“And you know, he’s the devil…
He’s everything that I ain’t…
Hiding intentions of evil,
Under the smile of a saint”.… Kris Kristofferson
I was going through my email inbox looking for ideas to write about when I came across some stuff I sent out recently. Somebody asked me to review a blog post and after reading it, I responded:
“This post really doesn’t work for me. Some of the grammatical constructs throughout the post are awkwardly done and I don’t feel that you’ve made any tangible connection between…”
Fortunately, I still have a good relationship with this person :.)
Here’s another one where I was evaluating someone’s website:
…I’m reasonably sure the poor format going on here (a code issue) is screwing up your site indexing in Google. The design of your site is a huge mess and before you even think about search marketing, you really need a total SEO Friendly web design in place (and you need professional copywriting as well).
I then went off on offered my opinion about a few other things not related to SEO. I’ve yet to hear back from him…really nice guy, hope I didn’t hurt his feelings :.)
Quite a bit of communication passes through my email inbox…some of it is the typical volume of professional / social correspondence for somebody who is somewhat visible in the search marketing industry and some of it involves people contacting me for reasons that might include my professional services.
I get a lot of REALLY BAD LEADS…mostly from really good people. These folks recognize they need search marketing services, which is positive but frequently have the toxic combination of limited budgets and unrealistic expectations.
Furthermore, I can tell that many are unsophisticated enough that they are unable to distinguish a consultant that offers ethical and effective SEO from one that will rip them off. So, I explain to them in great detail the deficiencies in their website that prevent them from achieving their goals and why fixing the problem will be a long, expensive project (one that doesn’t remotely interest me since I choose not to do “Lazarus SEO”).
What I’ve also learned is that I come across as really tough and somewhat harsh to people that haven’t met me before. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. In fact, I use that perception strategically because my best and highest responsibility to a person that won’t use my professional services is to give them a straight assessment of what they have. I’m reasonably certain that they will talk to other consultants that will try to tell them that their Cubic Zirconia can actually be turned into a Shiny Diamond with a little work. Hopefully they’ll remember my harsh words and have some objections that the vendor will need to overcome.
I think most prospects expect a sales pitch when they chat with a search marketing consultant and they get a bit crossed up when they get slapped upside the head a bit. A memo to those folks: That’s a strong signal you’re dealing with a quality consultant. Furthermore, to get that really talented person to work for you, you’ll likely need to really sell them as to why they should work on your project since most good people are too busy to work on stuff with limited potential that don’t interest them.
