A Few Simple, Smart Online Shopping Rules

The Internet provides instant access to a vast amount of information. The Internet also provides instant access to a vast amount of bunk, hype, hucksterism and even worse. How do you know which kind of information you are finding? And, if it’s somewhere in-between, how do you make the call?

Our speaker/lobbyist friend, Corky Kyle, recently got an email from an organization claiming that it would boost his speaking career. The email said, “If you are a professional speaker, trainer, or consultant, and are frustrated with the pace of your career growth, there is an organization with real solutions. We are International Speakers Network and we know what it takes to succeed in this business.”

The email went on to make other claims, none of them outlandish. It didn’t say they would make Corky into a millionaire, as so many come-on’s do. In fact, its claims were rather tame by Internet standards. They did say, “We specialize in Career Development, Marketing, Consulting, Graphic Design, Publishing and BOOKINGS!”. They also offer an upcoming weekend workshop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Heck, I’d go to Gatlinburg in the spring just because it’s so gorgeous there in April.

So, should Corky sign up with this network of international speakers and possibly hire them to do some marketing, consulting and graphic design for him? How the heck can he know if they’re legit? Let’s apply a few simple smart online shopper rules to find out.

The first rule of smart shopping is to get independent information. Think of all the stories you’ve heard about the rip-offs in telephone marketing. People have lost the life savings to smooth talking salesmen who have offered them “guaranteed investments that simply can’t fail.” In every case, if the people receiving these calls had spent time confirming the claims of the salesmen, they might not have lost their shirts.

So, Corky’s first move is the right one. He should not respond to the email immediately. When it comes to email these days, the practice called “phishing” has polluted the entire email market for even the legitimate marketers. (“Phishing” is the practice where the bad guys make their email messages look like those of  EBay, Paypal or your local bank – and then exploit your gullibility to steal your savings or your identity).

The International Speakers Network email offer includes links to their site within the email and even three attachments. It is crucial if you are going to protect yourself from spam, viruses and even identity theft to NOT open attachments from an unsolicited email and to NOT click on the links within those emails. The Speakers Network may well not be a “phishing” approach, but get independent information first.

So, leave the email behind and start your search for more information right where millions of people do – with Google (or Yahoo or Ask.com). Make sure you use quotation marks around the phrase, “International Speakers Network,” – if you don’t you’ll get (and I’m not kidding) 54 million results. If you do use quotation marks around the phrase, you will get 262 results – and results that refer to this particular organization. (for more on this topic read “Please Don’t Write Dopey Google Stuff”)

The first Google listing is the web site for the International Speakers Network, and since you are no longer within the email, feel free to check out their web site. Follow along at home kids, ‘cause you’re going to have to make your own decisions about what you see on their site. Be sure to click on their examples and follow their links. Once you have done this, you’ll have a better idea of the quality of the organization and their abilities. However, whether you think they look highly professional, amateurish or somewhere in between, you still have more work to do.

Before we go further with the Google results, let’s do some snooping by searching three other areas – News, Blogs and Groups. You can do this easily by just clicking on each of the tabs for “News,” “Blogs” and “Groups” (the latter two are under the “More” tab right there on the Google home page). The results are scant, to say the least – nothing in news, a couple of blog references and one mention in groups. This could be a good thing – at least they haven’t made the news in a negative way – or received a roasting from their customers (think Dell computers).

You should also search Google’s News Archive – which can be reached from the Google News home page – look for the link that, yeah, says “News Archive Search.” The results, even for news about this company, again are scant – so you’ll need to be the judge.

Back to your main Google results, now. A few of these results have links to some speakers who claim membership in the International Speakers Network. In many cases, their contact information is included, so go ahead and call them or email them. Find out directly if they are satisfied with their membership and the services provided. It is crucial to do this – most of the online and offline scams in the world work because people do not confirm the claims of the offer.

We can use one more search tool from our article “Please Don’t Write Dopey Google Stuff” by searching a few of the trusted sites we know that include information about speakers. Your Google (or Yahoo) search should look like this:

“International Speakers Network” site:nsaspeaker.org
“International Speakers Network” site:speakernetnews.org

What you accomplish here is a very quick way of seeing how often your search terms are mentioned on the sites you know and trust. In this case there are two results (both from speakers bios) at the site for the National Speakers Association and none on SpeakerNetNews.com. None of these results are conclusive, but the NSA site accesses the submitted short biographies of all of its members and only two members mention them. Go ahead and write or call these two folks, also.

We did a little “Beyond Google” searching just to help Corky out a bit more. Most of the information on the Internet is hidden in the “Invisible Web” and our membership to the James J. Hill Business Reference Library (jjhill.org) gives us access to lots of information that it is not possible to find on Google. Through them, we have access to Dun & Bradstreet’s Million Dollar Database – and confirmed that the company is, indeed, a real company and that its web site and contact information are accurate.

Our James J. Hill membership also includes a sophisticated “Onesearch” tool, which references such advanced news gathering databases as ABI/Inform and Proquest Newspapers. This search helped us find an article about the founder of the International Speakers Network, David Wright. The article, from the January 27 Knoxville News Sentinel, says;

“The business formerly held seven workshops per year with several in places like Dallas, Los Angeles and New York. Now, he said, they’re scaling back to about four sessions a year and will hold them regionally in cities like Knoxville and Atlanta. They’ll also feature celebrity speakers — the next workshop will include John Gray, author of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” — rather than just lesser known specialty trainers.”

No shame in re-focusing your business and the move may well have re-energized the company. In addition, they certainly can attract big-name speakers if they are getting John Gray to speak for them.

So, let’s review what we’ve done in Corky’s instance – because it would work in almost all instances.

1. Don’t click links or open attachments in unsolicited emails
2. Start your search for the company in a major search engine
3. Search also in the News, Blog and Groups tabs
4. Call or email the pricipals or those who give testimonials
5. Use advance search engine skills like searching by adding site:
6. Consider a premium paid database for business intelligence research and advanced news retrieval

Using all of this information, Corky has a decision to make. He has turned up some good information and he has found a few things to make him pause. Pausing is not bad, though. Corky’s last step, now that he’s armed with all of this information should be to give them a call, ask some further questions and then make his decision. That is, unless he just wants to visit Gatlinburg in the spring.