? They’re actually equipped to for you to begin? Um, so. You know? So so you find that out. Also I mean if you’re niche specific then you might have a better understanding of competition levels and and that kind of thing. But again you know we work with clients in multiple niches across across different countries. So. We do need to do some research to find out what the competition levels are what you know? What are the other factors that people are doing to improve their rankings who is it that we’re up against you know if we’re if you come to me selling.

18:33.90
peteeveritt
Trainers and you want to go up against Nike that’s a very different scenario to somebody that’s selling. You know, local made bird tables out of a particular type of wood and is only going to sell them in a particular area where these trees grow so you need to you need to know all of that. Before you can even contemplate putting together a schedule of work which will inform the price that you you agree with the client.

18:55.21
Jeff
Um, now one of the you know is it should have had my I should have my thought prepare a little bit more before I decided to just jump in there didn’t an ipe um no know, No no, one’s noticed. No one’s notice. So.

19:08.51
peteeveritt
I Don’t think anybody’s notices just keep on going powering through.

19:15.14
Jeff
1 of the things we do is we include what I call a low risk offer and that’s the that’s the basically it’s a coupon and that’s a way to get them back. Do you want to kind of elaborate on that or kind of some.

19:27.31
peteeveritt
Yeah, well I I have done this with discovery sessions before so the ah well let’s let’s use. Let’s use seohiva as the as the example here so in order to help you with discovery sessions. We offer scout reports and they offer you 5 different ports. Um, which. Ah, will help you run your discovery sessions health checks keyword research backtling cors, um, speed tests and current rankings. They’re the 5 scout reports that are included now if the the way we run it is to say so there’s a cost to the reports. It’s not very it’s not very expensive it’s $97 at the time of recording. And if you then come back and on board the site within two months we will give you a $97 discount off that off that order. So essentially you know if if you on board the site with us over a period of time. The the report is essentially free. Ah, you can do exactly the same with your paid discovery session. You know here’s the discovery session. This is the output we will put together a strategy we will put together. Ah a specification document and alongside that we will provide a quote for work. Um, now if you. Come and you know if you agree to the if you agree to the the proposal within x length of time then what we’ll do is we’ll discount the cost of the discovery session that you’ve already paid off your first month or off your you know we’ll split it by 3 and offer it off the first three months or however, you want to do it. That’s entirely up to you but your.

20:51.54
peteeveritt
You’re then also giving yourself a competitive advantage because actually in there’s a psychology to selling stuff and people thinking that they’re getting money back or getting money from you know, getting money for getting a discount. Is a hook which obviously gives you an advantage if they do start shopping around for other prices. Oh yeah, but if we go to them. Don’t forget, we’ll get $200 off for the first three months so there’s a psychology to this stuff that that helps helps can help you um retain clients and can help you. You know? um.

21:25.37
peteeveritt
Move on to the next step of the proposal now of course the other thing with this is if you do the discovery session. It turns out that you either don’t like the client or they’re going to you think they’re going to be ah a royal pain in the rear or you there’s just no chemistry. You just wouldn’t enjoy working with them then guess what you just. Give them the strategy. They’ve paid for it and off they go you just never give them the proposal. Um, so there’s there’s no reason for them to come back. They have you know they have ah, in fact, you might even send with the with the reports you know, just an over letter or an over covering email. It says something like we don’t. You know off the back of the discovery session here’s the strategy. This is what you need to do from a technical standpoint. However, you know this doesn’t sit within our skill set so we would recommend you look at Xy and z agencies who may be able to help you further. We wish you well and that’s it. They’ve still got plenty of value in it. They’ve got exactly what they paid for.

22:07.66
Jeff
And and they still got plenty of value in that.

22:15.58
peteeveritt
Plenty of value. They should have nothing but good things to say about you because you’ve been honest with them. You’ve delivered the value as you said you’ve helped them on their journey and they’re now more equipped to talk to other agencies which you may or may not have recommended. Um.

22:32.76
peteeveritt
Because they’ve dealt with you. So it’s it’s still a very professional situation to be in but you may have just dodged a bullet. Essentially.

22:40.18
Jeff
Yeah I was going to say you know you you started that by talking about you know, Maybe if you don’t click with the client. You don’t like them or whatever and I was thinking I usually like them but I’m more worried about is there site a piece of junk or.

22:50.60
peteeveritt
Oh I’ve met I’ve met people I I’ve I’ve met people I don’t like you know I used to be known as I used to be known as easygoing and then when I started working for myself I very quickly realized that. I must be I must have some mar my elements to my my character because some people some people have genuinely hated me I had 1 guy I was working for an agency and there was this guy came in for his retainer meeting now he wasn’t admittedly he wasn’t one of my. Regular clients but I led the team and the guy who ah, who looked after him on a day-to-day basis wasn’t wasn’t there for every reason he was on holiday or offs sick or whatever. So I took the meeting and ah the md also had something to talk to this client about which was completely unrelated. But he said I’ll pop in at the end of the me I’ll be hanging around um just give me a nod when it’s the end of the end of the meeting and I’ll pop in and our boardroom was all made a glass glass like 3 glass walls. You can walk all the way around it and just see in I hated it because there was always somebody behind you pulling a funny face. Um, but. Anyway, this guy this guy asked some questions about Google Analytics and how to get some reports for this and how to get some reports for that and I can’t honestly remember exactly how the conversation went but I did just say I did I made some comment about oh well, you just have to do this It’s like get this and then.

24:27.70
peteeveritt
Remove it from that and this guy saw red and and absolutely stood up in his chair bang. The table was calling me every name under the sun certainly names I’m not going to ah repeat on a on a recorded podcast and most of them had 4 letters in and ah the.

24:46.91
peteeveritt
Anyway, the the Md was literally walking past the door dove in and said pete I think you best leave and it’s the only time I’ve ever been kicked out of a client meeting but that guy hated me I only need I’d only been in the room with him for like 40 minutes and he hated me absolutely hated me. Um. So needless to say ah I was given a very wide berth on that account for the rest of my time at that agency. Um, they didn’t leave. They didn’t leave because of me I have no idea whether they have no idea whether they ever said that they never wanted to hear from me again. They did. Md wanted me to write a formal apology to them and I refused because I thought I thought it was unacceptable that he’d flown off the handle at me in the way that he had done to somebody that he’d never met before. But yeah, that was yeah, that was it so I must be.

25:40.94
Jeff
Well, this explains why I get so many of our clients asking if they can deal with me instead of you I didn’t know I thought it was just based on time zone. Well what’s going on.

25:41.00
peteeveritt
Must be relatively marmite. Some point.

25:50.19
peteeveritt
Ah, now you see what what happens is all the American clients want to speak to the guy with the British accent and all the British or European clients want to speak to the guy with the American accent and the Aussie clients just don’t care which one they get right.

26:01.82
Jeff
Ah, ah, teto they’re they’re restricted by time zones and they’ll take what they can get. Ah.

26:07.66
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely depending on which side of Australia they’re on can do to determine whether they’re dealing with you or me so apart from if they’re dealing with you. You’re like you can be like 20 hours behind them so well 18

26:21.46
Jeff
Um, like time travel. It’s weird hey happy new year. It’s still new. year’s eve here oh man um that’s ah, it’s actually kind of funny. That’s not exactly how it works out. We actually do tend to have the people in Europe book with Pete and the people in the states book with me and then Australia’ ‘ is a coin flip I think that does it literally is what I said they’re just like ah that is the closest to my time zone I can deal with you know it’s because when I see like.

26:40.93
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, but.

26:46.95
Jeff
Meeting times that you have it’s like four a m my time I’m like yeah no, no one’s booking. No one in America’s booking that.

26:50.66
peteeveritt
Well, that’s that’s the thing. So but so so we use Amelia as our calendar calendar plugin on the on the website so when I get the email notification. It says the PST time the pacific time so I’ll get an email notification saying yeah because because it well because that’s the time on the server. So.

27:04.85
Jeff
Um, yeah, because our website is like yeah.

27:10.72
peteeveritt
I’ll get I’ll get an email saying that soso has booked a call with you at like 4 a m just to realize that when I actually open it in the calendar. It’s twelve noon but that’s yeah took me took me a few emails to get the hang of that one I’ll tell you.

27:22.60
Jeff
Yeah, the the scheduling and booking and time zones is ah is a thing I’ve I’ve gotten into a habit of like clarifying the time zone in every conversation that I have like well not in that conversation but any type of you know negotiation. Whatever. Like I play it nerdy segue but I play some games or whatever and I’m in a few tournaments and we have to figure out when during the week we’re going to do well actually play in the East Coast bracket even though I’m in the west coast because I would rather play at like five o’clock my time than eight o’clock which is family time tv dinner. You know what? I mean. So.

27:55.18
peteeveritt
A.

27:57.36
Jeff
I’m always like hello. Ah, how about this time p or est and like so I’m just like all over the world now I’ve always been so bad at that until this last last year all of a sudden and just time zones.

28:06.95
peteeveritt
But not ah genuinely I mean I don’t I don’t look ah at our calendar bookings and think oh they’ve chosen me because they like me. Oh they’ve chosen you cause they like you. It’s they europeans have chosen me because that’s generally gonna have more overlap with their working day and americans I would presume choose you more because. Of the same reason rather than anything else if if I am wrong and you’re a customer of ours and you listen to that. Are you listening to this thinking? No I chose Jeff because I prefer Jeff please keep that to yourself. That’s not something I need to know. However, if you’ve chosen me. But.

28:38.52
Jeff
Um, ah now you you could tell me you could tell me don’t tell Pete though.

28:45.32
peteeveritt
And if you’ve chosen me over Jeff then please send that email that’s ah hello at seohive.co and just put Fao P in the subject level. But yeah.

28:51.18
Jeff
I actually wish it didn’t ask who you want to book it with first I think that’s kind of silly because it’s it to me. It’s all about the times and I don’t know and not and we’re not going to get it ranting about Amelia right now.

28:59.31
peteeveritt
Maybe we should just maybe we should just put like our time zone in like as brackets at the end of our name just so that people that might be a wise thing to do.

29:10.72
Jeff
Um, there you go. That’s a great idea look at us solving problems while we’re recording a podcast.

29:17.56
peteeveritt
Now to give this week shout out to Carl Van duzen he did say that we should. We should just record our team calls which actually is now what this has turned into so ah there you go Kyle shower in another show.

29:24.81
Jeff
A little bit a little bit.

29:32.17
Jeff
Well, you know since we’re on the subject or on the the topic or whatever since we’re doing shoutouts as we wind this down There are a couple um you know, really simple, easy to implement into your agency products like this that we’re talking about. And that’s because we provide a couple of them first one would be our scout reports that we talked about are we all saw our local Seo audits and our technical seo audits and those as we’ve kind of talked about more I’m not going to get into big selling our services on this right now but you know those are things that you literally can order from us and get all the info that you need to help. You know, solve that or have that client meeting and and and hopefully sell them but also on an unrelated from seo for the most part thing I want to give a shout out to my friend clifford our friend Clifford Almea in my webbot because that’s another great product that you can do to to provide ds for you know if you’ve got website clients. Maintenance care plan things like that. That’s a great and a really good. Um, you know client presentation that gets created when you when you do use their service so they they have a really good tool I’m sure there’s plenty of other ones out there too so feel free to add any or let us know.

30:37.72
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, my webboard it’s great. My webboard is great. Absolutely absolutely. But my word old. It’s great and yeah, good good idea, good idea giving a shout out to Clifford because he’s ah he’s a top guy as well.

30:49.25
Jeff
Absolute lovely human being met him couple times. Um what I like not to sell his you know service all the time right now too. But what I like about that is is the like I said the presentation. And it doesn’t just go into the technical stuff. It does go into technical stuff right? and and I can do that by going to the back and saying well your wordpress is out of data and you’ve got some malware or you’ve got you’re at risk for this and I can do all that but what I’m not great at is making that presentation. It highlights the more important things and it’s not the client doesn’t care about their wordpress version or whatever. They care that oh you’ve uncovered There’s no call to actions on these pages for example or our our hours aren’t on there. Our phone number is not on there I mean little things that get missed all the time that you can demonstrate that value that you can find and you know fix for them.

31:31.38
peteeveritt
absolutely absolutely now actually you have there is maybe 1 thing that we have not talked about if like we can just bring this into disco back to discovery as we’re sort of coming into land which is one of the key factors. You do need to understand with the client.

31:40.89
Jeff
Um, yeah.

31:49.60
peteeveritt
Is what their commercial goals and objectives are because again if they’re like completely off the wall complete. You know if they want to go from a a 4 figure business to an eight figure business in three months the reality is that unless they’ viral somewhere on Youtube that that’s just not gonna happen so you need to understand what their. What their commercial goals and objectives are in order for you to put the strategy together as well. So the discovery session because it can become that level of open discussion. You know you can talk about how much their average orders are how many orders a week they’re getting how many new customers. How many returning customers. what’s the what’s the web providing for them already or do they have other other channels of sale if. So what are they all of those kind of things because that that really helps you formulate another part of the strategy and I’m only mentioning it now because it was something that we we sort of we glossed over and onto onto other things like booking. Plugins and whatever a few minutes ago so yeah I didn’t want it to to be forgotten the part of the discovery process is is not just the the tactical delivery element that comes back from from you to the client should things move forward, but it is understanding how this. How what you will do will affect the client’s business and whether they have the capacity to deal with it whether they have the the staff to deal with it whether they are in a place to deal with it or whether there’s other bits of work that need to be done first in order to in order to allow that to happen.

33:18.56
Jeff
Yeah I was trying to think of ah I’m going to forget the exact specifics but we recently had a client that signed up and then found out they were like going to be traveling through Africa for like six months or something something. Ah, really weird like that and I mean it was cool but it was like well probably not the good time and if we would have. Discussed a little bit more ahead of time we would have known that.

33:40.71
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely we. We had a client that um they built playground equipment for like nurseries and play play areas and that kind of thing in in towns.

33:52.20
Jeff
Um I want to playground that sounds fun.

33:55.22
peteeveritt
Well I can fix you up with the with the number for a guy. Don’t know what the shipping will be to ah to Southern California like but we can I’m sure we can cross up bridge. Um, but so they they make this stuff bespoke and it’s all based on a honeycomb very very good for the Seo high brand actually.

34:00.56
Jeff
Um, sure.

34:10.94
peteeveritt
Or based on a honeycomb kind of model and you can have modules that fit together and this that so basically because they make it to order because they didn’t have any warehousing they’d they’d spent all this money on these plastic molds. So when you placed an order they then went into production and I had this meeting with these 2 guys.

34:12.90
Jeff
Um, zoom.

34:29.65
peteeveritt
1 of whom was significantly older than the other I’m I’m my read on it was the older guy had put the money in and the younger guy was the brains that was my kind of ah my kind of read on the on the room might be completely wrong. But anyway I I asked the question. So okay, so if I place an order today. When can I expect delivery. So if you place an order today. It’s a fourteen day turnaround on the on the thing so you can have it in fifteen days so fourteen days with us then we’ll deliver it next day. Okay, great. So if I’ve placed an order today and then you come in and place an order tomorrow. When can you have your order and the old guy said oh you can have it the day after you because it’ll be 40 and the guy next to him said no no, it can’t work like that because the molds are tied up for ten days on the first order. So your. 40 the second person’s fourteen days can’t start until day 11 of the first of the first order if you see what I mean and and the guy couldn’t get so so right? Okay, so we figure that out so you’re now looking at let’s say delivery within four weeks so if I’ve placed an order today. You’ve placed an order tomorrow. If you then place an order the day after when can your order be delivered and we it just it just showed very very quickly that if we went and drove a whole ton of traffic to this site and got orders for playground equipment. He was going to have a whole load of peed off customers very very quickly. Um, so.

35:53.10
Jeff
Um, yes, yeah.

35:54.86
peteeveritt
The outcome of the meeting wasn’t that they needed an seo retainer from me the the outcome of the meeting was he needed more molds or a warehouse where he could build this stuff and store it to deliver and yeah, absolutely and whilst that has nothing to do with Seo. It’s just good business advice business sense the work we do.

36:02.51
Jeff
Easy to figure out your infrastructure.

36:14.71
peteeveritt
Affects people’s businesses and we would be doing it wrong if we but send so many inquiries or so many sales through their doors that they can’t handle with them so we need to make sure that there’s the economy of scale on their side of things to accommodate the increase that we’re that we’re anticipating sending through.

36:30.71
Jeff
Yeah, you know at at is SeoHive we don’t require sites that we onboard to go through an audit process. But we you know we’ve discovered things when they have signed up and we’ve discovered things before if we did do if they did do an audit. Um and we’ve got no qualm saying politely that there’s not it’s not right we either we’re not the best fit for you or you’re not the best fit or you’re not in the right stage. We’ve got no problem saying that it feels tear I’m I’m not a person that likes to say no, just generally I hate saying? no um, but.

36:58.61
peteeveritt
Yeah now I’m with you.

37:02.77
Jeff
I Always feel so much better when I can kind of pull off that band-aid and say look you know I’ve just got to be honest with you. It’s not the best fit for whatever the reason is and here’s what I recommend and that’s you know I mean I don’t know what happened I don’t know if you know what happened to that company afterwards. But hopefully they. Took that they learned from that meeting. They went out and you know ordered a bunch of extra molds and and now they’re super successful but you know if it’s I mean we like I said we don’t mind saying no and also that’s you know, Thankfully, we’re in a position where we can do that and I know some people aren’t But. Trust me, you’re better to say no than to say Yes, if you aren’t sure.

37:36.84
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely That’s it’s it’s a it’s a key thing to it’s just being responsible I know it’s not fun and I know everybody wants to see their businesses grow. They want to see their clients businesses grow. But there’s. I was gonna say there’s a right way or wrong way to do that. That’s not that’s not entirely true. There’s lots of different ways to do that. But what you need to make sure is that the work that you do doesn’t back your client into a corner that might negatively affect their business because that’s just completely counterproductive. You may as well have not got them the sales in the first place if they’re having to refund people and deal with bad reviews. So yeah. I mean look you’re right? We don’t you you could go and just on board any site with us. But if if a site comes to us that hasn’t been through an audit process guess what within the first few days we’re actually doing the audit of the site and if it’s not a good fit. We will approach that agency partner and say we don’t think we can work on this because of x y and z so. Is there a plan to address that if not, we’ll give you money back and that’s that’s ah, that’s it. We’re done um and just because we can’t it’s not right for us to proceed in some instances we don’t do that very often I mean the vast majority of times I think we can probably want.

38:46.49
Jeff
no no no I’m thinking like twice I’ve taught my head like and we talked about 1 of them earlier. Ah.

38:50.20
peteeveritt
Yeah, it was going to say yeah I think we can count on one hand the number of times. It’s actually happened and and yeah, absolutely Ah, but that’s but that’s partly because we’ve structured our products in such a way that whilst we don’t have an official discovery session. We have. There’s a logic to our products we have clients. We’ve worked with for years. Some that we’ve worked with from the start that when they get a new lead come in buy a set of scout Reports. So We already know at that point you know before they are on monthly fees or retainers or anything like that whether it’s going to work and we’ve I suppose educated our clients that this is the way our process works you get you get? a. Ah, scout Report. You get a tech audit you get a local audit. Get the results of that We have a chat about it and then there you go. That’s you know if if we’re good to Proceed. You know what? our offering is.

39:36.81
Jeff
You know and and you know and and at the same time we’ve we’ve got a lot of agencies that are super equipped and really knowledgeable and they do a lot of that themselves and boom they sign up and they’re all ready to go So You know a lot they’re doing that their own version of it. You know they’ve got their own paid Discovery or their own process and. And and they they can check it off so and that’s fantastic and in either situation these relationships work very well and they can we see them last longer than than other ones you know I mean it’s the data is you can’t deny it. It’s great.

40:10.69
peteeveritt
It’s absolutely absolutely yeah, completely clear when you see the the effect that it has on a business over a number of years and I realize that the second half of this discussion has been far removed away from the paid Discovery It could just be Discovery. But. Just to drill that point home the strategy that you provide should never be given for free. You know that’s not you take your car to the mechanic he will charge you a diagnostic fee to find out what’s wrong with your car. That’s exactly what you’re doing here. It’s It’s like a diagnostic what is needed. What is the situation. All of that work that knowledge that expertise that you bring to the table has value and you need to be able to be recompense for that suitably I think we’re done.

40:59.19
Jeff
I Think so feel like we’ve ah we talked about that one exhaustively.

41:04.86
peteeveritt
Ah, well I tell you what I can just just start to feel my throat starting to go as well. So it’s a good is a good time to to wrap up. But um, no I think it’s I think it’s been I hope it’s been worthwhile. It’s been fun. Certainly been more achievable today than it was two days ago for my throat and I got all the way through it. So there you go.

41:10.79
Jeff
There we go.

41:19.74
Jeff
Yes, yeah, I’m glad you’re feeling a bit better.

41:24.75
peteeveritt
Cool, well look. It’s been It’s been cool and if you need any information about the services we offer. It’s all on seohive.co I’ll drop me in Jeff an email at hello@seohive.cooryoucanbookinthroughourcalendar which is on our contact page at seohive.co/contact and you can tell us whether you prefer me or Jeff when you get on the call. Ah.

41:44.65
Jeff
Ah, um, is this going to be our last podcast for the year know we got 1 more. Okay I think we got 1 more before the end of the year okay never mind I will not say happy New Year you guys all know.

41:48.29
peteeveritt
I Don’t think so I think we got another couple of weeks.

41:56.52
peteeveritt
And so I been yeah o know you mentioned it. It probably is worth mentioning that we are gonna we know we’re gonna go up towards Christmas but then we’re gonna have a break for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New year and enjoy some downtime with our families and then we’ll be back in January so um, yeah, but it’s been It’s been really cool doing these podcasts for the for the last. We started in September didn’t we so like the last quarter or so last third of the year

42:19.50
Jeff
It has been really cool, really blown away and I just I saw in your ah your your your personal brand email today. You’re talking about that and just kind of why do we do it sooner.

42:29.30
peteeveritt
Yeah, wait. It really has been like that now we’re so this is episode 14 so yeah, now we’re ah now with 14 episodes and releasing those first ones did feel really weird I don’t know how you felt and I’ve had a podcast before you know I’ve done 175 shows of a different podcast but this one felt. Strange being out there in the big wide world. But so pleased. It.

42:46.92
Jeff
Big, big big time Imp Postster syndrome. But it’s gone. Well you just got to do it. So Everybody says you know you just whether it’s podcast or whatever this just rip that bandit off just do it and it it works itself out. I’m sure those first ones weren’t fantastic I Know the videos weren’t great, but it didn’t Matter. We’ve pushed them out there. We’ve got people listening and if they’re not perfect. They’re not perfect, but we’re sharing some good insight. We’re having Fun. We’re meeting new people. It’s great.

43:11.58
peteeveritt
We are indeed we are indeed so by all means reach out say hi. We’d love that and if we can help you with your paid Discovery You know where you can find us.