So what does selecting an SEO company have to do with Vinny Chase? I’ll tell you, but first watch this video then read the inspiration below:

If you were Vinny, how would that experience have helped or not helped you choose an agent?

Here’s how this came to me…

This week we turned down the opportunity to work with a great organization because they required us to come in with a presentation for their selection committee. We don’t have canned presentations for “pitches.” Instead we like to sit down with a potential client figure out who they are, what makes them unique, what their needs are and THEN see if we are a good fit to help. After explaining this, it was still required for “participating firms” to have a thirty minute presentation or the deal was off (yes it had to be 30 minutes). So for now we walked away (remember walking away from deals is one of my ways to grow a stress free agency.)

When I am given the opportunity to speak with people about SEO/SEM, I tell all of them that the decision of selecting a search company is one that will be made with the GUT. Why? Because every SEO/SEM company is going to sound the same, talk the same game, and use the same shtick.

Every company will have slides on:
• The team’s experience
• How they alter on-site factors
• Their linking strategy
• Results for past clients
• Bid management
• Blah, blah, blah

While some may have one or two unique features, most people purchasing search marketing services (especially SEO) still don’t have enough knowledge of the space to know if those differentiating factors mean anything to their bottom line.

At the end of the lineup, most search companies will sound the same, leaving you to scratch your head and say, “What now. They all sound the same, so how do I pick?”

For those of you seeking great search companies, you will need to be Vinny Chase. Look for the company that shows some passion, something different, and is at least somewhat discriminating about the opportunities they take on.

If you want a second or third place search firm, ask them to come in and do a presentation or answer an RFP. The ones that jump at the opportunity without qualifying you are hungry for business.

In the search space where rip off artists are everywhere, the GOOD search companies that you WANT to work with will at least want to speak with you before running off to blindly answer an RFP/presentation. The ones that come on in with presentation in hand without first asking you about your goals and how you plan on achieving them, etc, etc might be dangerous, so do your due diligence on them.

All in all, If you want to make Medellin you need Billy Walsh (), not some suit!

Finally, let’s not forget the lesson learned at the end of this episode: After seeing so many canned, unoriginal presentations, Vinny decided to stay with Ari. When he arrived at Ari’s office to tell him, Ari proceeded to deliver the exact same type of canned presentation as all of his competition, prompting Vinny to can him!

The client may think they want a full presentation at the beginning of their search for a great SEO company, like Vinny thought when he began his search for a new agent, but they’re better off getting a company that doesn’t try to fit themselves into a mold and actually takes a chance doing something unique.

Inspiration for this post:
Rachael Levenson – she brought up this episode while in the car coming back from a results & ROI review up with a current client. Rachael, we gotta take more road trips!

Entourage – please come back soon. Without The Wire, Sopranos, and Sex & the City, the lineup is looking weak.

Since I don’t really “DO” web analytics and instead advise from a distance, maybe I am uninformed, but after reading this blog post it got me thinking about this quote in particular from a person at Omniture on the recent purchase of Indextools:

We were recently nominated for 2 awards that both required me to look back at our growth for the first time with a fine tooth comb. Typically, I judge success by this rule:

1. Am I having fun
2. Are the people I work with challenged and having fun too
3. Can I keep the lights on

When I looked at our growth it was shocking, it got me reflecting – how did this happen?!

Here are my thoughts to how to create & maintain growth (if that is what you want) with minimal stress, I hope you enjoy.

Love what you do, have some stinking passion!

Everyone says this, but you’ll get KILLED by people who just out “heart” you. Since I LOVE search, I have a better chance at getting great results than the guy who is in search because it is a great way to make a ton of money. You know why? Certain things will bother me, I will obsess over things that just don’t add up. The guy who sees it as just business goes to sleep easy when the margins look right, I go to sleep easy when the ROI for our projects is kicking!

Don’t hire douchebags who have no passion & put tenacity over tenure!

Sure every company has “role players” minimize those chumps, they don’t add value to clients, they are easily replaceable. Instead automate as many processes as possible so that every person you hire is working on strategies and not tactics. Don’t confuse passion with staying in the office late or coming in on Saturdays either!
People interview well, so be OK with firing quickly, don’t drag down your superstars with average players. I’m not proud of it, but we’ve let a few people go who were not a good match in less than 3 weeks. I hope they have found what their passion truly is.
Realize you can’t teach these things and hire people who have them (sometimes) regardless of experience:

* Work ethic
* Pride in your work
* Passion
* Analytical mindset

Realize your team is talented and could go anywhere else

Don’t kid yourself. By not hiring douchebags you’ll realize that talented people can move on easily. Create a culture that throws this reality on the table and fights hard to keep your team with YOU! That means give real freaking raises! People know when they contribute to the growth, and if the company is doing well they have a hand in it. I think this also helps you retain people with you hit a downturn, cause your team will know that you stick by them and share in the wealth when times are great. Getting rid of or minimizing tactical tasks also gives people strategic challenges to work on daily.
No one is on your team to make YOU rich. What are their goals, aspirations, etc. Knowing that humanizes the company and serves as a constant reminder that people aren’t widgets – they have goals too.
If you have people on your team who consistently work 65+ hours a week, change that or give them equity / profit sharing – let them know that you WILL not build a business predicated upon them burning themselves out – either take less clients and charge higher rates or improve processes – don’t burn them out.

Be high touch if you charge high rates
Many companies charge high prices for their services (to me if your blended hourly rates are 175+ you are charging a good rate). If you do, you better be high touch and have great results darn it! It never ceases to amaze me at the opportunities we get to work on simply because our clients know we really care and that is in stark contrast to many other companies in the agency space – be high touch, call your clients regularly.

Be Analytical
Find ways to minimize clients needing to ask this question -
“What is your work doing for my bottom line”
Ask every client how they will judge the success of the campaign, if they don’t know, DON’T WORK WITH THEM!!!! At some time this question will be asked, if not by them, but by their boss. And if you have no definition (that you all agreed to at the onset of the campaign) for what success is it will come back to bite you!

Be Transparent / Honest

* If someone has unrealistic expectations, tell them. If they don’t change em, don’t work with em.
* If you can only “hope” something is going to work, SAY IT!!!
* If you aren’t happy about how things are going, vocalize that!
* If your numbers suck (assuming you are analytical), spend all your time developing a plan to IMPROVE THEM, not a plan SPIN THEM, say they suck and move on.

I don’t think any client expects you to bat 1.000. Honesty, even about your flaws, agency problems, etc, builds TRUST. And building TRUST is something that is hard to break.

Turn business away, regularly
If you take on every piece of business that comes your way, you’ll have to hire douchebags at some point to just stay on top of it all. Take on new business as you can find superstars to work on the accounts. If you don’t you’ll ultimately have a “B team” and unless you change your prices based on the team assembled, NO client wants to be working with the B squad.
Do what is right before what is profitable
If you make every decision in your company on what’s going to earn you the most money, you’ll lose. If your “clients” truly feel like you are their advocate who puts their interests before your own (to a point) you’ll win. That is simple.

Don’t work for Jerks
Good “clients” realize that if you truly put their interests above yours there will be times when you’ve put in so many hours that then you’ll have to bill, but you could ask any client we’ve ever had…not a ONE of them has ever had an invoice for 30 minutes or 1 hour. As a result, the right clients don’t abuse this and we can keep doing what is right!

Not to mention working for Jerks adds stress - jerks usually abuse you, get you to do more more than they paid for, are abrasive, change the rules of what success is, don’t pay, etc to me this all equals stress. Get your jerk radar on get good at asking the right questions so you can identify these folks and not fall into the trap of working for them (regardless of how much money they are willing to spend with you)
Fire clients who treat your people poorly, we’re all adults! Show your people that you won’t sell them out for the almighty dollar and they’ll stay – if you sell them out for the almighty dollar then they have every right to do the same to you!

Volunteer
Helping others is a great way to keep you grounded on even the most challenging days! When you work with (NOT JUST DONATE MONEY) and spend your time helping others who have a much more complicated life than you, it helps you realize that no one is going to go hungry, homeless, or die if your agency doesn’t do X or Y. Have FUN!
Great people + Build trust w/ Clients + High Touch + Great results = Minimal Marketing / Sales Team and Minimal Stress

Following these steps above has allowed us to experience growth, and have a lot of fun with a great group of good people without:

* Paid search ads
* Booths at tradeshows
* Sales people
* Marketing people
* PR people
* Media Kits
* Mailings
* Whitepapers

And a whole slew of other tactics we are taught to do in order to grow our companies. I did some of these in my first 6 months, sure, but soon realized that by following the above we were going to be much more successful.
Some of this could change someday, but our foundation is not built on PR, Marketing or hype, instead it is built on great relationships and great results.

We have fired 2 clients (one of which was our largest at the time) and have lost NONE, yeah not a ONE in 5 years – because we care. And our clients and friends are in turn are our sales team they introduce us to others who are seeking good partners, thats how we have grown.
Note: The one marketing “thing” we have done is improve our search rankings.

This blog post inspired by:
Cure for startup stress
80/20 rule
Guts Companies that blow the doors of doing business as usual
Planning for our client thank you party

Another one - 10 rules for startup success
Our Clients
Our Team
Liz, Wil Sr, Tameka, Nora

Thanks!

Warning, unedited post forthcoming:

You know after seeing SEO just get crapped on by Amex, and reading this SEOMOZ post, This SEOMOZ list, the recent work by SEM compare & hearing the number of people mention how often they get phone calls from crappy SEO companies almost weekly, combined with the spam that even I get.  I am going to do whatever I can to pitch in and help.

It is pretty obvious that I’ve always tried to do what I could to clean up the space in my own little way, whether it is the conversation I had last week with a prospect who didn’t fit SEER’s model, but I told - Hey, call me before you pick someone I’ll make sure you don’t get hosed to posts & I try to write about the issues that plague our industry when time allows.

But today I am asking for help, this idea is totally off the cuff, from the gut but help me round it out.

I was thinking, can we as SEO/SEM professionals do unbiased audits on companies?  NOT because we want the business ourselves, but because we want to clean up the industry?  I was thinking could we have a group of SEO professionals who fit the following criteria:

• Has 4+ years experience
• Is in-house or works for a company that does little to NO advertising
• If you are asking why to little/no advertising,  I think SEO companies who advertise HEAVILY are needy for new clients, if so I think that adds to the likelihood that they’ll “pitch” people they should be doing unbiased audits for
• Can devote 2 hours per month to review proposals submitted for review (proposals would have to be over 25k for now)
• Has an existing track record of trying to provide unbiased information and help the industry along

So far that is all I got, but remember I am writing this from the gut.

I can tear apart a proposal from an SEO company in 30 minutes, which means if I devote 2 hours a month I can hopefully help up to 4 people  do one of two things:

• Feel more confident about whom they selected
• Realize some more questions they should ask before moving forward (or leaving the company altogether)

So the problems I see:

• People pitching instead of helping
• Confidential proposals shared with outsiders would be problematic (see below)
• Companies wanting to sue instead of fixing the problems that cause them to not cut it (Looks like iCrossing filed a suit against marketingsherpa)
• Involvement / time commitment - many of the people I would hope would come along to help are BUSY, but either way I’ll go this alone if I have to and find a way to tip toe around the landmines.

In theory if we could get 50 SEO’s each able to do 4 reviews a month that is 200 companies reviewed, and maybe privately we can rate the companies so that going forward we’d not have to waste our time.  I know this is hairy, but I just am sick of the complaints about SEO, but they are warranted, SEO companies are shady and I for one want to be a part of the solution instead of the problem.

Any idea on how to keep myself out of the courtroom before I start taking requests?

Thanks!

–Wil