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Here Comes the Modern Version of the Used Car Salesman

August 14th, 2023 by Kenneth Abrahams

For years, they were the butt of many jokes. Often portrayed in an unflattering light in movies and television shows. Frequently, they were shown dressed in hideous, ill-fitting clothes with a hairstyle that looked like they were cornering the greasy hair market. In the sales world, used car salesmen were viewed as the lowest of the low. Their sales pitch and banter is, or was, reminiscent of a string of bad pickup lines. “What’s it going to take to get you into this car?” “I really shouldn’t let it go to you for this price, but I really like you.” Even the tried and true “it really was only driven by a little old lady to church on Sunday’s”. Used car lots are still around, and they may be staffed by some of those human caricatures, but those individuals have been replaced by SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts. They are, in my opinion, the modern day used car salespeople.

Perhaps, you don’t have your own website or are not in charge of your organizations site, but these people, and I use that term loosely, are relentless. Each and every day my email box is populated with messages telling me we have a great design, but we are lacking in key words or phrases that will put us on page one of the great and mighty Google. They have prepared a full website audit report that details all the issues and problems with www.funent.com and want to know if they can send it to me. I hit delete or send a simple response letting them know we are not interested. Usually, these emails are simply signed SEO Team with no identification of the company. They often contain misspellings or poor grammar, so there is a question of their legitimacy or even country of origin. Regardless of whether I respond or not, there will be countless follow-up emails letting me know that they didn’t get a response from me.

Finally, after many emails from one of these SEO Team folks, I said yes, just to see what would happen. I barely hit reply when in my inbox appeared my detailed, personalized report on all that was wrong with our website and, of course, a request for a meeting. I replied that I wasn’t interested in a meeting, we just wanted to be removed from their mailing list. They complied and the barrage of emails from that specific email address stopped. Feeling like I was onto something, I replied yes to several other solicitations, followed the same formula and shockingly enough received the same results. Emails from Shane Watson were particularly persistent so why not try the same routine. It had worked before perhaps Shane too would disappear, never to be heard from again. This time I was not so lucky.

“Shane” responded but now his name was Adil, and he was very persistent. What I first noticed was that Adil worked for a company that I had encountered several years ago and immediately disliked them and the way they conducted business. Early in the email exchange, I referenced my previous interaction with the organization and told my new friend that I had no desire to meet with him and please just remove us from their solicitation list. His response was immediate and forceful. He had spent time on that report, and I owed it to him to meet. After a serve and volley of emails back and forth, I relented and told him that I would give him exactly 2 minutes. He assured me that was plenty.  We agreed on a time, and he sent me a meeting request, which, regrettably, I accepted. In the request it asked if I had any specific topic areas to discuss and I answered that I was concerned engaging with a high-tech company that used solicitation methods that didn’t recognize a negative response. There was also concern that we had previous interactions with his organization that were unpleasant.

On the day of our meeting, I clicked on the link and waited for the meeting to start. It never did. Then my phone rang, and it was Adil asking where I was. Waiting in the meeting room I replied, and he informed me that there must be a problem with the link and sent me a new one. Feeling generous, I set my timer for 2 and a half minutes and hit start once we connected. Immediately, he launched into a jargon laden, tech filled diatribe of all that is wrong with our site. As soon as the timer went off, I politely stopped him and let him know his time was up. “That’s it?” he replied. Yes, you had your 2 minutes and never addressed the issues that I raised in the email. He asked what those issues were, and I reiterated exactly what I had previously written.

Being a man, I have never been “mansplained” to, until now. Perhaps, I am using the term incorrectly but that is what it felt like. He explained that we were both in business to make money and the tactics they used were perfectly reasonable. They didn’t need to identify the name of the company, if it got results and I should expect the emails from them to keep coming. Again, he tried to explain to me why we needed his help to increase our web traffic. Despite patience wearing thin, I tried to use logic to explain that we were having trouble staffing the jobs that we were currently getting and didn’t need more work. Without missing a beat, Adil forged on essentially telling me I didn’t understand business, and everybody needed more work. Clearly, this was going nowhere, and I took the only road available to me I left the meeting. Thankfully, Shane Watson hasn’t sent me any more emails although Sue, Carol, and many other SEO Teams have.

A word of advice to those selling SEO services, make sure that you are solving a problem your client, or potential customer, has. Currently, our greatest need is for additional full time and part time staff. More web traffic and inquiries about additional business is always welcome but more staff is a much bigger problem. For years, a phrase that others use has been part of my repertoire, we were given 2 ears and one mouth, and they should be used in proportion. As salespeople it is our job to be a benefit to our clients, to help them, to work off their problems and to help them find solutions not push our own agenda. Perhaps some of these so-called experts will figure that out someday. Until then, I will just keep hitting delete.

About the Author

Ken Abrahams is the CBW, Chief Blog Writer at FUN Enterprises, Inc. Thoughts expressed in this blog are his and his alone and reflect his very slanted opinion. If they make you smile, laugh, think, cry, or throw things at the wall, he has done his job. Feel free to contact him at [email protected].

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