Presenting Yourself as a Professional

The Sleazy Salesman Approach

People are more and more opposed to the typical sleazy salesman approach.  This approach incorporates a lot of smoke screens, double talk, and unethical sales tactics.  The sleazy salesman approach also incorporates a lot of pitching, and “look at how great my company is” ads.  Sleazy salesmen always want to take, and don’t really care about giving.  It’s obvious that you are working with a sleazy salesman when all they care about is making a sale, and not about making sure you make an educated purchase.  When you incorporate sleazy salesman tactics in your business, even if it’s just a single salesman doing it and not you, it gives a negative impression on your brand.  People will start to perceive your company as one they can’t really trust in your industry.

The Professional Approach

On the contrary, when people do business with a professional company, they leave feeling satisfied – like they could do business with you again; and they wouldn’t mind encouraging their friends and family to do the same.  A professional is someone who cares about people more than they care about money.  A professional understands that if you take care of people, then they take care of you.  A professional makes sure that before a person makes the decision to do business with them, they know exactly what they are committing to and they are not left with more questions than when they started.    

How do you present yourself as a professional?  Aside from honesty and ethical business practices, a huge part of professionalism includes offering resources and educational information about your industry, products, or services.  Write articles and blogs.  Answer 10 or 20 of the most frequently asked questions about your industry (this could become your FAQ’s page on your website) and post them to your social media sites.  Create content and resources that educate people about your industry, not just about what you do.  Make a resource page on your site and offer them for free as educational materials to anyone who visits.  When you create your resources, it’s important to make sure people know that you can help them with whatever issues you discuss, but don’t inundate your materials with adds and promotions – people will get the idea that all you want to do is make money off of them, rather than help them. 

It’s crucial to your company’s brand to leave people with the understanding that you are in the people business.  People don’t really care how much you know, until they know how much you care.  When they see your company as a trusted source in your industry, your brand will be the first that comes to their mind when they need your services.  

Typical layout of a home page

Just in case you thought creating a website was as simple as putting your logo, services and  contact info, we thought it would be helpful to show you some basic industry standards for creating a successful home page.

How many pages should a website have? What should go on each page of my website"

Every website is different, and serves a different purpose.  Therefore there's really no cookie cutter way of telling you exactly how many pages, or what pages your website should have.  However, if you need help getting some direction about how many pages your website needs, and what type of content your site should have, you can use this article a guide.  Depending on what type of website you have, the pages and content varies; but for a typical business, most websites have these five standard pages:

1. Home
2. About
3. Products and/or Services
4. Portfolio, Resources, or Other info
5. Contact   

In the rest of this article, I will give some suggestions as to what can go on each of these pages and how they can be laid out - but again, this can vary depending on exactly what you're trying to accomplish with your website.  

Home Page:

The Home page is what will give your customers their first impression of your business.  You only have a few seconds to:

• grab your viewers attention
• give them a good idea as to what you do and what your website is about
• direct their eyes to where they should go
• give a clear call to action, or option to view another main page

Your Home page should include something eye catching, attention grabbing, sweet and to the point… and more importantly, something to get them to want to explore your site a little more.  The mistake that many people make with their home page is by trying to put all of the information they want their customers to see right on that first page.  The fact is that no one is going to read it all, and it will scare people away.  It should not have too much text that will scare off your customers (no long running paragraphs). 

Examples of content that can be on your home page:

• Images of the work you do
• Pictures of your office or building
• Links to other areas of your site
• A brief mission statement 
• Your company logo    

 Keep in mind that the images you want to place on your home page can be in a slideshow or banner where people would expect to see them, rather than spread out on different areas of your Home page.  

About Page:

This is the page that customer can go to if they want to learn more about your company.  This is where you should add a lot of text, but make sure not to have too much text without good images, and make sure to spread it out in a way that makes sense and doesn't overwhelm a visitor's eyes.  

Examples of content that can be on your About Page:

• About Us – this is the straight forward explanation of the products and/or services you offer, without giving a lot of details including pricing (that can be saved for the “Services” page).  Make sure to include your location, hours of operation, and other important information about your company. 
• Mission Statement – this is the overarching purpose of your business.  This tells your customers why you do what you do.
•  About the Owner – for family owned businesses, or small local businesses that want to add a personal touch to their website, it’s good to include a short bio of the owner or founder, including a picture. 

 The about page is simply to give a more personal touch to your website so your visitors can learn who you are, what you do, and why you do it.  

Products and/or Services:

This is where your site should showcase your products and/or services.  Make sure to include as much information that your customers need to see in order to give you a call, including pictures if possible.  If you don’t mind giving pricing on your website, this is the page to do it. 

The About page tells your visitors what you do.  The Products/Services page expands on that by telling your visitors what you can do for them. 

Portfolio, Resources, or Other Info:

Before making a decision to work with a business, most people like to see what that business is capable of.  The Portfolio page is your online gallery showing off your skills.  You may have pictures of your work, or testimonials, or samples, etc.  

A lot of people today are also realizing the importance of relevant, helpful content in relationship to search engine placement.  Search engines, such as Google, are now looking for websites that are not only relevant to what people are looking for, they are also looking for websites that are helpful.  For example, if you are a plumber in Fresno, CA and your website shows your plumbing services and prices, and people can easily navigate around it then you may get good placement in search engines whenever someone does a search for "plumbers in fresno california".  However, if you took your website to another level by providing helpful information that people who are looking for plumbers in Fresno California would want, then you would get better search engine rankings.  For example, it could help your search engine rankings by having an article titled "how to prevent leaky pipes" where you are simply giving helpful information to your visitors, and not just trying to sell your services.  Helpful information can include things like: articles, links to information, videos, tutorials, etc.  

Contact Page:

Aside from just displaying your contact info, today, it's standard practice for your contact page to have a contact form.  This is usually a basic contact form where your customer can leave their contact information, such as Name, phone number and Email, along with a message box where they can write to you.  Some clients like to add certain qualifying questions such as “are you a homeowner” or “do you currently have this type of service” to their contact form in order to qualify their visitors.  

Let Butler Web & Design know exactly what pages you would like to have on your site, and we’ll make sure to create something that your customers will love!