"Hi. My Name Is (Insert Name Here). Did You Know That Your Site Is Not Optimized?"

By: Chris Behan - President, Socius Marketing, Inc.
Posted: 05-09-08

Pretty good sales pitch, huh? In my years as an optimizer, I have actually had other SEO companies call me and tell me the same thing about sites I managed for years that were generating millions of unique visitors. Just the other day, a company called one of our clients and told them roughly the same thing. Unfortunately, this poor, ill-equipped salesperson did not bother to review my client’s site before calling. Our client, who we had just launched a new site for, quickly began to point out all of their first-page listings in Google. The call quickly ended.

I cannot say I totally blame other SEOs for arming their sales force with such little information. It takes time to properly train your sales force and account managers, and I guess other SEOs feel that if they call enough people, someone will eventually bite, regardless of whether the salesperson knows what they're talking about.

Socius Marketing, however, does not subscribe to this practice. Our sales force and account managers are not just trained to explain our services and the benefits of them, but also to take part in ongoing optimization meetings. In fact, sometimes our salespeople know considerably more than a lot of "SEO experts" I have met. And the education we offer our employees extends to our clients. We believe that having a customer who understands our process and the industry can benefit both parties. Many times, I receive forwarded emails from our clients from other SEO companies, and they themselves can pick out the inaccuracies in the email.

In closing, before getting in a deep discussion with any SEO that is cold-calling you over the phone, just ask them to read the first sentence on your website. More than likely, they are not on your site, and they probably never were.