Re: UKNM: Dirty Tricks in the UK web industry?

[Duncan Macmillan]

Tom Hume wrote:


> We've just had an interesting experience... a salesperson from one of the

> established UK-based web houses cold-called one of our clients and

> proceeded to rubbish the site we'd developed for them (well over a year

> ago), offering their services instead.


I'm not quite sure what you're making a fuss about, Tom.  Clearly, it's bad

salesmanship to tell your contact that they made a poor purchasing decision;

far better to let them tell you.  But apart from that, you must expect

agencies to proactively search for work - we're not all as well known as Good

Technology.


Anyone who's anyone has usually got *some* kind of website.  So surely if an

agency wants to work with a client, and genuinely believes that the client is

not getting the best out of the Internet, then it's only natural to phone them

up and tell them how you see the medium working for them, and this has to be

contrasted with what's already been done.


So my analysis of the unnamed agency's behaviour is:  Nice idea, crap

execution.


You need to defend yourself against this by doing your utmost to provide

evidence that the site is achieving what it's supposed to be achieving.


You can't sit back and complain, "s'not fair, we did it a year ago, we can do

much better now", which is what I presume you're arguing.  Your client should

know exactly where the existing work fits into their Internet strategy, and

have complete confidence in your ability to correctly advise them about what

they should be doing when and why.


> Is this the sort of behaviour we can expect more of given the tightening

> of belts (perceived or otherwise) which we're seeing in the web industry

> at the moment?


Almost certainly.  Fasten your seat belt.


Duncan.

--

Duncan Macmillan

Director

Renaissance New Media

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