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He said they had 7 major SE on board, and were in talks with Google.
Hows do they do this? and do all the major SE companies do this? Im confused, whether to go with them
Andy
Merf. No offence, but I suspect that depends what results they expect;)
I used to work for an Overture reseller. Very similar to this one - package keywords for a round price each year and don't mention Overture. And you know what? We got a lot of happy customers.
The thing you have to remember is that we are web marketers. When we think of "lots of hits" we dream of hundreds a day. Those are our expectations.
BUT, in the company I worked for at least, we weren't targeting people LOOKING for that. We were targeting small to medium offline businesses, that wanted a little online business on the side. Had they been SEO'd properly? They wouldn't have been able to cope with that amount of business. They didn't WANT that big an online presence.
We were careful who we looked for as well. We didn't go for bookshops or anything like that - they wouldn't make enough profit on each sale for it to be worth it for them. But wholesalers of various types of equipment? Sellers of items which constituted a $200 profit with each sale like piano's? With those, it took only a couple of sales and they'd made more than they spent on us.
And no, we didn't mention Overture either. People mostly based offline don't WANT to hear about the complicated partnerships. Their eyes glaze over, they put the phone down. They want to hear names like Yahoo, and Lycos so they know what you're talking about. Long explanations truly aren't NECCESARY or even wanted in most cases.
Value is in the eye of the beholder. To someone with SEO abilities themselves? Yeah, this company'd be no use to them. But to an offline business who can't TAKE too many customers, who'll make a healthy amount of profit off it? They'll make more money than they spent. They'll be happy. Not every company NEEDS an SEO.
Andrew_Thomas is the only one of us who had the actual conversation, so anyone else's judgements are secondhand, but if we take his account to be accurate:
>> He [the salesman] said they had 7 major SE on board, and were in talks with Google.
>> He said the most popular engine was Atlavista, (which he showed the demo on)
>> making out they had some bespoke software that put them high (or anywhere they want) in the SE
These kinds of statements range somewhere between deceit and obfuscation.
And no, we didn't mention Overture either. People mostly based offline don't WANT to hear about the complicated partnerships. Their eyes glaze over, they put the phone down. They want to hear names like Yahoo, and Lycos so they know what you're talking about. Long explanations truly aren't NECCESARY or even wanted in most cases.
Fair enough. But the case here is that of a potential customer who did want details, asked questions, and was given inaccurate answers -- not one who said "I don't care how you do it, just bring in some hits."
The "They're up to no good" posts started from the first post (which was actually happy with the call) which gave very few conversation details so from what I saw, hence my reply.
And my second point would be that the salesman himself admitted he was very new. When you're that new you sometimes avoid the complicated stuff like the plague because YOU don't understand it, and you're nervous of slipping up in your explanation. Ever tried explaining something you don't understand properly yourself? "Well, er, um.. we're partners with these people who are partners with these other people..I think.."
Just because you can type numbers in the little box and move it up and down doesn't always mean you understand WHY that works;) My policy would be to ask for the supervisor who SHOULD be guarenteed to have a handle on what's actually happening. If THEY screw up? Then you run away. But a sales-newbie? Nah, be patient with those;) Takes time to work out what's going on
I let him waffle on for a while, he thought he had a sale, and then he said what do you think of our services. I said i dont really need your services as I may aswell use overture myself, instead of you doing it for me. As soon as i mentioned this he hung up (didnt even say goodbye after our long and fruitfull conversation) After all i did have a bit of time to waste.
And i thought id waste a bit of his time :) instead of trying to conn somebody else.
:) :)
Class
If he ever calls back, tell him you want to see him do that stunt on Google. ;)
