Vent: Took me 4 months to figure out why our client retention tanked

I run a small 5 person SEO agency in Cleveland and last spring we lost 3 clients in 2 weeks. I thought it was our rankings or pricing but nope. After digging through old call recordings I realized our project manager was promising 30 day results every time a client asked about timelines. We switched to a 60 to 90 day standard window and retention jumped back up. Anyone else had a hidden internal process kill their momentum?

2 comments

2 Comments

riley59515d ago

Oh man, I actually think that 2 weeks to page one claim is even worse than what my PM said, since at least we said 30 days. The bigger agency example tracks though, sales teams get so focused on closing deals they forget the actual work takes time. Did you guys end up putting any written boundaries in place for your sales people after that?

morgan.cameron15d ago

Just saw a LinkedIn post from a bigger agency that had the exact same problem. Their sales team was overpromising on page one rankings in 2 weeks and the delivery side couldn't keep up. Clients bounced fast once they realized the timeline was a lie. Sounds like your fix of pushing it to 60-90 days was smart. Sometimes it's the little things that screw everything up, not the big visible stuff like pricing or competition.