Example Sales Call For Brand Strategy

Today, I want to talk about selling strategy as a service.

Strategy is difficult to sell because it’s not tangible service. Clients don’t really know what they’re getting. That’s why I put together this guideline on how you should be selling high-level strategy service:

You should be turning clients away

If you’re desperate to close sales, clients can feel it.

They assume you’re desperate because nobody is hiring you, and maybe nobody is hiring you because you suck.

You need to be confident, maybe even a little cocky. Clients should feel like they need you more than you need them and that they’re lucky to have you.

But that’s easier said than done, right?

It’s hard to be confident when you haven’t had sales in months and you need to close this one to pay rent.

Now imagine you had 5 potential clients and you can only work with 1 of them. Would that make you feel a little more cocky?

This is why most of your time should be spent on getting more leads.

For example, if you need 2 new clients, focus your time and energy on getting 10 leads. Your goal is to turn away 8 of them during the sales call. Ironically when you turn clients away, the more sales you’ll close. People hate being told “no, you can’t have it”. So telling clients they can’t hire you, makes them want to hire you more, and you’ll end up with more clients than you can handle. This gives you an opportunity to raise your prices.

Your goal isn’t to close every sale. It’s to get more leads.

How to get more leads

If you haven’t already, you need to reach out to EVERYONE you’ve ever met in your life and tell them you have a new service you’re offering. Then ask them if they know anyone who might need that, make an introduction.

I’m not gonna get into too much detail about asking for referrals and doing outreach. If you want to know more about that, watch this video.

Here are the more important parts, IMO:

1. Be specific with your offerings

People are busy.

Don’t make them do more work and ask you a million questions in order to work with you.

You might be tempted to keep things open so you can appeal to wider range of people, but you’re actually shooting yourself in the foot by doing that. Be hyper specific about exactly what you can do for them.

For example, if I get a message that says:

“I work with entrepreneurs to help with their video needs. I’d love to see if we can figure out a way to work together”

Now you just gave me homework. I don’t have time to go back and forth with you to figure out how I can hire you.

Instead, be direct like this:

“I can take your podcast episodes and turn them into short-form videos for Reels, YT Shorts, and TikTok”

2. Don’t give yourself obscure titles

When you get introductions or meet people while networking, you won’t actually turn them into leads if you keep calling yourself “brand strategist” or “fractional COO” or “mindset coach” or any other obscure titles that most people don’t think they need. 99% of clients don’t even know what that means, and the 1% who do, already knows who they want to hire.

For example, if someone is too busy and overwhelmed, they think hiring a “virtual assistant” will make their life easier and fix the problem. They don’t know that the “real problem” is that they have no systems and their operation is a mess.

When you meet this person and introduce yourself as a “fractional COO” or “systems expert” they’re just gonna say “oh cool” and move on. But if you tell them you’re a “virtual assistant”, they’ll say “oh I’ve been looking for one”

Clients aren’t looking for a “fractional COO”. They’re looking for more free time in their business and they think a virtual assistant can do that.

Clients aren’t looking for a “marketing strategist”. They’re looking for more sales on their website and they think a web designer can do that.

Clients aren’t looking for a “brand strategist”. They’re looking for more exposure on social media and they think a social media manager can do that.

Clients aren’t looking for a “mindset coach”. They’re looking to grow their revenue and they think a business coach can do that.

It doesn’t matter what title you want to call yourself. Just call yourself whatever the client thinks they’re looking for. And to find out what that is, just ask them “what is the outcome you want?” and “who do you think you need to hire to get that?”

Eventually, it’ll become obvious what you should call yourself.

You’ll get 10x the leads.

Quick tip: if you don’t actually design websites and only do strategy, then partner with a freelance web designer who does.

How to educate clients on the need for strategy

Once you got them in the door, now you can sell them on strategy.

And the easiest way to do that is to make the client sell themselves through answering a series of questions.

These questions have to make them think critically about what EXACTLY what they need help with.

For example:

Client: I need a virtual assistant to make my life easier so I have more free time.

You: What are 2 or 3 things that take the most time in your week?

Client: Onboarding new customers, answering emails, customer service, it’s different every week.

You: If it’s different every week, do you think a virtual assistant can manage that without you being involved?

Client: Hmm, maybe not.

You: It seems like you need help with setting up a process in your business so it can run without you having to be involved in everything. I think what you need is a fractional COO, not just a virtual assistant.

This is called consultative sales.

Don’t try to sell anything yet.

Each question should reveal a deeper layer of the problem in their business so you can find out where the root cause of their pain is coming from.

How to close the sale

After the client goes through answering the questions, they’re going to have more questions than answers. They might even feel overwhelmed because they realize they need a lot more help than they thought.

This is actually a good sign.

They used to dismiss “strategy” as some useless service they don’t need, but you created a new “problem” they didn’t know they had.

This is your chance to present the “solution” they didn’t know they need.

For example, here’s how I ask questions, then present the solution:

Client: Can I get a quote for a new website?

Me: Sure, I have a few questions first. How many pages do you need and what are they? Do you have a wireframe for each of the page? Do you have copy for each page?

Client: No, I thought you were gonna do that.

Me: We definitely can. I have a few more questions then. What’s the primary goal of the website? More traffic? Higher sales conversion? Brand credibility?

Client: That’s a great question. I think more sales.

Me: Do you know what the current conversion rate is on each of your sales page? And how would you measure success after the new website launches, meaning what would be the goal conversion rate?

Client: I’m not sure, what do you recommend?

Me: Well, that would depend on what the industry average is. Do you have a benchmark on what your competitors might be doing?

Client: I have no idea actually.

Me: No problem. We can do some research on this once we start the project. My next question is on copywriting. Do you have any data on which messaging performs with which audience?

Client: That’s a great question, I don’t think we do.

(This is when clients start to get overwhelmed, so I calm them down and start my sales pitch)

Me: No worries. This is perfectly normal with most of our clients. The websites we build perform well because we do a lot of research and strategy on your target audience, what are the different reasons why they buy, and what the different buying stage is for your customers. We do this through research and interviewing some of your team members as well as the customers.

We then come up with a sitemap and wireframe to figure out what pages you’ll need and the goal of each page to achieve your overall business goal. Once we have the sitemap and wireframe, then our designers and developers can start designing and coding. Without that it would be like building a building without a blueprint.

That entire planning session, where we produce the sitemap and wireframe, is called “brand strategy” and it costs $20k. I believe it’s absolutely necessary whether you do the website with us or not because, like I said, it’s the blueprint. You will need one whether you work with us or another agency.

You see, most web designers skip this part and just wing it, which is why most websites don’t perform.

If you want to just wing it and put together what pages you want and copy for each page, we’re happy to design around it, but I highly recommend doing the brand strategy first. That’s what all our clients do.

By this point the client is sold.

They’re actually afraid to go anywhere else because you asked them questions they haven’t thought about, but they know it’s important. This makes them question “what else do I not know?”

I hope this was helpful.

If you’re a freelancer or agency owner and want mentorship from me, you can learn more about it ​here​. This round is already full, but you can still apply to be considered for the next round.

Also if you want to improve your storytelling or get better at content creation, definitely consider joining my storytelling community ​Night Owl Nation​. It’s the best community in the world with the best people in the world if you want to practice your storytelling.

That’s it for now.

Until next time, cheers!