How Google Pitch

A pal of mine runs an accountancy practice in England’s Second City.  I was explaining that I was doing a bit of cold-calling lately, and he told me of a similar approach he recently received.  It was from someone at Google.  He couldn’t recollect receving any communication signalling such an imminent call beforehand.  Google’s telesales rep pitched as follows:

“For just £200 I can make your name come top whenever someone types in ‘accountant birmingham’.”

There’s so much here to make you tear your hair out, it’s difficult to know where to begin.  It just doesn’t consider anything that the prospect might have as an ‘issue’.  Solution selling pitches are really only truly effective when they evoke a genuine need (latent or blatant).  So how on earth would being top of a search engine result page do that?  It’s a kind of old-school, feature-lead-with-half-an-advantage statement.

A superior alternative is exposed by the objection that killed the call, “our work comes from referrals and we’ve more work on our books than we can really handle, thank you.”

Arh, accountants, bless.  What’s the key reason why people advertise?  To gain fresh revenues for starters.  So surely identifying people that are keen to do this would be a better jumping in point.

Perhaps Google reps don’t have to work too hard for their money, but with a quick tweak, this one could do much better.