Being in sales and marketing for well over a decade now I have no shortage of stories of businesses complaining about their cheap customers and lack of high paying clients. I hear it regularly in private groups meant to help these businesses with their sales and marketing.

The problem is it's usually followed by horrific advice.

"If a customer calls asking for a price, tell them to find someone else."

The false assumption is that if a potential customer calls asking for a price, they're a cheap customer who will just be a pain. The truth though is that most high paying clients ask about the price because they don't know what else to ask. They're uninformed shoppers and the only understanding they have of value at this point is price.

The result is a business that is frustrated with cheap customers and too many quotes that don't close. And that's when the complaining starts.

What most of these businesses don't realize is that this problem is easily fixed by updating their website. Yes. That's it.

Sometimes it's a re-design, other times it might just be updating 1 or 2 things to transform your sales process to attract more high paying clients.

Don't take my word for it though, check out this review my buddy Brian from American Steam gave me after we updated his website:

Ok, so now you've realized you've got a website that's not attracting high paying clients? Let's see what might be going wrong...

1. Your images are targeting the wrong audience - I mean, who needs to attract high paying clients anyway, right? Might as well target the mediocre ones and settle for the second best. Who are your ideal high paying clients? What do they look like? How old are they? Are they male or female? What colour is their skin? Any images of people should look like the ones you want to attract. We want them to see themselves doing business with us. If your website doesn't have pictures of people, you're losing sales, period.

2. Your website is not user-friendly - Ah, the classic "Let's make it as hard as possible for customers to use our website" strategy. Genius! If your content is not properly organized or navigated, you're losing sales. Lots of content is great, but it needs to have a proper sales flow to attract more ideal high paying clients.

3. Your website lacks valuable content - Hey, who needs to provide valuable content when you can just fill your website with nonsense and hope for the best? Understanding your ideal high paying client better ensures your content is directed specifically to their needs.

4. Your website design is outdated - Outdated? More like "vintage", am I right? Who needs modern design when you can stick to the classics? Yeah, unlike your classic car in the garage, websites don't get better with age. With the changing technology and ever-improving access to information online, your website needs to look up to date. If your website is over five years old, you should definitely look at your competition and see how they look in comparison.

5. Your website lacks social proof - Social proof? Nah, let's just hope our customers will trust us blindly without any proof of our credibility. The best sales system is one based on referrals. That's why reviews and testimonials are so important. They turn cold traffic into warm leads. Good customers are usually smart shoppers looking for reviews. If you don't have reviews on your website this is an easy change that can be done within the hour.

6. Your website is not optimized for search engines - SEO? That's just a made-up term, isn't it? I mean, who needs to be found on search engines anyway? YOU DO! Customers searching for your services on search engines are already qualified in that they need your services. This is not like PPC ads which are many times an interruption trying to convince someone they need your service. Don't get me wrong, PPC ads have a place and can be effective, but an SEO lead is a ready-to-buy client.

7. Your website lacks a clear call-to-action - A clear call-to-what-now? Who needs a clear direction for customers when you can just leave them wandering aimlessly on your website? Once you establish a clear primary and secondary call to action and put them in the right places, you'll see your leads and sales requests increase almost instantly.

In all seriousness, if your website is not attracting the high paying clients, it's time to take a good look at what might be going wrong and make some changes. Don't settle for mediocrity, aim for the best and give your customers a reason to choose you over the competition by making sure your website is updated with the best practices.