BlogHow not to sell
The other day I got a call from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company.
SEO companies are all the rage at the moment. In a nutshell, they help you to get to the top of the search engine listings. Not the paid stuff, the natural listings.
I get at least one call per day from a new company claiming to be the best.
On this occasion I answered the call from a nice sounding telesales woman who said that I could partake in a free trial that would lift me to the top of the rankings for Google, Yahoo and others.
I said that it sounded tempting.
(I already have an SEO guy who I consider to be doing a good job for us. But I had a couple of minutes to listen, and it’s my job to teach sales so I wanted to hear how it was going to be pitched. It sounded too good to be true).
She asked me to hold, and then I was passed on to a salesman.
Right away I knew that this guy had graduated from the world of second hand cars and selling vegetables at Borough Market.
He was insulting. He was rude. He was presumptious.
He started off by asking me how much I spent on Adwords on Google. I told him.
“What!?” he spluttered. “I spend more than that on my weekly lunches. I don’t mean to be rude, but you can’t be serious about marketing if you’re only spending that. I spent more than that on coffees and bagels every morning!”
(Hackles on my back slowly begin to rise).
Two points:
1. He didn’t ask me about my other marketing budget, or overall marketing strategy. He honed in on just the bit that interested him. So he failed to engage with me, show an interest in my business or develop any rapport from the start.
2. He insulted me, but prefaced it with “I don’t mean to be rude”, as though that makes everything alright. He used this phrase about another 4 times in the conversation, all before saying equally insulting things.
I stayed with him, for research sake.
He asked me what search terms people use to find our company. I told him. He then told me that within a week or two he could have me up to the top in Google.
Now I know that’s not true.
Even the most radical of web evangelists say that it takes a decent amount of time (3 months +) for the search engines to recognise your site. It’s a longer process that no amount of “link monkeys” can speed up.
So, now he’s insulting and he’s lost credibility.
I still stayed with him though, wondering what else he had up his sleeve.
He asked me to send through 10 of my most popular search terms, and I emailed them to him virtually straight away. He said that he would put them into a document, consider a strategy and send me back a proposal.
That same day I got two more calls off him, no document as promised. I had agreed to receive a proposal outlining what they would do to help me. His calls were somehow trying to close me for a sale, without even sending me the proposal.
So, what are the lessons to be taken from it? Simple really:
1. Ask your prospect a few questions before launching into your spiel. What is their marketing strategy? How important is the internet to drive leads? What are they currently doing to achieve this? Without this information, a salesman is really searching in the dark.
2. The market may be more knowledgable than you think, so you should assume that rather than “dumbing down” your call. Revert to number 1 to find out exactly what your prospect knows first.
3. If you promise something that the customer has agreed to, then those are the terms the customer wants to do business. I had agreed to a written proposal. Why was I then getting more phone calls? Made no sense to me. It showed signs of a frustrated and desperate salesman, and customers can smell desperation a mile away.
Post-script: During the last call I said that I didn’t really have time to keep discussing this over the phone as I was heading out to a meeting (I was). He then said “don’t worry about it then” and hung up on me.
