My strong believe is any
SEO activity has to begin with understanding your clients or prospects needs. Why does your client need top positioning at Google if he sells software scripts and you know about sites like hotscripts.com (vertical search engine) where he'll get his sales much-much faster then with organic
SEO. I'm not telling that this particular client won't need
SEO at all, no. I'm telling that to get sells, leads - anything he defines as a target you don't have to concetrate on organic
SEO as a major thing. He WILL NEED
SEO to get good word of mouth, good reputation. When people will start googling in search of any information about this client they fill find positive marks for his product at different directories, forums...etc (this is part of your job to place info about this product/service so people may evalutate it and give him positive marks) which have high ranking at GG already (you don't have to grab they from nowhere to top 10, they are already there)
I believe
SEO has to be treated wider, if you want to sell
SEO to your clients and decrease amount of explanation work 'why do I have to wait 6-8 month till I get high positing at GG?' You need to sell a complex solution, you need to sell a solution for getting quality traffic, traffic which leads to sells.