Which top 5 questions to ask for a first meeting?

[JonathanLeplang]

Hi Mozzers,

I have a question: which top 5 questions to ask for a first meeting with a "future" customer to avoid bad surprises?

Thank you for your help.

Regards,
Jonathan

[Ria_]

Miriam Ellis recently wrote a blog post about this on Moz, which I would definitely recommend checking out:

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-client-discovery-questionnaire

Within it, she provides quite an awesome template or "Client Discovery Questionnaire" of questions that she recommends sending to new clients to get a better understanding of the client's history including other consultants that they have worked or are working with. This is available to download as a Google Doc too! It's a great resource.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Ria gave a great URL to read there, but unless I missed them, it's missing a few points, like:

• Do you feel you have been hit by any penalties? Show stats and dates of concern.
• Do you have a monthly budget you are trying to work to?

There are a lot more that I would ask, but these are ones I couldn't miss.

-Andy

[StephanPire]

By definition, your prospect won't know about SEO, Google penalties, backlinks, nofollow, canonical, etc.

The five questions should be:

1. How much revenue do you get from online visits/sales?

2. What increase in revenues would you expect from improving your website's visibility?

3. Are you OK with long term visibility investments or do you want quick results?

4. Do you have partners or customers who would be happy to speak about you?

5. What's the percentage of revenue you want to allocate to Online Marketing?

Between those 5 questions, you shut up and listen while taking notes carefully then you'll come back for the 2nd meeting with a tailor-made offer.

[JonathanLeplang]

Thank you for your help and your precious tips. Everything was very helpful with other points of view.

Kind regards,

Jonathan