Why I believe Websourced, MarketSmart Interactive, Keyword Ranking failed
The recent implosion of my former employer and formerly one of the largest SEO firms in the industry makes an interesting case study for any business oriented jabroni like myself. But seeing as I do not want to rehash my MBA career, I threw together my thoughts in a response to Garrett’s post asking why a once successful industry leading business failed.
There are a multitude of reasons that I believe have influenced the downfall of this once powerful company but here are my top 8:
1. Letting Your Talent Walk Away - First it was tech-savvy Jason Dowdell. Then it was your company face Andy Beal. And finally Ben Wills walked away from the company without any effort to keep them. Now, I can’t speak to exactly why these people felt they should leave but I would suspect it has something to do with managements egos and not wanting these people who are in the trenches of the industry every day have any influence over the direction of company.
2. Hard to Mass Produce a One Size Fits All Service - Like any service industry it is hard to develop a product to sell that applies to all of your consumers. Imagine your plumber trying to use the exact same pipes and fixtures in your house as your neighbors, it just wouldn’t work, everyone’s house is different and just b/c copper pipes worked for my internal plumbing, doesn’t mean it will work for yours as well. This is the same theory that can be applied to WebSourced’s SEO services. From the time I started there in 2003 we tried to fit everyone’s website into our service rather than fitting our service to their site.
They eventually started selling services a la carte, but by then, it was too late. The damage was done.
3. Not Adapting To Change - Now, a lot of sites had the same general problems and all needed meta tags, keywords and content, along with linking and small site fixes but as the web got more competitive and search algorithms got more advanced, we as a company should have changed. But to my knowledge up until the day I left and well beyond, Websourced was still using the same metatag generator with keyword stuffed tags and directory linking strategies. Both of which have negligible benefit for SEO.
Also lack of technology was a major issue. Rather than building tools for the future WebSourced relied on outdated tools like the previously mentioned metatag generator and the constant use of excel spreadsheets rather then web based applications and tools to help the employees do their job.
4. Management Not Managing - This is probably the single most important aspect of why the company, and any company for that matter, failed. We all know the Martin’s lead the company down the crapper, but why is the question. Jeff like to apply the theories he learned from GE to Websourced, and while in principal that is a good idea, it is hard to apply the same theories from an old long standing Fortune 500 company to an ever changing and rapidly growing start-up. You need two different types of people for each of those. At one point while working there, I started a list of things NOT to do as a manager based on JM’s actions. I think good managers know the power is in the people, and your job is to keep them happy. I guess this also goes along with #1 and the next point.
5. Management Not Listening - There are tons of points about how the management did not do its job and listening to its people is a good way to summarize a lot of issues into one. I remember at one point, I asked JM “Why?” and he pulled me aside and chewed me out, gave me a lecture about how I shouldn’t ask those types of questions. Now if I am a manager, its exactly what I want my people to do. Another example and a major issue was the overwhelming client load. Marketing people were overloaded with clients. You can’t work people like pack mules and expect to get the best out of them. With 20-50+ accounts people weren’t given the opportunity to excel. How can you empower your employees when they can’t even get to each client at least once a week. I think Schultz or Swiller at one point did a spreadsheet to show that there was not enough time in the week for him to touch every client even if he worked 28hrs a day. Everyone felt like that.
When you get to that point, everyone is stressed to the max and client service suffers.
6. Unbalanced Workplace - Department favoritism, chaos and obnoxiousness -Websourced was a Sales dominated organization which is tough to have in a service industry. Especially, early on when things seemed to be going well, sales was filling up the board, clients were piling on in boat loads, and everyone got $50 weekly bonuses pretty often. What went unnoticed until those bonuses dried up, were what type of deals were being made. The sales department was making unrealistic promises to clients because what did they care, once the contract came in, they got paid and the new client was a problem of client services. This built up a lot of tension b/t the two halves of office and any attempt to talk to a sales manager fell on deaf ears, they loved their own and would protect them.
Not only was the sales department making ridiculous promises that no one could have fulfilled, they were obnoxious. As an account manager, I shouldn’t have had to hide under my desk to talk to my clients. Maybe one of the most uncomfortable situations just about everyone in client services has been in was being on the phone with a client and having the music from the huge speaker crank on. Not only can you not hear, but try explaining that to a client when they ask “what is all that noise?”. So many times I wanted to be honest and say, “that was just our sales department raping another client.”
I think the straw that finally broke this camel’s back was when I was a Paid Search account manager with 35+ accounts. Now, I handled the accounts fine, although I did not like having that many, but at one point I got an account assigned to me who did not have a website! Surely, I thought this was a mistake but after approaching the paid search sales managers and the sales girl who made the deal, none of them knew this guy didn’t have a website. I almost lost it. How can the sales girl make this deal? How can the sales managers approve it? Its a minor detail and how no one knew, was beyond me. This guy had an affiliate account and he used ppc to drive traffic, but the way his deal was set up, as performance based, there was no way to track it because he couldn’t add any tracking b/c it was someone else’s site. I put in my two week notice less than a month after and never looked back.
7. Unbalanced Workplace - Money - One of the must frustrating things was watching the sales department, lie, cheat and overpromise their way to BMW’s, Benz’, Flat screens, BBQ Grills, watches etc. At one point a sales girl made one and a half times my salary in commission on ONE DEAL, then followed that up a week later with another deal worth twice my salary. That was very annoying but even worse was the inconsistency among our department. Some BC’s were making $80k and could barely tell you what a metatag was. They relied so heavily on the tech department whose salaries ranged between 20 and 35k and maxed out at 45k. Just because one person could talk on the phone and one could do an SEV doesn’t make one more or less valuable than the other. The pay scales were just stupid. Personally, I’m not complaining because Al and I were able to double our salaries (and Jen Den’s) by threatening to leave, but having some tech people make $20k is just not fair especially considering that sales’ base salary was $18k, so even if you sold nothing you got paid almost as much as some tech people. Its hard to live on that.
I don’t even want to get on the topic of raises, who just about everyone eventually asked for and so many times it was “waiting for approval” “raises are coming”, or “your next on the list to get a raise.” It was bogus and people got hosed. Maybe its like this with any company but it seems the more ass you kissed the more responsibility you got. Free lunches were nice but you can’t expect people with any dignity to do their job for years and not expect a raise b/c you give them chicken nuggets, pizza and cold Chinese food.
8. Lack of Training - With such a new industry it is hard to find people with the right kind of experience but marketing people were thrust into roles they did not understand. They were only taught basics and basically just passed around the SEO for Dummies book as their training manual. It is not these people’s fault, they were not given the chance or tools to really learn SEO/SEM. Forcing them to use the tech folks as a crutch rather than a Co-worker. This strained relationships when the answer to keep clients happy was, “we’ll get you some more metatags or another analysis.” Work started piling up, getting backlogged, and not getting done which strained team relationships and client-Websourced relationships. It was a snowball that was growing with each passing bizflow assignment.
Sales wasn’t trained either and that was part of the problem. They were told to sell and just sold at any expense. They didn’t know the boundaries nor did they really care (only a few did), in my opinion.
Conclusion: There were a lot of issues that plagued this once promising company and most of them started at the top. I purposely didn’t mention the sexual harassment behavior, embezzlement, wasting of millions on a SEM webservices product that was poorly planned and poorly executed, but all played a contributing factor in the downfall of this company. I had a unique cube location right near JM’s office and overheard many conversations that I shouldn’t have. Relating to #7 at one point JM would brag about how he had a unique skill about getting tech people to work for him cheap, because people wanted to work for him. While that was pretty arrogant and stupid to even say, it was not the most absurd thing to come out of that office from the brothers and cousin. The company got too big for its’ britches too fast, and the end result was inevitable.
The company that was created by accident from a guy selling websites (PM) to people was doomed from the beginning because they failed to see what they really had before it was too late.
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40 Responses to “Why I believe Websourced, MarketSmart Interactive, Keyword Ranking failed”
I don’t think the sales team realized that they were making outrageous promises. they were sheltered from the client services side, so that they never knew that the contracts they put together could not be fulfilled.
the reason MSI failed is simple: The management was uneducated, undisciplined, inexperienced and most of all incompetent.
those of us let go on friday have no one to blame but ourselves. my blind loyalty and willingness to bury my head in the sand lead to me being at home today updating my resume. i have no one to blame but myself. heck, 4 months ago i gave money to a manager as thanks for him taking us out to a ballgame…i gave money to one of the people who ruined my company.
I agree and thats something that I should have said. Sales wasn’t trained either, they were just told to sell, and they did, at any cost.
sales gave you jokers jobs bitch! the real prollum was the jackoves on the other side of the building talking about star trek and montie pithons instead of actually doing der jobs.
mad props to cord, roadgod and john ashenbrenner. most smartest people i ever worked with.
I’m a reporter at The News & Observer and I’m doing a story about the demise of MarketSmart Interactive. I’d like to interview Evan K. Roberts and other recent former employees of the company. If you’re interested, please contact me at 919-829-4877.
Thanks.
David Ranii
i agree with your conclusions Evan, mark this day down. Training, communication, one size fits all solutions, among other items were the cause of their failure.
You are still not good at prognasticating college fb coach moves though.
Evan I think the Unger Report really sums it up.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6741721
Evan, old friend of Garrett’s from his webpronews days and I just found this post from his on the same topic. To me it sounds like the inability to change was a major factor. In today’s market, web developers like myself, use best known practices in advance. we’ve even built our own CMS just to do the grunt of the SEO work. Things like that really nullify any services provided by an SEO only firm. A web developer that is worth working with will build your site with SEO in mind, leaving SEO services to pretty much be nothing more than high paid copy writers. And most development companies offer that too. Information on SEO and online marketing strategies is just to readily available to support a medium to large company that only does that. You’ll see, most of what MSI did will be done primarily by consultants,web developers or in-house departments in the future. The SEO companies of the world are already starting to trickle away.
j. scott, you are exactly right, inability to change and lack of vision to see that change is needed. I guess it all comes down to management.
I do however disagree about designers and SEO. Its rare to find a designer who really understands SEO IMO. And being good at one doesnt mean you have to be good at the other. Its a big plus though.
Evan-
I agree with your last post 100%. I have been doing SEO and Internet Marketing for 10+ years as a consultant, small business owner, at MSI and currently at Capitol Broadcasting. My experience has always been that developers / designers know some, but not nearly enough to fully be effective when you get beyond Meta tags into copywriting, Usability, Best Practices, increased conversions, etc.
With all due respect to CMS - some of them are the biggest problems marketers face. There are always exceptions to this rule, and I presume J. Scott is one of these, but for every developer exception I can find 9 non-exceptions.
I do believe it will continue the migration toward consultative - good news for folks like myself who like to make side money
Evan -
While most of your posting has merit, alot of your pompus assumptions are out in left field and far from truths. Sales was the heart and life blood of a company that grows from 20 employees to nearly 200 in 4 years. The culture, excitement, opportunities, and growth was a result of a collectively motivated company offering services that were supposed to be delivered. No one in services was complaining when they were getting bonuses due to the production of sales, nor was anyone lying about services that should have been provided. It’s easy for you to sit in an ivory tower now and point fingers at those that got you a paycheck back when. In the end, it was a lack of client services’ inability to deliver more than some meta tags and ranking reports, when they clearly knew that link building and content development were a part of the contract. All in all, every single person that spent more than 12 months at WBS, including yourself, should be thankful that they were part of that company b/c otherwise, you wouldn’t even have this blog. Ease up on throwing the daggers b/c you didn’t contribute much at all to the progress of that company….rather you rode coat-tails late in the game.
Anon,
I’m agree that sales did their job, they sold and did it well, for a while.
I agree that I’m glad I worked there and got the experience.
I agree, Sales was the life blood for about 6 months when things were going well. But, anyone can sell water to a thirsty man in a desert. Its my opinion that you can’t build a company starting with the sales department. You have to have a product or service first. I’d love for you to give me an example of a long-term successful company that started with a sales team first.
Your same company that grew from 20 to 200 in 4 years is also the same that went from 200 to 0 in 10 months. I’m not saying sales was the downfall of the company, but it had a part in it, because it was mismanaged, like the Client side was.
I don’t agree with your statement that sales earned my paycheck for me, I earned a paycheck by managing 40+ accounts and putting out fires from unrealistic expectations set by the salesperson.
I’m disagree that lies were not told, maybe it was not you, but I personally heard and have had other trustworthy sales people there tell me how shady some of the sales pitches were. I got a client w/o a website, how can you say that it was an honest sales job by all? Maybe you were one of the few trustworthy ones, but I think the fact that you posted under Anonymous is a hint in the other direction.
I was there for over 2 years, I really don’t think I “rode anyones coat-tails” but that is your opinion.
And lastly, I had this blog before I started there so neither one has anything to do with the other, but thanks for your concern.
Sorry to hear about everyones job losses. It really sucks when horrific companies suffocate great people.
If anyone’s interested in coming to the big apple, Greenlight (Europe’s leading search agency) has opened its New York office and is looking for a multitude of mid level and senior people on both SEO and PPC sides, including a head of agency for the NY office.
Send your resumes to warren.cowan@greenlightsearch.com
Evan, I agree with the majority of what you are saying. Being a fair and inpartial witness to everything, my opinion is that the company as a whole was a timebomb waiting to explode.
In regards to sales, there were a lot of really good sales people who did a great job. But when you look at it, they were better than we all thought since we really didn’t have any “revolutionary products”. There was no product development, there might have been a team, but nothing for the sales people to rally around and roll it out to potential clients (or current).
I also acknowledge that there was very good Client service people, in my opinion is the real “Life blood” of the company. Without them there is no product. Remember this was a SERVICE company, we were selling our employees as the Product. This is the major missing link. Like Evan said before the people who left were not replacable. But the workload problem was never addressed properly. There was people in positions that hurt the company as well. Taking a look at the cancellations of current customers the majority of those clients were tied to a small handfull of people, but they were not fired for whatever reason.
All in all, there was a lot of dead weight (dead salary) tied up in MSI. Free lunches were BS, no benefits at all, management was suspect, and people were tired of working hard and not getting the rewards of working hard. This was a recipe for disaster.
I never thought of sales in that manner, selling an ordinary product. I think that was really prevalent in 2005 when the industry started getting more crowded and more known, sales dipped.
Good point. I still think it comes down to piss poor management and the way they didn’t handle all of the situations, I brought up and that Anon and others have brought up.
its a lesson for us all that is for sure.
Those are some strong words about sales coming from the client service side of things. I guess the sales side could say the client service side sucked so hard they couldn’t keep any clients happy.
I don’t think that is the truth though.
But as far as the “we don’t need no stinking salespeople”
I guess that would be true if the site ever ranked well on Google, Yahoo or MSN for any terms like oh I don’t know
“search engine marketing firm” “search engine marketing” “SEO” or you know r anything else that might have showed that kick ass talent you were refering to and driven sales all by itself to the company.
the problem is pretty simple. sales didn’t know what the fuck we were selling. as evidence in the posting above, some of us never learned.
this was not entirely our fault. we were never trained and to be fair, maany of us were making some mad duckets. So initially, what was the point in learning?
what was our fault, was never taking the initiative to learn about the technology behind the scenes when sales started to dry up.
want to know who the good sales people were? we were the ones who left. anonymous above is posting on break at cary auto mall. as a salesperson, having marketsmaart interactive on your resume at this point is about as helpful as listing “pedophile” under your interests.
i have no problem sharing in the blame, but putting it all on the sales side is absurd.
client services is also at fault for acting like a bunch of scared girls and not telling jeff martin to go suck a dick. i wouldn’t know half of you if i saw you because you hid at your desks like mice and said nothing as all the “talent” walked out the door. you bowed to your inept management. you giggled about all the ass-kissers behind their backs and now you are out of a job. where are the rusty trumpeteers? they were absorbed into marketsmart. don’t throw a hissy fit now becaause you regret acting like a bunch of flaming fairies then.
we all know you had shitty management, but according to at least one post above (if true), you gave one of these inexperienced managers your own hard-earned money. If this is true and the ass-clown actually took it…you got scammed.
katie, assuming that is you, I wasn’t lumping you into the liar group, in fact from what i heard, you were a decent sales rep. I was really just pointing out how you made so much money in one and two deals as opposed to many of the SEO techs.
and no you were not the sales girl who sold the deal w/o a website, i think you had walked out by then.
In my opinion, there were two major problems with the service WebSourced/MSI offered. The first is that all clients were pigeonholed into “packages”, which in many cases didn’t suit their needs, and which were not informed by solid analytics. Without analytics, we were never able to show the client their ROI.
The second problem was that everyone was overworked. There were too many low level clients bleeding client services and the analysts dry. I did a study at one time showing how (even if we just stuck to the basic “package” a customer bought), we were ultimately losing money on every deal because of the time and manpower involved to fulfill a “package” that had no real hope of helping the customer. Of course, it fell on deaf ears.
And that’s the reason neither of the above problems were corrected - management just wanted to pat each other on the backs and buy rounds at O’Mulligans instead of listening to the people in the trenches.
Everyone is always pissed off at Sales Reps. We do make alot of money. Make no mistake, you’re a client services rep for a reason and the reason is that you’re scared shitless to pick up a phone and make a cold-call. Sales will always drive a company, True, you obviously need a product or service but who’s going to sell it, you Evan? There are many bright minds out there that come out with great products only to find out that they’re afraid to call someone and pitch what they have and sell it!. There’s a reason why we make a ton more…. because without us no one will buy it. I agree with some of what you say. You come across as a bright guy. But you clearly weren’t a leader and some of your statements were out of line. I do however feel bad about what happened but I don’t at the same time. It’s amazing what people will believe after being told lies for 4 years. Good luck to you all.
Who is you know who? email is Evan [at] Evankroberts.com
As someone who was instrumental in building the company before any of you ass clowns had even heard of Websourced;
The company would never have gone anywhere without the sales department. We made a lot of money. Damn right we did, and we should have. Try busting your ass cold calling for nine hours a day and tell me we weren’t worth it. We put up with more shit than all of you idiots put together, so don’t blame the demise of Websourced on sales. We kept the doors open. We weren’t the problem.
The leadership didn’t and still doesn’t give a crap about any of their employees. Anyone who thinks/thought they are/were the chosen ones, or that they will get special treatment is/was delusional. To the people who weren’t fired, get your resumes out. No matter what Mitchell and Co. tell you, they will fire you in a heartbeat.
The customer service department sucked. You let yourselves be pushed around by Jeff Squeaky Martin. How could you let yourselves be humiliated by a little fucker like Jeff Martin? You never called your clients. You didn’t and still don’t know a damn thing about ranking a client. You got paid exactly what you were worth. If you didn’t like the way you were treated, LEAVE. Don’t blame your spinelessness on the sales department. You say that we misrepresented what we were selling. That’s fucking hilarious. If we had told clients what you idiots were going to do for them, and the level of sheer incompetence they would be exposed to they would never have signed up.
Websourced was doomed to failure when they stopped caring about their clients. It started at the top and filtered down through every level of the company. We failed because we didn’t do what we were paid to do. Hopefully you will all learn a lesson from the experience. Respect your clients. They pay your salary. I wish you all the best of luck except for the following people:
Pat Martin, Jeff Martin, Mark Campaugh, Jodie Brown, X, George Deware, Scott Mitchell, Cord Silverstein, Tom Roeder, and last but not least, Chadd Lomoglio. Chadd, I hope you have an unpleasant life full of misfortune and unhappiness. You are a lying little fucker.
Yep, Chadd can eat a dick sammich.
Evan- I have been following your blog closely the past few days since the final death throes of MSI last Friday. Reading some of these posts, I am amazed at the level and tone of some of the emails. If you are going to throw blame, use personal attacks and call people names such as “spineless” (and much worse) and then sign your email “Anonymous” hmmm…. If you want to choose that level of useless rhetoric and childish blame, please do grow a set and use your name. If you write something you ought to be willing to take responsibility for it by signing your name, if you aren’t willing to do this than maybe you need to rethink whether it needs to be written.
I agree with much of your reasoning Evan, and with some of the other posts. Honestly, blame could be put on each area of the organization as there was more than enough incompetence to go around – this exists in every business there is, there is no “perfect” organization, at least not of the size MSI grew to. One thing I would mention: MSI never had a business plan, so in turn they really never had a direction for growth. The process of writing a business plan involves brainstorming and collaborative cross-functional efforts that would have revealed many obstacles and offered the chance to address them before they occurred. As it happened, they grew too large, too fast and were built upon a weak foundation. Without a solid foundation and no plan/direction for evolving they floundered and fell. Business plans don’t make a company succeed, but the process used to create one is what helps establish a solid foundation and evolve it in the right direction.
That being said, I think we also need to acknowledge the tremendous amount of collective brain-power, creativity and talent in that place! I also need to acknowledge the many great senses of humor!!!! I truly enjoyed working with many of the folks there and I learned a LOT from many of you- my sincere thanks! I may not have been there long but I made some dear friends, learned a bit each day and got a couple of great consulting clients so I do not consider my time wasted. The folks with talent are going to have no problem landing a job, please let me know if I can be of help to any of you.
Dawn
Crap- sorry Evan, my post looked fine in Wordpad and preview. What the gibberish in the first paragraph says is basically: Anonymous, use your name if you are going to resort to personal attacks and name calling. To run your mouth, call people spineless and then sign it Anonymous is b.s. If you are going to fling it, grow a set and stand by your words with a name so readers will know who you are.
Dawn,
Thanks for the comment. I agree with you on all the Anon. comments. I just have to laugh at those who throw stones but dont man up and put their name. They can attack me all they want, I really don’t care, it just proves they can not read. Most of them think i blamed sales, but in reality it was piss poor management, like you and most of the other rational people who’ve commented have stated.
E
MSI. We Know Drama.
Not sure why people are reluctant to leave their names…it’s not like you can get fired.
Anyway, Honaker summed it up perfectly:
“There was no real direction, no real strategy, no real leadership…”
This isn’t saying that people didn’t have great ideas, it’s just pointing out that fact that management (despite their laughable “open door policy”) wasn’t interested in them.
I’m agreeing with Dawn, I learned so much, made some great friends, and that was the launchpad of my career.
WBS is now just a memory that we all hold in our possessions, do you want to optimize the worth of your share of the possessions by remembering the best parts of WBS? Or do you want to devalue your possessions by remembering the worst?
Evan, I must politely disagree. I worked with Garrett back in the day and we covered SEO before is it was the popular trend it is today. I was one of the lucky few who started to grasp SEO before I went into development. So when we developed our own cms, SEO was the main objective, not an after thought. That being said, I see alot of developers becoming in-depth students of SEO simply because they have to develop tools people want and will benefit them. Web development and SEO are slowly becoming one and the same. SEO companies typically come in later when the site was done and used to have a mess to clean up. Thats not as much the case any more. There are lots of SEO companies out there, some big, some small, some white hat, some black. The reality of it is, many seo companies have practices in place that are outdated or have already been done by the client and aren’t very progressive in their thinking. And these days, development companies employ their own SEO “experts”. If you see that your developers rank well and their past clients do as well, why not use them as a one stop shop.
Whoof! A lot of lessons to learned here! Especially about communication, training and responsibilities.
I think you were a team and unfortunately you disintegrated as a team - surely the buck stops with the management? If a business fails, it’s the management’s fault - that is why they get paid the big bucks.
The real reason WBS/MSI failed was Jeff Martin.
He may have come from GE but I’m sure he was 12th man on the engineering team in their Tiki-Touch division. He didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know what he was saying and was a sexist, raciest pinhead with a huge napoleon complex.
He was closed minded to anyone’s ideas, specially if you were a female. Several times I told him the most knowledgeable person on a particular subject was (insert female employee here) and he would look at me like I just insulted his brother. Every meeting I had with him I would just sit in amazement that this guy was my boss.
Jeff once made a derogatory remark to a female service person in front of several other people and I almost said something to him. Wish I did and I apologize to that person if you’re reading this.
I don’t regret working at WBS but I do regret not putting that twat in his place after witnessing that comment.
Hey guys,
I know I’m a little late on the commentary but here’s my 2 cents.
Evan - I do not believe you know anything of real substance about this organization. Yes I was one of the 20+ who was let go and Yes I had a job lined up, but to make accusations on people not understanding the industry is just plain ignorant. You can not sit on the outside and fully understand the entire situation. There were very knowledgeable people working their with hopes of the corner turning with every lie that was told to them by the new managers or VP’s every 3 motnhs. The bottom line is Pat started it and George Douaire continued the decline as neither of them knew the industry as well as others. This is why they hired many people with NO interactie experience from any other competitor or vertical to be part of this masquarade. But toward the end of 2005 they started hiring good, seasoned people like myself who had a vision of turning this monster around. Yes the old internal buddy network continued to show its ugly head whenever things got dicey, but who let this happen? George and the fools at THK. Or where they fools? They let this place go under to rid themselves of what Pat started. And let’s not forget the Chads and the Dwyers of the world who had ZERO sales experience in this vertical trying to run a sales force. pretty hilarious. To try and instill new products to the company Tom Dwyer brought his fathers Custom Publishing company in where Chad and Tom Dwyer Jr were going to make a piece of the action. Problem was this was an interactive company and when Dwyer Sr. wasted 2 days on Sales 101 he informed us and the company that Custom Publishing was the wave of the future and the Internet was a lost medium. Idiots!!
So with this rant I end by saying when the CEO Scott Mitchell says to the final 28 people, “I am surprised 80% of you do not have your resumes out there” in October you are fools to not have seen thru the BS
Evan, how many former MSI customers have been able to get a refund from those thieves?
Also, why did MSI drop Clicktrax?
I dont know about the refunds but I would assume if you don’t actively cancel then they will continue rebilling. I know for a fact of a client who was continuing get billed although no one was servicing them.
I suggest all clients or former clients make sure they are not getting charged.
They dropped clicktrax b/c MSI was developing SEMwebservices.com although it turned out to just be a money pit which some suspect was a money laundering project. It was terrible.
Sorry to hear about your companies decline. I am a recruiter workign for MSN and we have several positions open in NY, Chicago, IL and Redmond, WA. They all require SEM or SEO experience, and all varry in levels. If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities please email me at vivian.larsen@kenexa.com.
Evan,
Who was the person at Marketsmart Interactive that was dating Demming Bass, Vice President of Communications at the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce? When did that person leave MSI?
Marketsmart used Demming Bass as a reference and when that person ceased working at MSI, Demming Bass ceased to subscribe to MSI service.
Thanks.
hi all.
[...] is the same company that was making acquisitions and was aiming for IPO until something went wrong. Sound familiar? Yea, I thought so too, and now read the comments on this post and tell me that doesn’t give [...]
Ok I can answer the ? of why the company failed I was there from the beginning…. You guys have it all wrong stay tunned
[...] my former employer, WebSourced / MarketSmart / Think / KeywordRanking et al. Sure they have been out of business for a while but the drama never [...]