Complaint Review: New Clients Inc - Mullica Hill New Jersey

NCI/Bruce gave us a 20-year old video, and required us to put it on our website as term of their "guarantee."

None of them bothered to even look at our website to notice this despite multiple complaints

None of them bothered to examine the material I sent back to them

NCI/Bruce walked away with $25,000 of our money

NCI/Bruce only realized the error after this exchange on Ripoff Report

Rather than accept responsiblity, Bruce blamed the DVD manufacturer

The DVD was dated a couple years before this whole exchange

Apparently NCI gave out bad DVDs for a couple years?

 i was hired and trained through NCI for a local CPA to sell bookkeeping services as a client services representative. I have two telemarketers setting appointments with business owners who need a CPA and are willing to meet with me. I can run between 15 and 20 leads a week and average only 2 or 3 closes. I was proud to make the NCI monthly newsletter at the end of my first year when i closed new client #100. I am now in my 5th year and i know that any decent salesman and tm team could do this for any good CPA in any market.

NCI would like to add a correction to our post from April 2^nd regarding our client Josh Wilcoxson. It came to our attention today April 3d that the sample video Wilcoxson posted in his complaint about NCI’s services was in fact the video we in error had sent him. For this we apologize to Josh for stating he intentionally tried to mislead accountants about the quality of this video.

The video mistake happened as a result of NCI being sent the old version of this DVD by the company that dubs all our videos. We should have checked this order when it came in but didn’t and will make sure to do so on all future orders. We have requested the correct current version of the DVD and will send that to Wilcoxson and any other NCI clients once we receive it.

Other than this DVD issue nothing else in our original post changes concerning what transpired between NCI and Wilcoxson and we stand by the balance of our rebuttal to his claims regarding NCI services.

Josh Wilcoxson entered into a contract with NCI on February 4, 2015 for our Client Acquisition Program. When NCI’s trainer Pete Borrelli arrived at this client’s office, the office start-up requirements were not in place at all. No permanent office was set up, no phones were in place, no website was established and the required printed material had not been printed. All of these setup requirements were covered in detail, per NCI’s normal procedures several weeks prior to our arrival on-site to begin the recruiting and training of Wilcoxson’s marketing team. Not exactly the image and preparation a new accounting should put forth. The failure on Wilcoxson’s behalf to present a professional image had a damaging effect on the hiring process. One of the appointment setters NCI recruited, who appeared to be a very good fit for the position, declined the job and we believe this decision was based on the poor image presented and the first impression made by Wilcoxson. Within just days of implementing the program Wilcoxson decides to change the phone scripts and marketing materials which jeopardizes the integrity of the program and essentially voids his contract.  It was a case of making radical changes to a proven process for bringing in new business clients. Wilcoxson may not believe that our program works, but he signed an agreement with us to implement that program. NCI has successfully worked with over 4,000 accounting firms nationwide and one of our more successful clients is located right in Josh Wilcoxson’s general market,  yet Josh decides that Josh knows better.

After paying NCI a substantial fee, just a few weeks into the program, Wilcoxson decides unilaterally to reinvent the program by tearing it apart and rebuilding it with their own concepts based on little to no experience in this type of marketing. The responsibility over why expectations were not met in this client’s experience should fall squarely on this client’s shoulders. Wilcoxson, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a CMA with an MBA, now claims he “didn’t understand our target market and offerings” which is perplexing, to say the least. This client made incorrect assumptions that led to improper and unrealistic expectations. The executed contract signed by Wilcoxson clearly states exactly what the program is designed to do and how it works. From the target market, to marketing procedures, to product offerings, the NCI program is explained in explicit detail on our website and in our promotional material which Wilcoxson received prior to executing his contract with us.  Furthermore, Wilcoxson chose not to exercise his right per the contract and utilize the dispute resolution clause to address any grievance, but instead decides to go public in an attempt to coerce NCI into providing a refund. NCI specializes in helping accounting and tax professionals by implementing modern, effective marketing techniques designed to help the firm acquire more small to medium-sized business clients. It is this particular client’s opinion that our sales material is obsolete. He is entitled to his opinion. Our results speak for themselves and speak loudly thanks to the thousands of accounting and tax professionals across the country utilizing our techniques and marketing materials to assist in growing their accounting practices.

We constantly update our material to provide our clients with the finest, most effective practice development programs available today. As recently as May of last year, NCI invested in recreating and printing the collateral material used in our marketing programs. To demonstrate Wilcoxson’s malicious intent with his post, consider that he knowingly placed a link to an outdated version of our SoftSell™ video that was originally published by NCI in 2001. This is a blatant attempt to purposely mislead accountants that NCI marketing materials are outdated. How Wilcoxson obtained this outdated version of our marketing video is unknown. To be clear, this is not the version of the video NCI provides to its clients any longer, and it is not the one we provided to Josh. This fact alone should convince anyone reading this of who is telling the truth here. We have updated that video multiple times and can provide the most recent version of the video produced in 2012 upon request. Extensive support from New Clients, Inc. was provided to Wilcoxson’s organization via face-to-face hiring and training, along with phone and email consultation. Support was provided up until March 15^th, 2015 when Wilcoxson breached his contract through his failure to make an agreed-upon $4,500 deferred payment to NCI.

To further demonstrate Wilcoxson’s unprofessional behavior, one need only look to his personal attacks on Bruce Clark, NCI founder and CEO, referring to Mr. Clark as a “head-in-the-sand embecile[sic].” Notice Wilcoxson’s reference to academia in his opening paragraph. His personal attack is symptomatic of an overeducated, under experienced person who, when confronted with facts, resorts to personal attacks. NCI trainer Pete Borrelli, who has 13 years’ experience implementing NCI programs and is the one who installed Wilcoxson’s program, categorically denies the claim that NCI personnel readily admit to the “shoddy quality” of our material. All of Wilcoxson’s lies and distortions were levied at NCI to obtain one thing, a large refund of the fee he has paid NCI to install and support the marketing program. This request was made several times in different emails and phone conversations with Bruce Clark. When his request was denied, he launched this baseless and slanderous attack. One final fallacy to dispel: NCI’s program does not target the bottom 10% of the small business market as Wilcoxson claims. Our programs targets the vast majority of this market, including new startup businesses and extending to companies doing $5,000,000 annually in sales with up to 19 employees. This is the largest segment of the small business market in the U.S. today and has been for the past 40 years!

NCI has provided our marketing services to thousands of CPA's and accountants nationwide over the past 28 years. We are extremely proud of our reputation having assisted thousands of accountants to build large, successful accounting and tax practices. Please visit our website at www.newclientsinc.com and view our video testimonials or call us at 800-338-0778 for an ample list of references.

Academia would brand NCI “nepotistic monopolist.” I do think they may have a somewhat honest offering for the following segment: CPAs looking to make their first forays into the concept of marketing and are comfortable serving perhaps the bottom 10% of the small business market in terms of customer sophistication and profitability. (Notice NCI’s performance metric is revenue, not profit?) If you do not have a sense of recent or impending changes to what success looks like in the accounting or marketing fields, you are in the right company.

A great litmus test: here is a link to their public-facing marketing video that they would have you post of your website in order to qualify for the revenue guarantee: https://vimeo.com/119818829 This video is very much representative of the quality and datedness of the program as a whole. Seriously.

For the rest of us, hiring NCI may not go down as a great move. Their compelling revenue guarantee is predicated on your championing their obsolete marketing activities, which we found infeasible. In raising these concerns, we experienced some of the most excruciating customer interactions imaginable today. Remember calling Sprint in the 90s? Imagine if their leadership was determined by heredity, and you will start to get a sense of the feeling of interacting with NCI (which is still sending mail to a temporary office we used for the first four days.)

In fairness, multiple members of their staff readily admit to the shoddy quality of their marketing and training materials as well as methodology. For example, before asking our employees to cross out and rewrite swaths of their printed training materials, NCI's most senior trainer apologized profusely for the quality of the training video. However the high-power-distance boss, Bruce Clark, is content to essentially play the role of the head-in-sand embecile. Our expression of dissatisfaction was met with emails addressed to the wrong person and descriptions of bizarre exercises Bruce spun up to demonstrate activity without displaying awareness of the underlying issues. Rather than hash out the entire awful experience here, I invite you to give me a call at 804.200.9870.  I have figured out the trick behind their positive references and why they should not inspire full confidence. Maybe NCI is right for you, but if you are a good person looking to get ahead, you deserve to know the full experience beforehand.

I have been an NCI customer for over 25 years.

I am requesting that you please identify yourself or please remove this post as Bruce is falsely accusing me of being responsible for your comments.

Bruce and I have amicably resolved and settled any differences between us.

Scott Sander

NCI provided all services as outlined in the agreement with this client as we do with all our clients.We offered to arbitrate the dispute as called for in our agreement but the client declined.In an effort to amicably resolve this we offered a refund to the client which he has accepted as full and final settlement.

NCI has provided our marketing services to thousands of CPA's and accountants nationwide over the past 27 years.We are proud of our reputation and have assisted thousands of accountants to build large successful accounting and tax practices.Please visit our web site at www.newclientsinc.com and view our video testimonials or call us at 800-338-0778 for an ample list of references.