Interesting. How do you approach the phone call? People can get super-pissed if they think you messed with their site in some way.
Indeed, getting the message right is super important - it needs to be clear that what you've done is on your end, rather than on their site. Broadly speaking, we used to say something like "
we've invested in our capability to rank any site for the keyword xyz, and we randomly chose to point that power at your website, so it's ranking. Have we done the right thing - is it of any value to you?". You don't need to say "
or should we rank one of your competitors instead" - that's exactly the type of thing that will piss people off, and in any case, you can be assured that even without you saying it their mind will go there pretty much instantly, particularly if you've got the message framed properly and you've vaguely seeded those thoughts earlier in the conversation.
It's still a super-fine balance, but if you're so damn pleasant and they can't help but to like you, they won't mind - and as long as you don't sound like you're calling to extort them (which you aren't - you're just calling to upgrade them from an unsolicited free trial to a paid service).
but the potential customer could get pretty angry that you have taken it upon yourself to "mess" with their site without contacting them first. Especially if they ended up with a penalty and blamed you?! Do you really use this method?
Very rare is the small business owner who says "
yeah, thanks, but I actually don't want any more clients/customers, so the top ranking isn't of any use to me, so if you could take it down, that'd be great". Sure, it happens, but generally only when they're about to retire and have 'stopped caring', or perhaps if you catch them in the middle of selling the business, or similar. That said, though, there are a few industries in which the service providers/suppliers are so damn busy they truly don't care about new clients/customers.
Certainly they could get pissed off as you describe, and probably my above reply to EditProfile goes to that point, and to mitigating the risk of that happening. It's all about how you handle the situation - if they get pissed off and you say "
look I didn't mean to put you on the spot, I'll let you go for now, and I'll call you back in a few days", when you call back I'm sure the reality will have set in that they need you more than they might think.
There is no 'script book' - you need to be a genuine hustler for this model to work
