SEM companies discuss how they handle there business and growth.
John Lustina from IntraPromote is the first guy up. He is discussing how its important for his company to hire the brightest people. He said they can work where ever they want, as long as they are the best and get their work done. His employees need to have skills in either keyword research, seo coding, seo copywriting, technology, stats and reporting skills.
Cheryle Pingel is now up. She simply discussed that business used to be more fun, now its more like a real business where lots of money is involved, making it more serious. The industry is growing and its great.
Fredrick Marckini from IProspect. Stage one, your working out the the home. Stage two, you hire some people. Stage three you are the senior manager, stagge 4 hiring success and growth, stage 5 you cant be the top guy anymore, stage 6 is growth. He said "Employees Quit Managers, Not Companies". He basically discussed the principles of growing any business.Q & A Time: Growth is important, without it your employees wont stay and your company wont grow. Even if you add no new clients, your current clients will want more.
Fredrick Marckini a major turning point was in 1997 when he just let go and forced his employees to pick up the ball.
John Lustina says some of his major challenges is finding the right people. Its a rough process to find the right person and takes a lot of time.
Cheryle Pingel did not expect expect to be so involved in the lives of her clients. She is so interlined with her clients personally and its like a family to her. I can relate to this, my clients and I are real close.
They also discussed when to outsource versus hire internally. Common sense stuff for any business.
Advisory Board & Board of Directors: Pingel said they use an Advisory board, she said it has helped her company grow so well. But they said they dont want to be held accountable to the board that is why they went with an advisory board. She also highly recommends bringing in a consultant from the outside to take a fresh look at the company. Lustina says he doesn't like his board too much because they do not understand the Internet business however, they do understand the business.
Pricing Methods: Lustina trys to have a 4x salary ratio to what they charge their clients and they primarily work on retainer and not hourly. Marckini mostly does project based pricing. Pingel never does hourly, always does project based or % of media or retainer.
