I know for some of you in this group the question might seem a little dumb considering you probably see or work with your customers on a daily basis or whatever the time frame may be, but if you're like me and you guys work from different states, countries, etc… Then chances are many of the clients you work with will never really come in contact with you outside of zoom or other online meeting platforms. For a while I thought I would never really meet or see the businesses I worked with until recently.
I decided it was time to take a trip out to Colorado with my girlfriend, and during this time I passed by a town called Pueblo. Now I have a roofing client for that I've been doing SEO for out in Colorado for years and he always talks about Pueblo and the work he does over there so the first thing that came to mind was to look up how far the business was from my current location. After a quick Google map search it was only 10 minutes from me and I decided this might be my one shot to stop in and see the company.
I know that may seem a little weird for someone to just show up at your place of work claiming to be your SEO guy of 2+ years but me and the owner have a pretty good relationship with our meetings oftentimes ending in long drawn out discussions about family, latest events, funny jokes, etc… and I was hoping that he would recognize because like I said we have done video calls before so he's seen my face. To make a long story much shorter I finally pulled up to the location and let me tell you it's crazy to see something in person when your whole last few years have just been pictures or references from people who work there. It wasn't a massive building but man did it make an impression on me. Unfortunately, the owner wasn't there when I arrived as he was out working on another location he plans to open but definitely a cool experience I recommend all entrepreneurs try at least once to see how their work has impacted the people or companies they work with outside of just reports and metrics.
Has anyone here ever visited the businesses they work with?
byu/SEOskokie inEntrepreneur
Posted by SEOskokie
2 Comments
I’ve visited some of my clients’ HQs.
The only thing I learned was the internal politics regarding decisionmaking processes.
It seems, the larger the company, the more intense the backstabbing, creditgrabbing, clique politics.
Case in point: In 2008, I visited a media company at the request of its VP – he was the one who had the idea of retaining my outsourcing company for their initiatives. I initially detected HEAT from subordinates and other departments’ VPs since I apparently made their enemy LOOK GOOD. The friend of their enemy is instantly their enemy. I got pelted by passive aggressive questions.
It was a snake pit.
You really have to have an eye for what goes on behind the scenes and human hierarchical psychology.
My client ended up leaving his company when he got big funding and retained my agency for his business. We ended up partially responsible for the sinking and eventual piecemeal sale of his former corporation.
You’ve never door knocked?
What about surveys and market validation?
No presentation in one of their boardrooms?