Anyone that has clients has run into this issue. It is where a client is easily swayed by fast talking salespeople and takes the advice of the last person he/she speaks to. In the internet age this usually takes the form of an SEO, or Marketing company trying to steal away clients by giving them false hopes.

I recently had a client of many years leave to have his site hosted and maintained by a marketing firm (why a marketing firm would be hosting websites is a topic for another blog…). Now we hosted his website and gave his company excellent support completing all support requests within the same day for years. He never waited even 24 hours for us to answer and complete requests. You can’t give better support than this. This is why RooSites is the top website management company in the US, Bar NONE.

But this client has the condition (and the title of this blog) that he listens to the last person he speaks to, no matter how poor the advice given. He is open to suggestion, and fast talkers sway him quite easily. So he is ripe to be taken advantage by unscrupulous vendors he meets at various networking events and spammers shooting arrows in the sky looking for the one sucker.

As an example, previously he had an SEO salesman sell him a bill of goods. The advice was so elementary and wouldn’t improve much. You know they type, they run a free report and tell you how they can fix it and make you #1 for everything under the sun. (charging you an arm and a leg and delivering NOTHING substantial) We had done a lot of good for this company, so I wouldn’t fight over some minor tweaks and it was easier just to make the changes (at least in this case they weren’t black hat tricks that would hurt his rankings).

Personally, I figure it is better to do right by people, as in the long run you has much better, longer term relationships with your clientele. We have a 98% retention rate, which says we are correct in this assumption.

Several months ago this client told me about this marketing firm who’s going to do some work for his company. Looking up their work, I didn’t see anything too impressive, and although he lives in a major market this company was not one of the better firms and had a lackluster portfolio at best. But, I figured that if he liked their work, perhaps they could help him as he was not very skilled at writing blogs and coming up with ideas for content.

But then he said that this company also needed to host his website in order to do marketing work. Now that this was an immediate red flag. (Danger Will Robinson!!) I explained to him that moving the hosting would be a mistake as if he wanted to leave them, they will hold his site hostage and charge him to transfer it to another company. I explained that there was nothing they needed to do from a content standpoint that they couldn’t do just by logging on my server. So there was no good reason to leave and since we charged him very little, there wasn’t a financial rationale.

But, as I said, he listens to the last person he speaks to, so he typically makes bad decisions rather than trusting those companies who were fair to him for many years.

Alas, there is a cure for this condition if you suffer from this affliction.

Next time some fast talking salesman approaches you and proposes a change to your website management:

1. Think about what they are asking and how it can impact your company if the relationship fails. What happens to my site?
2. Take a step back and ask yourself, is my current company doing a good job, and more importantly have they been trustworthy?
3. Look for a red flag as was sooo obvious in the above case, if you see one, walk away. NO RUN.

Taking these 3 simple steps will save you agita down the road and money!! Having a company you can trust with no hidden agenda is worth its weight in gold in today’s world.