Sales Call from Yelp - How NOT to Engender Confidence in a Customer

Someone from Yelp contacted our business yesterday.

My boss handed the call off to me. "Winston handles all our web marketing," he said.

I didn't know that I was the internet marketing director for our small, family-owned business, but since it's the sort of place where job titles are fluid and we all put on whatever hat the day requires, that's fine with me.

Plus, my boss is about as cantankerous and tech-friendly as you'd imagine the proprietor of a 150 year old tobacconist to be, so maybe I am a better fit.

"Don't take any crap and hang up if he irritates you," he said.

So, let me ask you folks, being citizens of the internet and all:

Have you ever used Yelp?

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Personally, if I'm in a new place and looking for a particular business, I turn to Google or DuckDuckGo.

But the sales rep was eager to pull me into his narrative. "We can see that no one from your business has signed into your account for over three years," he told me. "Let me ask you - how much additional business are you able to take on? If we sent you a thousand extra customers a month, could you handle it?"

Now, what kind of idiotic question is that? We're a business. We want as many customers as we can find. If sales go up, we order more product and hire the staff to handle it.

I get what he's doing. He's trying to make me feel like the only reason we don't have more business is because we haven't been paying his company money for advertising. But I was so flabbergasted by the blatant idiocy of the question that I was silent for some long seconds. "Are you still there?" he said.

"Sure," I said. "Go ahead and send us all the customers you like."

"Good, good! I love the optimism! Let me ask you - have you used Yelp before? Are you familiar with us?"

"Only from the South Park episode," I said.

"Ok great, great. So you have heard of us then."

He had me search for cigar shops in Boston. There we were! #2 behind some gay vape and head shop and two paid ads for stores that were 50 miles away. "How would you feel if you were on top of that list?"

"Not too great. I never click on paid ads," I said.

"That's cool, that's cool. We know some people are like that. That's why we only charge when someone clicks through."

He went on to set me up with a new password and show me around our page's back-end. There were bar graphs and reports. "Six thousand people have seen your listing!" he said. "And 150 have clicked on the map link from this page! These are people in your area, searching for your products."

I said, "Wow. 6000 people and we haven't even logged in or done anything to manage it. Let me ask you, though. Did they use Yelp to find us? Or did they search on Google? How do I know where these traffic statistics were pulled from? And on the months where I see a decline, is that because we're less popular, or because Yelp is less popular?"

Now, at this point, something happened that really disturbed me.

It was clear he was calling from a cubicle in a large office. All of a sudden there was the sound of celebration in the background. Cheering and clapping and hooting.

Someone in the office had just made a sale! It was the sort of idiotic backroom affirmation we were supposed to perform at Barnes & Noble when a cashier was able to push paid membership enrollments or credit card sign-ups on our customers. Only they were doing it right in their open-plan office, where potential customers on the phone could hear it.

This tells me several things. First, I showed that selling Yelp advertising is hard. It's so hard that, when someone wrenches payment details from a customer, it's a matter for celebration in the office.

So it doesn't happen that often.

When it's that hard to sell a service, it means that the service isn't really worth much to the customer.

If growing your business at an exponential rate was really a matter of shooting Yelp half a grand in advertising payments each month, these sales would be routine. Everyone would sign up. Our own customers, many of which are business owners themselves, would have already mentioned this miraculous service in casual conversation. And we'd all be calling Yelp and begging them to take our money, instead of the other way 'round.

The little office party tells me, yeah, this guy really needs our money. And we're not going to get much in exchange for it.

Anyway, the more he talked, the less appealing the deal looked.

The page for our listing also showed several competing businesses. Again, none were really a threat, because they were too far away, or different enough from what we do that our own customers wouldn't want their stuff. We don't sell glass pipes or bongs or dope paraphenlia or vape crap. If someone comes in asking for that stuff we're fully authorized to tell them to fuck off. It's part of the charm of the place.

Really, my greater concern was that our shop would be associated with those places by appearing on the same page. But it turns out, those competitor's listings would still appear even if we paid for advertising!

The sales rep assured me there was a way around this hurdle as well. "Scroll down the page to 'additional services,'" he said. "For an extra charge we can insure that your listing appears without competitors listings showing up on the same page."

That sounds suspiciously like a protection racket to me. Nice listing you got here. Be a shame if anything happened to it...

I told the guy I had the web form right in front of me, so if we chose to participate, we knew where to go. I told him that yes, if we decided to sign up, I'd reply to his email so that he could give us the extra 600 clicks for free he was authorized to add to our account. And then I told him I really had to go, because I had to catch a train. Which was half true.

Marketing makes liars of us all.