My vast network of sources has divulged to me that Google now has roughly 300 telephone sales reps in Mountain View. They’re selling Tags and Boost.
The telephone reps are addressing a number of US markets apparently (but less than 30). Thus the SMB sales force and culture exists at Google (as we knew to some degree). Groupon would have added substantially to that sales force of course.
But this indicates to me, as I suspected, that Google has crossed some sort of “cultural’ threshold around sales to SMBs and will either be going after another sales force directly or a product with a sales force attached like Groupon or Yelp.
Google can now sell search, display and mobile ads. But the company may need more SMB-specific products to sell. Groupon would have provided some or most of that: presence, new customers and soon CRM. But the deal didn’t happen.
It has been a long time coming but Google is now seemingly off its self-service model for the local market.
December 10th, 2010 at 1:48 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Greg Sterling, Posts Google, Adam Liebman, weboptimist, Jason Capshaw and others. Jason Capshaw said: RT @weboptimist: RT @gsterling: Google Has 300 Telephone Reps in Mtn View http://bit.ly/grkDsM (yeah, but just TRY reaching Google by ph … [...]
December 10th, 2010 at 1:51 am
“It has been a long time coming but Google is now seemingly off its self-service model for the local market.”
I’m not sure that’s how I’d characterize it…just because they are going direct to SMB’s with SALES does not mean they’re off the self-serve model. They are certainly making plenty of moves to cut the agency and directory piece of the pie, but even reading Susan Wojicki’s comments from one of your 62 posts yesterday (:D) indicates that they’re fundamentally committed to making their tools easy enough for business owners to use themselves…they just need to get the word out to business owners.
December 10th, 2010 at 1:53 am
Was it 62? Your characterization is more nuanced. Perhaps I should have said that they haven’t abandoned self-service . . . certainly not. But they’ve accepted that they’ll need sales people to really penetrate the local space.
Their attitude is probably as you say: get them started and hope that with some experience and education they’ll self-serve over time.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:00 am
they have divide advertisers into several tiers based on spend. top tier has direct sales affiliates that work with them from start to finish on their campaigns. these are big brands or the agencies that represent them. lowest tier gets self-service interface and snail mail. Tiers in the middle get varying levels of support, medium-sized advertisers are served by the tele-sales team. I didn’t know this wasn’t widely known.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:03 am
Not widely known. This is first it’s being exposed I think based on information I received earlier.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:04 am
My apologies for writing my previous comment so haphazardly. By “snail mail” I just meant slowly processed email-based support.
I should also clarify that it has been this way since at least four years ago. This is nothing new by Google.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:09 am
So you’re saying that they’ve had this telephone channel focused on local for four years? They have sales and account reps, sure but I don’t think they’ve had a 300 person SMB sales force for 4 years.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:10 am
Facebook has adopted roughly the same model. They too have a large direct sales team, a telesales team that focuses on medium-sized spenders, and a bunch of support reps that process emails from advertisers.
December 10th, 2010 at 2:18 am
well i may be talking about something different, but they’ve definitely had couple floors worth of “ad word reps” who work primarily with middle tier advertisers via telephone. Most of the businesses with this spend are SMBs. Not sure if they have created a new or more specifically focused group as well.
December 10th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
[...] Google Has 300 Telephone Reps in Mtn View, Greg Sterling [...]
December 13th, 2010 at 7:09 am
[...] Google has a 300 person phone room dialing for dollars, selling local businesses their Boost and Tag services, Greg Sterling reported. [...]
December 25th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
If Google is so smart, with every possible method of identifying, reaching and appealing to distinctive, unique, singular market segments, why are they putting people on the phone? Because they finally figured out that the value of human interaction a phone call provides is darned effective, and prospects don’t have to work to figure it all out. Just another reason why Pay Per Call performance marketing has such a bright future.
January 8th, 2011 at 2:38 pm
[...] according to latest news, this has recently changed. Several hundreds of telemarketers are employed by the company, their [...]
January 21st, 2011 at 2:20 am
[...] over time but is not a viable way to acquire deals/content in the near term. To that end Google has about 300 sales reps in Mountain View selling Boost and Tags. This would presumably be another product to sell to small [...]
February 1st, 2011 at 11:31 am
[...] will likely be activating tele and direct-sales teams to ramp up merchants. They already have a 300-person tele-sales team as a starting [...]
March 21st, 2011 at 11:07 pm
The Google sales reps are a bunch of push-salesperson jerks! For ‘Boost’ they bait you with a free $100 worth of clicks but then they say that I may-or-may not be charged $50.. I don’t understand how that counts for giving me $100 of free credits nor why they don’t know whether or not i’ll end up having to pay $50. The were suuuuper pushy about getting me to sign up.
September 5th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
[...] network of publishers and partners that sell to small businesses. As with Google’s move into direct small business sales (Offers, AdWords Express) — the customer support reps don’t do any outbound sales [...]
September 7th, 2011 at 8:16 am
[...] Google’s network of publishers and partners that sell to small businesses. As with Google’s move into direct small business sales (Offers, AdWords Express) — the customer support reps don’t do any outbound sales — the [...]
October 20th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
[...] has recently built its own telesales force and a parallel customer service organization to onboard SMBs and help them better understand [...]
October 21st, 2011 at 4:48 am
[...] has recently built its own telesales force and a parallel customer service organization to onboard SMBs and help them better understand [...]
October 24th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
[...] has recently built its own telesales force and a parallel customer service organization to onboard SMBs and help them better understand [...]
December 7th, 2011 at 3:25 am
I haven’t been able to get a call from Google, but if one of those sales representatives that contacts me will be a pushy salesmen, then they can expect an earful of rage and a phone slamming.