Complaint Review: New Clients Inc. -

For an accountant, finding new clients is difficult, complex, and based on chance, but NCI claims to have a formula that makes it simple and straightforward. All you have to do is pay for their service and follow the program. It sounds too good to be true, and it is. That does not mean the burden and blame fall on those who lose money because of their false promises. The fact is, NCI are the ones selling a service, taking advantage of people’s frustration and credulity. They grossly understate the risks involved with their service. In fact, what they are selling is the elimination of risk, which seems like a godsend to anyone who works in a tenuous field. NCI is not a godsend, but they will happily collect your money based on your that belief they are. Therefore, I find it necessary to take them to task for their practices.

As you would expect, a fundamental part of their marketing is the claim that all their clients, so long as they follow their program, have been successful. They’ve got (mostly undated) testimonials to prove it. And why wouldn’t that be the case? It’s a guarantee! In retrospect, this claim is troubling, even if one takes it at face value: if you aren’t accumulating the guaranteed two new clients a week, it’s probably somehow your fault. If, in three months, you don’t obtain the projected ~$12,000/month in revenue (not income, revenue) it’s definitely your fault. My revenue was $600/month, my overhead $8,000/month.

Again, this assumes everyone who sticks to the program is guaranteed success. I’m willing to bet that’s not true, even according to the conditional language they use. I mentioned parenthetically that their testimonials are mostly undated, and this is nontrivial. They’ve been in business twenty-eight years, and the focus of their marketing program is cold calling. It’s extremely obvious that the progress in communications technology over that time has changed the way people find professionals for hire. Needless to say, people are less receptive than ever to telephone solicitations. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that, as humans who exist in the world. This is common sense, but the reason I’m bothering to spell it out is that NCI’s whole program is based on the unspoken, implied idea that common sense about the present we inhabit isn’t true. And it is unspoken—they don’t acknowledge that cold calling seems archaic, sure, but it’s actually effective. They just choose to ignore the obvious datedness of their program, rather than changing it substantially. How have they adjusted? They require you to have a website. Still, the web presence hasn’t displaced cold calling’s position in the NCI program. The website is, at best, supplemental to cold calling. If your appointment setters actually find a receptive (or polite) person on the other end, they can tell that person to learn more by visiting your website.

Their guarantee proved to be ludicrous. After three months, the point at which I gave up, I had obtained three clients, who generated ~$600 in billing a month. At this rate, had I continued the program for the full two years, it would’ve cost me ~$250,000, and gotten to the point of ~$60,000 in annual client billings. They guaranteed $300,000 in billing over two years, and would only adjust what they charged me if I stayed with them for that long and did not achieve that. Granted, I did not stick with them the full two years, and they did not necessarily claim the growth would be smooth and predictable, but it was not an auspicious beginning. I could not see why, simply by continuing to follow the same program, the rate at which I obtained new clients would grow exponentially and ultimately match their goal. There was no reason for me to believe it would change for the better, considering also when I reported my troubles to them, they did propose any solutions that would logically change the course of things. After I complained it was not working, they offered to hire a new crew, and/or add a third appointment setter.

I doubt any of the people involved with NCI will lose sleep over this review. Judging by the other reviews, at best, one of them will write a blustery response. In it, he will point out the many ways I flouted the clearly prescribed program, therefore invalidating my right to complain and negating any of my claims of its ineffectiveness. I also assume he will comb the details of my review, down to the language I used, so he can find any reason to call my character and reliability into question, again to illustrate that I have disqualified myself. (By making these assumptions so overt, I am really lobbing one over the plate for him, as if assumptions, with far less basis than these, weren’t the very core of his business.) Still, I write this report in the hope that you, a fellow member of my profession, will have a healthier dose of skepticism about the claims NCI puts forth than I did, perform a simple web search, and find it before making the same expensive mistake.