Best, in my opinion, means the most honest, forthright, productive, all-star company representative - AND they are performance based (on commission).

Performance based systems rarely fail because the individual gets a HUGE reward if they perform exceptionally well and little to no reward if they perform poorly in their activities.

Sometimes, businesses are tempted to put an hourly wage or lower commission on their sales reps because the best of the best are costing them a lot of money…right?

Wrong.

You have undoubtedly heard about the Pareto principle - often called the 80/20 rule - and in this case it would say that 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of your salespeople OR 80% of your sales people are producing 20% of your revenue.

If a company fired their top sales people by putting them on a lower pay scale or hourly wage, they could lose 80% of their revenue!

While a great company or sales person can get a large sum of money for good performance, their competition is simply not producing the same results according to the Pareto principle.

How does this relate to pay per click advertising?

The entire essence of search marketing, pay per click advertising in particular, is performance based. Search engines thrive on the model and they are starting to command the largest portion of a company’s ad spend budget because the model is efficient and VERY profitable for both parties - the company doing the advertising, and the company hosting the ads!

The search engine is or can be a company’s best salesperson - where else can you be at your customer’s fingertips when they are actively seeking your product or service?

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Years ago I attended an event that was pivotal in my selling career…at that time I was selling mortgages in South Carolina and for some reason, I could not close a loan on the east coast so I would put in 15 or 16 hour days. 8 hours in the morning/early afternoon for the East coast, then another 8 hours in the early afternoon/evening/night for the West Coast. Not only was I wearing myself thin, I was ragged, timid, and super skinny. I didn’t have time to eat much, half my day felt wasted when I would begin calling California but I was lucky enough to find good people that would let me refinance their homes in California so my fees were modest and I was able to stay alive. Thankfully, I didn’t have kids yet or they would have been the skinniest kids around!

Then, the company came into the bull pen - there were 60+ loan officers here - and announced they would pay everybody’s way to a seminar if we wanted to sign up. Only 13 or 14 of us signed up because it would be a very welcome break to the regular week. It was an 8 hour seminar - I didn’t even know who was in it until the next day!

Zig Ziglar was the keynote speaker at this seminar! He taught me a lot. In fact, I was LATE to this awesome seminar that was key noted by one of the greatest sales people in the world so they seated me in the executive section - FRONT ROW, a little to the left of the stage! I couldn’t believe it!

Zig said a lot - and I don’t remember it all, but one of the neatest things I remember him saying was this: Timid Salespeople Have Skinny Kids.

Wow. Enough said. I knew I needed to step up the game and realize that people need help and they need a knowledgeable person to help them navigate through any product or service.

I feel like the SEM/SEO industry is very similar - people NEED to see authoritative sites in the organic search results. They need to see authoritative sites in the sponsored results. Search needs to be a high quality, relevant experience and that is the sale we need to make to get repeat visits, search engine favors, and ultimately more sales!

Zig says: Timid Sales People Have Skinny Kids.

SEO dictates that: Timid Link Builders Have Skinny Kids.

SEM dictates that: Timid Campaign Managers Have Skinny Kids.

Building links is the true sale in SEO - if you can get another authority site to link to you, using decent anchor text, then you will improve the authority of your site and be able to feed those kids.

Holistic campaign management is the true sale in SEM - if you can get people to take action based on your advertisements and landing pages, then you will be able to feed those kids.

Bottom line is this: Don’t be timid with link building, don’t be timid with campaign management, just do it and your rewards will be incalculable.

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