2 Secrets to Selling Google Ads Services

Hey, it's Kasim of Solutions 8 and I want to teach

you how to sell PPC services.

So the reason I'm doing this by the way is because I notice we

have a lot of agencies subscribers.

Some small, some medium.

And so I want to kind of offer you my insights as to how I think that

this particular service should be sold if you're not an agency and

you don't do this as a service then, forgive me if this is irrelevant.

I actually think this could still serve you because it might help you

if you ever go shop for a vendor.

So I own an agency that's a little bit bigger than most.

The average agency, I think, is sub million in revenue, we're approaching two.

And then, I've got 30 employees, right?

So the average agency, my experience experiences anywhere

between like five and 10.

And so we're a little bit bigger.

And what that has forced me to do is to build something of a sales process

that ensures continuity and consistency, because as you grow, you risk delusion.

And I'm going to kind of share with you what we've learned, and this is

going to apply to you, even if you don't plan on ever-growing to be as

big as us, or if you just like do that small, 30 employees is nothing I want

The principles here that I want to share, I think will carry through and the first

and the most important one is continuity.

When you're selling PPC, when you're selling any managed service, you want

to make sure that what the sales person says and offers matches the client's

experience on an ongoing basis.

Now, that seems really linear.

You're like, yeah, duh, thank you very much Kasim for the pro tip.

You just wasted 90 seconds of my life, but I can tell you that the minute

there's more than one person in your organization, this is a massive risk.

It's a massive risk that person a says, oh yeah, we should

run a smart shopping campaign.

And I definitely want to do a little bit of YouTube.

For whatever reason, I think that there's an exploratory campaign and then passes

over to this other person who h as mildly different idea, but for the client,

that's a potentially catastrophic damage to the foundation of your relationship.

Cause you said this and I got that.

And you want to make sure that never, ever, ever, ever happens.

We've all had this experience.

You go to a restaurant, you don't get what you ordered and no matter how

kind of a person you are, there's just something about it that just eats at you.

It's so funny.

I don't remember where I was.

I was at one of those horrible chain restaurants.

And I ordered a normal fries and I ended up getting the crisp cut

fries, and I was mad the whole day.

And what's really funny about that is actually like the Chris cut fries better.

It was like a happy accident, but I was just mad that I didn't get what I wanted.

And then, take that and now assume that I'm paying thousands

of dollars to these fries and I'm going to get them every single month.

And that's what your professional services are.

So make sure that you're articulating what it is that the client is.

And then that's being carried through your entire process, from

the salesperson to the onboarding manager, to the client manager, to the

specialist, the strategist, everybody that, depending on the roles that you

have assigned everybody that's involved, it needs to be really clear on who

the client is, what their goals are.

What's important to them and what it is that we've told them they're going to get.

Now, if you take.

And you agree that that's important?

What it does is it forces you to have salespeople that actually know Google ads.

I have two sales people on staff.

Both of them have run Google ads, campaigns in like extreme depth.

He's worked with, premier partner agencies and worked directly with Google

and just a phenomenal amount of pedigree.

So he knows he can open up a Google ads dashboard and poke around

new campaign evaluations himself.

And what's nice about that is when he's talking to the client about

the improvement opportunities that narrative carries through, if you

throw a sales person, and this is what most agencies do by the way.

So if you've done this, I'm not trying to knock you.

I just want to help maybe bring you around to something that I

think could be more effective.

If you throw just a random sales person at this and say,

Hey, you're a good salesperson.

Go sell Google ads.

They'll do it.

What they're selling and what you're fulfilling could end up

being two very different things.

That's true.

Even if they're selling a nebulous kind of opaque product, right.

Let's say that they're just kind of good at getting people to try things out.

If they're not being specific about, What it is that you're doing or how long

it's going to take or what's possible.

I had a client just signed up with this.

I was on the phone two days ago and he's really cool.

I really liked him.

But he said something that, red flag in my mind, he goes, if I go couple

of days seeing a decline in the data, cause he's currently running

Google ads, it's going pretty well.

And he hired us to make it better.

So he goes viral a couple of days and I see a decrease in the data.

I'm probably gonna freak out.

And he said it tongue in cheek, it wasn't threatening at all, but I just,

I hit the brakes and I said, Hey.

Just so you know We're going to be building a smart shopping campaign for you

and smart shopping as a 45 day learning period where the data is like insane.

I mean, we've had like a week of flatline in the past.

So context is, I totally understand the spirit of what you're saying.

We're going to make sure we're headed in the right direction, but

there are some specific application elements that you need to be aware of.

And a sales person is not gonna.

So, if you've already got a sales person, I'm gonna tell you to fire

them, but go teach them Google ads, make them take some training.

They don't need to know everything inside, out, upside down the front and

center, but they should know enough to be able to speak intelligently to it.

And then also guide the clients in the right direction.

The other thing that we do with our salespeople is once they have a client

that is properly qualified, when we run a campaign evaluation, those evaluations

are being run by the specialists that will ultimately manage those scans.

So we take a real-life specialists, because a lot of those evils

are done by, you can get like, WordStream has a horrible bot you

can pay for and white label.

There's a bunch of them that you hook up to the people, some of these

Google ads campaign, and then it just pumps out this 13 page checklist

that looks kind of impressive.

But when he goes through the action items, if you know what you're

doing and you look at it and go, well, none of this means anything.

You don't want to hand that to a client and you don't want to end it.

You're held accountable to that sheet and the sheet is worthless.

You also don't want to put somebody on those evaluations or those

estimates that they can't be held accountable to measure later.

So if we're talking about someone, QPC makes sure that it's an intellectual sale.

It's an emotional buy, but it's an intellectual sell.

You have to make sure that you're doing with the client that has reasonable

expectations understands what's possible.

That's really important.

And that you've also defined what is it you're going to do.

And by the way, if that definition is opaque, that's okay.

I've told clients all the time, like, Hey, we're going to run

some traffic and see what happens.

And then based off of those results, I'm going to build

your campaign and your strategy.

Cool.

As long as you say that up front and you give them the context that I

have no idea what to do here, dude.

I'm just gonna throw some spaghetti against the wall.

And if they're comfortable with that, I think that's an okay approach.

But just make sure that your sales conversation and then

your actual fulfillment to make sure that those are connected.

And if you're more than an organization of

no matter how aligned you feel like you are, this is a risk, it's a risk for PBC.

If you're selling something way more linear then and there's

no other way to do it, then you're probably in better shape.

But when you're selling Google ads services, I think it's really important

that segues to the second half of this.

actually can't sell it.

What I do when I talk to customers, I did this yesterday.

spoke to a gentleman who I really liked.

He has got a really kind of cool business.

He helps people optimize their analytics.

He helps e-commerce.

Providers optimize our analytics and use cool dude.

I'd love to work with him, but his model at the moment,

wasn't right for Google ads.

So I talked him out of it and I actually batted away his business.

A couple of times we spent a half hour and he was like, well, what if we do this?

Well, what if I increase my pricing?

Well, what if that, and each time now I'm not in the habit of turning down work.

I'd love to.

But it wasn't right for the time we could get there.

And I told him how, just think it needed a little bit more flushing out,

more proof of concept with the model.

A little bit more in the way of scalability.

Right now Google ads.

Wasn't right for them.

I think if you're talking to somebody, your job in the beginning should

be to try to talk them out of it.

And all my leads are inbound.

They want little ads, so I'm in a pretty good shape, to be like,

Hey, just so you know, this could take 90 days to prove concepts.

And as many as 50% of all Google ads, campaigns fail in the first 90 days,

are you willing to take that risk?

And sometimes you hear like, No, I'm not.

And that's a good thing.

That's a good thing for you because that's what that's true.

What happens if you paper up this client in 45 days into it, the campaign's

failing failing client cost you so much, so much time, so much effort, so much

energy, so much money, so much manpower, person power, so much reputation.

One bad review will cost you three clients or more.

Make sure they know what's possible.

Make sure you're being honest about what's possible.

And the whole thing's tied together.

If there's continuity with what you're selling, what you're

selling also needs to be realistic.

We ran a challenge.

It was really successful as a three-act Shopify challenge and the promise was

three extra ROAS in three days for $33.

And we ran this challenge, taught everybody how to do it.

And then at the end of the challenge, As management to the people that didn't want

to do it themselves, even though we told them everything from soup to nuts, exactly

how to do it, they were just like, yeah, you guys clearly know what you're doing.

We're gonna hire you.

It works phenomenally well.

Here's, what's interesting about it is I ran that past a buddy of mine recently

who does similar work to us tangentially.

And he's like, well, three extra ROAS.

Like, it's not that big a deal.

And he's right.

ROAS is that's proof of concept basically.

my point was, I know that's what I'm willing to promise.

So I can show you how to get to a 300% ROAS at hopefully much higher, right.

Hopefully much higher, but that's the expectation I want to manage.

I don't want that client out of the gate.

I mean, without knowing some really specific things about whether or

not that's feasible or reasonable.

So I realize that we're all contending with.

Forgive me for slandering our collective environment, but there

are some freaking snakes out there.

There's, there's this big agency and we all know the name.

I won't drop it, but their protocol, their standard operating procedures to call

my clients and your clients, anybody run Google ads and tell them things like, do

you know, your ads are running in Egypt?

I have this recorded by the way, I mean, I've been doing this for 15

years, so I guess that's a lie.

We haven't been doing Google ads for 15 years, but I've been

doing it for a long darn time.

And they've been doing it for as long as I've been doing it calling

clients every couple of months.

We'll get another one.

And, we track and record all phone calls.

So we're listening to this phone call and this dope calls up and says, do

you know your ads are running in Egypt?

Or, do you know that your extension has the wrong link or whatever

things that are just bold faced lies?

What's funny is we've been on the phone with their C-level team.

And they got on the phone with us because we had the call recordings

and they're like, we're so sorry.

That was an isolated incident.

It will never happen again.

It's happened a bunch of times since then, and we're all

competing against those people.

We're competing against the people that are willing to lie

and willing to over promise.

And my note to you, if you really want this to be a long-term.

Is just be your prospect's plan B.

Cause if I'm talking to a prospect and I'm like, look, you guys sound great, but

you're more expensive than the other team.

And the other team has promised me better results in a shorter amount of time.

I can't compete against that.

I don't want to just sit there and say, well, they're lying because maybe

they're not, you know what I mean?

Like what do I know?

Maybe somebody out there is, is cheaper and better and faster than me.

Awesome.

Good for them.

So all I do is say completely understand my recommendation

would be to try them, try it out.

And then what ends up happening is they come back, they come back 60, 90

days later, like freaking clockwork.

So play the long game, I mean, honesty and integrity.

Phenomenal sales tactics, because they're not tactics.

It's just like, Hey, here's, what's possible.

Here's what's not.

And everybody else in the game is just trying to be like, oh, we,

promise conversions or you don't pay.

And that's so funny because in my mind, I'm like yeah, you do, you pay the

ad spend, which is most of the money.

So it's like, all they're doing is they're just papering up 20 clients

hoping that one of them hits.

And then, the 19 that go away it's a numbers game for them.

So

that whole game.

just don't think it's worth playing.

I think that you should offer a really solid service charge, what you're

worth, and then be honest about with.

And if somebody swoops a client out from under you, because they're

willing to, make promises that they can't keep that's fine.

The client will be back in 60 days.

Just follow up with them, say, Hey, just wanted to see how the campaign's

running and you, it'll be no surprise.

I'm like, oh, well it's actually not going as well as the agency said that it would.

And I'm like, oh, I know that.

That's not a surprise at all.

So maintain continuity, make sure you manage expectations.

And that's it.

I mean, I'm not a good sales person.

And I tell people that on calls, which might be the best

line in the world of sales.

I just tell him the truth.

hop on.

I try to talk them out of it briefly, if I feel like that's really necessary.

And if I can't do that, I make sure I manage expectations.

And if I think they're going to be a good fit, I bring them on.

And I always, always, always regret Ben.

If I ever have a client and I'm like, Hey, I just don't think this is going to work.

I don't think we're that fit or, whatever.

And, and it still happens to this day, but you'll have somebody who you just

really like, or maybe the referral from a strategic partner is somebody that.

or, you want to continue to cultivate a relationship with.

And they're like, well, what if for how about, or, here's what we can do.

Or, all those weird kind of jiggy deals that you cut.

And then it just never works out.

Six year guns, six year model, 16 old works.

And you don't have to be a salesperson, just be honest, just hop on and be like,

here's what I think is possible because if they're talking to five people, which

I think is probably about the average, usually that's the everybody's special

for pain is talking to five service providers and picking the best of five.

The other four are just making really bold promises.

And if you hop on and you're the one reasonable human who's like, oh, I

actually know how Google ads works.

Incidentally, because you're training your sales people on Google ads.

Okay.

Here's me managing expectations.

You're dealing with an educated consumer base people didn't, start a business and

run it to a point to where it's successful enough for them to spend thousands of

dollars a month in advertising, you don't get there and also be an idiot

like you're dealing with a smart human, so treat them like a smart human.

I think they're really gonna respect that anyway.

Oh, this is how.

We'd love to hear your thoughts and comments.

If you have other sales tips that I'm not hitting on.

Like I said, I'm not a good sales person.

I'd love for some advice.

There may be just when it comes to more of the Polish.

Cause we don't have that, but I really like our foundation.