by John Long

I often worry about making sure we are selling to the right companies. I want to sell to those companies who will make great long-term partners and truly receive benefit from our software. What I
didn’t think I needed to worry about however, was wasting time selling
to a competitor.

A couple of months ago, we received a call from Karen Conner from Coats, one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in the staffing industry. Although we are technically competitors, we really respect, like and
want the best for Karen and Coats. Anyhow – she called asking if we
knew anything about Vic Turner of Talent Staffing in
Georgia. At the time, Vic Turner had already sent out an RFP and
requested a demo from both of our companies. Being based in Georgia,
Matt Gallagher handled the call. Vic and his business partner
described themselves as a 15 user, 3 office company based out of Conyers
doing a variety of different staffing. The website WAS http://www.talentstaffing.net/ and the email vturner@talentstaffing.net.

The reason Karen called, though, is because she wasn’t feeling comfortable with the information she was finding on this company.

Her – and our – suspicions were based on several factors to start:

1) Just a P.O. Box on the website, no physical address

2) The phone number just rolled over to Vic’s cell phone

3) Neither Vic or his partner where ever available to meet Matt in person

4) 3 locations and we have never heard of them

After Matt had literally done hours upon hours of demos with Vic and his business partner Dan Walsh from Talent Staffing, we got even more suspicious. So – we did a little digging.

Exhibit A:
We found several legitimate and reputable staffing firm websites whose pages were exact matches to the Talent Staffing website.
Clearly an excellent cut & paste job by a talented web designer.
Interesting how shortly after confronting the competitor
we suspected, the website has been taken down or released back to
GoDaddy. Odd for an established multi-branch staffing firm that claims
to be growing.

Exhibit B:
This Free website template offers the exact same services as Talent Staffing…small world!
Free website templates

Exhibit C:
There is no record with Georgia’s Secretary of State for Talent Staffing, including as a dba. Nor is there a staffing company with the
name of Talent Staffing in the yellow pages for Conyers.

Exhibit D:
The domain was registered July 2010. Now…up for grabs if someone wants it!

When confronted with this information, “Vic” or whatever his name actually is, got defensive and couldn’t believe we didn’t think his business is legitimate.

I conversed with a representative from TempWorks who also confirmed their suspicions of this company and that they feel they were shopped.

We have indirect, circumstantial (though convincing) evidence that the competitor in charge of this operation is one of our primary competitors. I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out who it is.

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