Three different people landed on the same question in one Reddit thread, independently, which usually means it's the real one.
"have they already ranked other plumbers in your area with real, verifiable results or are you the experiment?"
That's question one. It's good. Most guys never ask it, and the ones who do usually accept a case study from a company in a different state as an answer.
But somebody in the replies went one step further, and this is the one that matters:
"If they have and they're doing the same for you, how do they decide who gets priority."
Nobody from the agency side answered. Another contractor did: "they probably prioritize the clients paying the most."
Why question two is the whole thing
Sit with what's actually being described.
There is one first position on Google for "emergency plumber" in your town. One. It is not a shelf that holds several products. If a marketing company has you and another plumber four miles away on the same plan, they are being paid twice to win a thing that can only be won once.
That's not a bad company necessarily. It's a structural conflict, and the conflict doesn't go away because everybody's nice about it. Somebody has to lose, and it isn't going to be the guy on the bigger retainer.
The worst version: you're funding your competitor's marketing education. Whatever they learn ranking him, they learned partly on your money.
The two questions, word for word
Ask these on any sales call, in this order.
- "Who else in my trade, in my service area, are you working with right now?" Present tense. Not "have you ever." Right now.
- "If you rank both of us for the same search, who wins?" Then stop talking and let them answer it.
What you're listening for on the second one is whether they've thought about it at all. Some people have a real policy. Some people have never had to say it out loud and you'll hear that in real time.
Watch for these answers, because they're all versions of no:
- "We work with everyone, there's plenty of search volume to go around." Not for the top spot there isn't.
- "We'd never do anything to hurt a client." That's not the question. The question was who wins.
- "We target different keywords for each client." Ask which keywords you get and which ones the other guy gets. This can be a legitimate answer. It can also mean you got assigned the ones nobody searches.
- Anything that takes more than fifteen seconds. A company with a real rule states it in one sentence.
My answer, since I'd be a coward not to give one
One trade per service area on Make The Phone Ring. If I'm working with a roofer in your town, I don't take another roofer in your town. Full Authority is exclusive across the whole metro.
That's on the pricing page where you can hold me to it, and it's not a marketing line, it's a constraint I actually live with.
Here's what it means in practice, and it's the part that makes it real instead of a slogan. When the second roofer in a market calls me, I have to tell him no. Not "let me check," not a version of the plan that's technically different. No. And that guy is often ready to buy, which makes it the most expensive sentence I say.
I'm telling you that because it's the only way to know the rule is real. Any company can put "exclusivity" on a sales page. The test is whether they've ever turned down money over it, and you're allowed to ask that directly: "when's the last time you told somebody no because of this?"
What it means for you, both directions
The upside is obvious. Nobody you're paying is also paid to beat you.
The downside is real and worth saying. Exclusivity means the good spots in a market get taken, and once one's gone it's gone. If you're calling around and somebody tells you they already have your trade in your town, that's not a sales tactic, that's the thing working the way it's supposed to. Annoying when you're the second call.
It also means a smaller pool of companies will work with you, and the ones that will are the ones that already said no to somebody else.
How to check the answer they give you
You don't have to take it on faith. Two ways to verify in about ten minutes.
Ask for two current clients in your trade, in any market, and call them. Not a testimonial page. Actual phone numbers. Ask those guys whether anybody else in their town is on the same plan. Somebody who's proud of their policy hands over the numbers without flinching.
Then search the term you care about, in an incognito window, and look at who's ranking in your area right now. If two companies in your trade both look professionally handled and both credit the same marketing company in their site footer, you've got your answer without asking anybody.
The version of this that isn't about competitors at all
There's a second reason to ask, and it has nothing to do with the guy across town.
A company working with fifteen plumbers has built a system. Same page structure, same content plan, same everything, rolled out fifteen times. That's efficient and it's often perfectly good work.
But you're getting the system, not attention. Which is fine if you're paying system prices and know that's the deal. It's not fine if you're paying for someone to think about your business specifically and what you're actually getting is template number sixteen.
So the question does double duty. It tells you about the conflict, and it tells you what kind of product you're buying.
The one-minute version
You're not trying to catch anybody out. You're trying to find out whether the person selling you has thought about the thing that decides whether their work is worth anything to you.
Who else in my trade, in my area. And if we both rank, who wins.
If the answer's clean, great, now you know. If it's fifteen seconds of tap dancing, you just saved yourself a year and whatever the monthly was.
If you want to know whether your trade and your town are still open on my end, just ask me. It's a yes or a no and I'll tell you which one on the spot. Sometimes it's already taken and there's nothing either of us can do about that.