It’s one of the most common phrases in marketing, and it’s very popular with salespeople, mostly because it’s one of those terms that isn’t technically a lie, but certainly doesn’t mean what you think it does.

What you mean by ‘top rank’ is being the first entry for a popular term that describes what you do, but what the salesperson means is being the first entry for a search term that won’t cost them very much money – regardless of whether people are actually searching for it or not.

For example, being ranked first for “inexpensive apparel” doesn’t have the impact of being ranked first for “cheap clothing”, because no-one’s going to be searching the first term anyway.

Everyone wants top ranking in search engines, but top rank for a random term that no-one ever searches isn’t going to get you more business – and that’s the whole point of paying out for marketing in the first place.

An honest online marketer won’t promise you ‘top ranking’, because it’s a meaningless phrase. What you really need from a marketer is a guarantee that they will work to find the most useful terms for your business, terms that balance the cost of the click against the business it brings you.

So beware of marketers promising you top ranking. They might not be lying, but they’re coming damned close.

Here’s a tip to help you along the way: Dogged doesn’t have to mean chipping away at a problem until it crumbles, it means using your imagination to find an alternative way to get the result you want.

Here’s another tip: No doesn’t always mean no, it quite often means “not like this.”

Example: Cold-calling. I don’t care what you are selling, how cheap it is, how much I could save, how easy it is to switch or how soon you can meet. If you cold-call me, I probably won’t do business with you. Maybe a change of marketing channel is necessary.

It’s a common behaviour for business owners to start altering their prices and business model until more people start saying yes. But as shown in the example above, it’s not necessarily that your model is wrong, it might be the way you are trying to do business.

I used the example of cold calling randomly of course and it can be incredibly successful for some people. I could equally say the same about business networking events, where people are so eager to prove their credibility they can end up scaring potential customers away.

Example: You get approached by someone at a small business networking event who want to tell you about their new business coaching company. They tell you about the big company they used to work for, and the leading companies they worked with, and their great success that took them first class to all corners of the globe.

Sounds expensive, I’ll pass. In this instance maybe a change of script rather than marketing channel is necessary. Perhaps one that focuses on how I can benefit rather than how successful you are/were. Maybe you need to play a waiting game and get to know me over a period of months (building trust). Maybe proving your knowledge with an insightful presentation at an event will allow me to draw my own conclusions about your credibility.

This isn’t a post about how not to do business, so don’t pay too much attention to the slightly extreme examples of poor selling above. Pay attention to the idea that when somebody says no (in one of it’s many forms!), they don’t necessarily mean no to your service or product. They often just mean, no I don’t want to do business based on this encounter.