Small Business Blog

It’s not an uncommon situation for B2B service providers: you spend hours consulting with your prospective customer, get that prospect to put his inked pen to the contract, and then it all goes south. Seemingly, at the very moment your prospect will retain your services, his phone rings. On the other end of the line is a slick salesperson who promises the world and plants the seed of doubt. Next thing you know, your prospect is on the fence between the rosy world of dreams and the real world, where your business operates.

The world of Web marketing seems, at times, like auto repair or psychotherapy: the customer is at the mercy of the service provider. When the service provider says you need a new timing belt or six months of biweekly sessions, you may not have the know-how to doubt the diagnosis or the recommendation. In Web marketing, sales people routinely diagnosis your problem as poor search visibility and recommend expensive and unnecessary solutions to get you “to the top of Google.”

For that reason, I’ve had the nagging feeling that being honest and straightforward with people can be a liability. The slow and steady marketing campaign that builds the value of your online assets over time isn’t nearly as sexy as being Number 1 in Google tomorrow. And so I find myself explaining the fine print of Google dreams and trying to dispel the myth that it takes magic to buy sponsored search listings. All the while I’m wondering why my prospect suddenly wants something quite different from what he initially asked me to do. How can someone’s objectives change so significantly in such a short period of time? And how do I address the sky-high promises made by an unscrupulous salesperson, without sounding like a rejected girlfriend?

Despite that nagging feeling, I still stick to the honest, consultative approach. We may not close all the deals this way, but we tend to keep the ones we do close. It’s a very bad thing, in my mind, to retain a customer who has unrealistic expectations; this inevitably ends in disappointment for everyone involved.

How is your business impacted by the aggressive sales actions of your competitors?