I don't know about you guys...but I absolutely HATE yellowbooks and anyone associated with them. I constantly find either myself or one of my team members arguing with them over the phone about domain ownership issues. Most of the time my clients end up paying a "cancellation fee" to take over ownership of THEIR domain...I simply can't stand yellowbooks...

Well...long story short...

Today I woke up very hung over and irritated. Only to get a call from one of my reps saying he wouldn't be able to take any meetings today because a family emergency had come up and he had to go out of state for a week.

Being that it was such a short notice, I could not have anyone cover his meetings today. So I climbed my ass out of bed and somehow made it to the shower and got ready.

I arrived at an appointment at 9:00AM. My meeting writeup simply said

"Meeting with (name) at (place of business) 9:00am - Currently building website but interested in SEO and SMM"

Normally we do preliminary research before meetings, however I was hung over and felt like "winging it" today.

SO...

I walk into this attourneys office, speak to the secratary and she sends me in a meeting room. When I walk in I see the two attournys sitting there with a gentleman in a suite and tie with his little tablet. I walked in, introduced myself and said "would you like me to wait outside while you finish?" They insisted that I sit down. They introduced me to their suite and tie man and said he's from the yellowbooks and they were just finishing up their meeting regarding a website.

I took a seat, still dizzy with the feeling that I was going to puke at any minute. He had what looked to be a contract sitting in front of him. As they continued talking I immediately knew that they WERE indeed having these idiots build their website. I let them continue to talk for about 10 minutes, contemplating weather or not I should risk this meeting and put him in the hot seat.

After 15 minutes passed I began to get pretty irritated, plus it was extremely hot in this room. So the "asshole" came out in me.

Just as they got to the contract and started talking numbers I abruptly interrupted (I could not just sit and watch them do this...That's how much I HATE yellowbooks). PLUS their setup installment was $1,200!!!! PLUS $275/mo "maintenance".

I said, "I'm really sorry, but are you seriously considering having these guys build you a website?" After a snarl from the salesman and odd looks from the attorneys, they replied "yes, we are...why?"

That was my key to completely destroy this guy. (I had prayed for this opportunity for years)

I won't go into what I said, because I babbled for a good 10 minutes on how much yellowbooks hinders businesses and completely rips them off.

I told them how over 50% of MY clients have done, or still do some type of business with yellowbooks and HATE them. I also offered to phone up my assistant and have her draft up a quick reference list to email me so they could actually CALL these business owners on the spot. If they had the time of course...they rejected to that.

At this point the salesman was PISSED. He fired back at me with "What exactly makes you an expert in this field? What can you offer that I can't?"

I told him that I could offer them solution that will actually get prospects to view their website, pick up the phone, and call them to do business.

I pulled out my laptop and googled "city" "featured on yp.com" I then explained how they don't build a website. They take your information and throw it into a crappy template that spits out a horrible looking "website". I handed the laptop to one of the attorneys and told them to start clicking on the different websites listed on google. As he did this, he said "they all look the same"

I said THAT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL THE SAME.

The salesman tried to rebut with shitty excuses for another 10 minutes as I put him over my lap and spanked him.

We covered how they don't design worth a shit
Their websites don't convert
Their websites pretty much ruin any opportunity to rank well on search engines
How they hold their clients domain names hostage
How their SEO packages are nothing but a bunch of crap that could easily be outsorced to fiverr.com (I even explained what Fiverr was lol)

I ended my rant by saying, "I'm sorry, but if you choose to sign a contract with these guys, I don't want to work with you. I feel that I would be a part of your upcoming nightmare on the internet. I just don't feel that it would be worth your investment TO ME if you have such a horrible baseline like a yellowpages website"

The attorneys looked at me, looked at the goof sitting across from me, and said "How about we keep your proposal and think things over.."

He packed his shit, shook their hands, looked at me like he wanted to murder my family, and left.

I ended up continuing my meeting, apologizing for "lashing out" and closed a deal 3X bigger than what he proposed

I know this was putting the sale at jepordy, and COULD have made me look unprofessional to certain people. But I didn't care...I have always ran my company with the mindset that I would much rather be aggressive, assertive, and maybe even a slight dick, and make my clients money rather than be a softie and fall into the category of "just another SEO guy".

In this case, I was thanked for my attitude. The one attorney made a point to say "I hired you because I can see you want what is best for your clients, most people would have never stood up for someone who is NOT paying them."

Anyway...I wanted to share this story, because it will probably never happen again. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to sit face to face with my arch enemy

"This story was crafted by trained professionals, Please do not attempt to recreate or reenact these stunts at home"