It’s Salsa’s 8th birthday, I’m feeling nostalgic, so I thought I’d share a little about our young history.

August 25, 2003.  8 years ago today I sat at a 2nd hand desk in a spare bedroom (well, it was spare after we moved our 4 month old daughter into our room) of our 2 bedroom unit in Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs.  I stared at the screen of my 3-year-old self made PC, rolled up my sleeves, and started working… with absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Previously I was a lead developer for a large IT services firm.  I was made redundant during the DotCom bust, then spent a couple of months pondering life with my Fiance Nicole and our new baby Sienna – I actually considered getting out of IT all together.

My good friends Phil & Alfred asked me whether I’d be interested in running a new business idea they had – selling & building thousands (!!??) of websites using open source software for $99, and making money off the hosting & support.  Wow, how things have changed…

We hired our first employee a few weeks later (Murat, designer – family of course), then our second (Emil, developer – a close friend, who has recently re-joined the Salsa team actually!), then Nicole kicked us out of the house.

2004. We leased our first real office which was above a mechanical workshop in Northcote for $150/week, and then hired Conan & Hiroo, and shortly afterwards, Matt.  They helped us make a name for ourselves, and thankfully I’m still in touch with them (in fact I had a beer with Matty & Hiroo on Friday afternoon, along with half a dozen or so other x-Salsa employees).

2005. Over the coming year we met some amazing clients that had faith in us, and allowed us to learn & grow, including www.melbourneweddingregistry.com.au, who we still work with today.

2006. We moved into our 3rd location in Lygon St, East Brunswick, where Phil joined the business full time as our SEO Manager (and cold caller – that was funny).  We hired our first Office Manager, Rachel, and a series of developers that were to transform the Salsa business yet again to the agency it is today, including Sammy, Nathan, Chris, Steve, Dan (x2), Nick, Modi, & Alex (R.I.P Big Al, we miss ya).

2008. We moved into our current premises in Fitzroy, and now have a team of 29 staff across 3 countries, and about 200 loyal customers.  The journey continues – we keep changing the business, introducing new services, meeting new clients, and making great friends along the way.  Our staff are the difference for us – they’re the real Salsa.

I love what I do, what Salsa does for our customers, and that we’re able to provide jobs to some special people.

Since starting Salsa, I married my Fiance and we’ve had a couple more kids – my life has been amazing because of Nicole, and what Salsa has allowed us to do.  Nicole would kill me if I put a photo of her here, but here is one of our kids.

Adam DeGiorgio.

We take on a lot of customers that have come from bad (digital provider) relationships.  We have over the years lost a handful of customers for the same reason (not very often thankfully!).  In almost every case, I think the problems can be avoided by adhering to a few principles in how you deal with your digital agency (and how your digital agency deals with you too of course!!).

It’s all about a relationship of course – built on trust first and foremost.  The sales process usually helps get this sorted, and you choose someone you feel you can trust.  Once you’ve chosen the lucky company you wish to partner with, here are some tips to help the relationship last as long as possible.

1. Understand your warranty – Unfortunately many customers expect a website to have an unlimited warranty (or a long warranty period), and for the website to work as it did on day 1.  This isn’t the case.  Providing a website is like buying any other piece of software.   Websites live on servers and computers which change every day.   The software which drives your website (web server, database etc) is under constant maintenance and upgrade by your hosting providers.  Because of this changing environment in which your website lives, your Digital Agency partner will almost always place a time limit on warranty fixes.  This is often <90 days in length.  Therefore it’s important to get all your testing done during the warranty period to ensure everything is fixed within the price.  For a website, the provider will fix bugs after the expiration of the warranty period, but it needs to be paid for.

2. Understand your IP ownership rights - About 25% of the new clients we take on come from clients that have been burnt by the cost of having to revert to the software author of a proprietary content management system (CMS) which cannot be edited by you, or your chosen software developer (if that isn’t the original provider of the CMS software).  There are sometimes huge (tens of thousands a year!) license costs associated with these proprietary CMS systems which may be running your website, which cannot be avoided – and in some cases, you also can’t take the site elsewhere and are stuck with the original CMS vendor. Ouch!

3. Don’t be rude – Rude or aggressive emails which are personally insulting and take the focus off the issues and place it onto the people, rarely evokes the most helpful and useful response.    We hold ourselves to high standards of courtesy and professionalism at all times.  A polite but firm customer who points out problems and demands a sensible strategy to fix them, will ALWAYS get a better result, than a rude or insulting client who vents frustration and burns relationships in the process.

4. Remember its a partnership – As much as all businesses want more customers, this is a two way street.  Service providers are looking for long-term customers, and you are no doubt looking for a long-term service provider.  To achieve this requires productive, positive, supportive and respectful relationships.

5. The golden rule – It goes without saying that we all need to show respect, honesty, transparency and ethical behaviour in business.  If you treat your agency as you’d like to be treated – put yourself in their shoes – it usually all works out just fine.

There are a bunch of new technologies popping up (is it just me, or do they sound like ice-cream flavours? Just me? OK).

My head is spinning trying to keep up with all the latest and greatest.  I’m enjoying it; loving learning new things.  I’ve included a few items in this post, with my understanding of what they do, and some opinions on how useful they are/not, or might become…

Quora.com. Their home page describes it nicely – “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”.  Basically someone posts a question, and people answer it.  Others then comment on, or vote for the answer.  The goal is that it will eventually create a useful body of content for people to use to find answers to common questions.  I guess it’s kind of like Google, except utilises the “crowd sourcing” concept to gather comments and votes to determine what is ranked higher, compared to Google which uses in-bound links & content to determine which results are given priority.

RockMelt.com. ANOTHER web browser!  If it is as good as it claims, I think it will be awesome (except for their terrible logo). I already run 3 browsers – Firefox for business, Chrome for personal, Safari to run my Google calendar. I’d likely drop Safari and use Chrome for Google Calendar, and perhaps rockmelt for personal if its good enough.  I’m waiting for my early access invite to arrive, but from watching the video on their site.  It appears to do something I’ve been whining about for ages – bringing all your social experiences together.  LOVE that idea. Can’t wait to try it.

blekko.com. (still in beta).  A new search engine. Are they bloody crazy?  Actually, it’s pretty cool.  Will it last? Who knows, it’s pretty out there!  The CEO seems like a nice guy (watch his demo video), so I hope they do.  Pretty tough competition – they’re striving to become “the 3rd biggest search engine” (to Google & YouTube I guess).  The short of it: each site in the search index is tagged with keywords. When you do a search, you can use a slash ‘/’ to refine or order your results based on those tags.  For example, search for “web developer”, then add /design to find those that also have a design team.  You can use /date to sort chronologically.  Blekko also has some pretty cool SEO features – allowing you to easily view links into a site and also SEO information.

If you have experience with any of these tools, and/or have an opinion on them, I’d love to hear it.

It’s become one of my new years resolutions – reduce interruptions.  As if there weren’t enough interruptions in a day; then came blog subscription notifications, Twitter, Facebook, an open plan office… etc, etc.  If we’re not talking to someone, we’re consuming media of some sort – all the time!  Don’t get me wrong, I love it – the digital age is incredible, but sometimes it drive me nuts. It scatters my thoughts.

I love interacting – it’s how I learn, grow (& sell!).  I just can’t help but notice how much more effective & productive I am when I’m not interacting!  It needs to be very, very carefully managed.  In fact, I think the ability to manage interruptions can seriously affect a career or a business.

If I’m in a “interrupted state” it’s really hard to focus on writing an important email, or proposal – things end up being done superficially, and without enough consideration.  This also extends to human interaction.  If you’re sitting with someone, having a conversation, or a quiet moment, and their phone is buzzing and burping constantly, distracting them from you – your interaction with them is also compromised.   How often do you get a message when spending time with your kids, and you whip out the phone to take a look?  People need to be present. Put down the iPhone and Blackberry and enjoy the personal company of the human(s) you’re sitting with right now (after you read this   ).

There are a bunch of other things to consider about having quiet time.  I’m compelled whenever I read something about these topics.  Here are some interesting thoughts to consider from others:

“If anything, it is having more choices that is driving more and more consumption. It’s our ability to fill those smaller time slots (like any idle moment of waiting in your life) with some form of media/entertainment (be it a quick glance of a Twitter feed or checking the sport scores on your mobile device)”.  From http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/you-do-this-more-than-sleeping-and-working/ – Mitch Joel.

This is a brilliant article – “A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers”.  From http://m.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-the-internet-makes-us-stupid-20100909-15383.html – Nicholas Carr.

Here are some things I like to do to help:

Turn off notifications

When I get a new tweet, instant message, email or blog post to read, I don’t really need to know about it immediately.  Turn off the notification settings on these apps, and watch your focus increase.  The world isn’t going to end if you don’t respond immediately.  People will come tap you on the shoulder if they need to.

Don’t answer/respond to your phone

I’ve removed my office phone from the Sales ring group.  I can still answer the phone if I hear it ringing, and feel like answering it, but my desk phone doesn’t ring all the time now.  When I get home from work, my mobile phone gets shelved at least for the “rush hour” – I have quality time to spend with the family.  If too busy at work, I turn it onto silent.

Don’t check your emails

If you really think about it, how many emails do you get that require an immediate response – anything that can’t wait a few hours?  And if something was urgent, wouldn’t they just call you?  Probably.  Give it a try – don’t click on the mail link for a few hours, you won’t explode.  I like to deal with emails first thing in the morning, in the middle of the day, mid afternoon, then end of day. 3-4 times per day is often enough.

Work remotely (not from home)

I often stop at a cafe I pass on the way to work – it’s usually quiet, they have big tables, good coffee, and free wifi. I can work there for as long as I want, without interruption.  I don’t work from home for various reasons.  I have 3 energetic kids, a talkative wife (bless her), and am easily distracted by the never ending list of stuff to do around the house.

Disconnect from the internet

The web is the cause of most of the interruptions in our lives – turn the wifi off on the laptop now and again – works for me.

Get up early

This is likely the most effective of all the techniques I use.  Not only are early mornings naturally void of most distractions, but I also find myself most aware, clear-minded and thoughtful at this time of the day.  I honestly think of my best ideas first thing in the morning – however rare they may be!

Lists

Oh man, I LOVE “Things” on my Mac.  There are heaps of ways to keep a list – write it down, use notepad, outlook tasks, to-do pads – whatever.  Just write stuff down.  If you think of something to do when you’re in the middle of something else, add it to the list.  Don’t distract yourself and go “do it quickly” – add it to your list quickly, clear your mind of it, then continue to complete the task at hand, and come back to the list later.

Don’t be shy to say you’re too busy

I used to be worried about what people would think if I said “sorry I’m a bit busy, can you come back later”. Or “just let me finish what I’m doing, and I’ll pop over”.  Guess what? They don’t mind!

Prioritise

Don’t take it form me.  Covey and Blanchard had theories on how to prioritise tasks – I have the Covey quadrant pasted on the wall in front of my desk.  Quadrant 1 are highest priority, then 2, and so on…

Here is a run down: http://tinobox.com/wordpress/productivity/todo-sorting-by-coveys-and-blanchardquadrant/

Carve out interruption time

While at work, I find that the interruptions can build up quickly.  I often ignore them for a while, especially if in the middle of something that I want to finish.  When I’m done, I might spend 10 minutes reading emails, responding to Tweets, etc.  I do this every few hours.

In summary…

Sometimes I think of it as a mini-holiday.  When you go away on leave, everything continues one way or another, without you.  There is heaps to do when you get back, but everything is generally OK.  You come back refreshed, energised, and ready to be productive again.  Removing yourself from interruptions is similar, on a smaller scale.  Remove yourself, come back with a fresh mind, a clear list of things to do, and get cracking again.

Of course, these are just ideas, and in reality, we must be approachable, flexible and effective communicators.  I find that if I remind myself of these guidelines every now and again, and carve out the important quiet time, I’m more effective, less agitated, actually sell more business, and offer better leadership than when constantly distracted.  Interruptions are very, very expensive for our businesses, careers, and more importantly, our personal lives.

Our rates are so high because *this* guy goes through bananas like you wouldn’t believe!!

There is an old adage that goes something like “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”… and this one … “You get what you pay for!”.  Ah, the cliches are endless.

Seriously though, we get this question a lot.  There are a lot of ways to answer the question, and a lot of theories around what a website is worth. After being in the industry for about 12 years now, I believe you get what you pay for (well that’s not true if you deal with a really big over-priced agency that can demand any price they like) … AND also believe that some businesses don’t need to spend a fortune on their website!

If your business is very small, doesn’t have a huge marketing budget, or doesn’t see the web as a strategic part of the business growth, and is a strong offline business (accounting firms are a good example of this), then it’s not likely you need to invest heavily in a web presence, and can get away with having it built by a freelancer or a small agency, however be warned…

I’ve compared digital agencies and freelancers in another post.

As the owner of a mid-tier agency, I can tell you categorically that we charge what we do, to survive.  If we charged less, we’d have to provide a less superior service (and compete with the commodity end of the market), or disappear.  Here is why:

1. Experience - what a surprise huh? Building websites isn’t just about slapping together a design and crunching out a few pages of code.  Anyone that’s had a bad website built knows that there are endless amounts of pain associated with a site that has been built poorly: It doesn’t render properly in the browsers it should; hosted in an unreliable environment; CMS wasn’t setup correctly so you can’t edit all the things you should be able to; the site doesn’t appear in the search engines; it looks unprofessional; usability is poor!  We’ve learnt all these lessons the only way – the hard way!

2. Staff – you’re buying a service, not a product.  The quality of the service you receive depends solely on the quality of the staff that are providing the service.  It’s all about the people you’re dealing with.  The larger, and more professional the agency, the more talented and expensive their staff will be.  There’s a reason more experienced staff are more expensive!  It’s like choosing an accountant – if you go to an inexperienced accountant straight out of school, they’ll be cheaper, and you’ll most likely get poorer advice than from an Accountant that has been working in the field for years.  Probably not a great idea considering the difference that could make to your tax return – why make the same mistake on your website?

3. Infrastructure – Salsa has a dedicated Program Manager who’s sole responsibility is to ensure projects are run to schedule, and to the highest standards.  Our support team is dedicated purely to helping customers maintain their sites after they go live (as opposed to trying to get our developers to support client sites while they’re busy on building new ones). We also ensure the staff are well looked after – we have someone that manages the office, the beer fridge is stocked, the coffee machine is ready for our next client meeting, organises team events, & client xmas parties.  Happy staff make great websites, which makes happy customers.

4. Quality assurance – about 3 years ago we heard a story from a client of ours that had a website built by another agency, which was lost about 90% way through the build cycle.  They had a server problem, and the site that had been worked on for 3 months, disappeared over night – no backup, no copy on a local machine. Nothing. They had to start from scratch.  More professional agencies have backup systems, version control mechanisms, project management tools, development-production synchronisation processes, testing infrastructures… the list goes on.

5. ROI – a site that doesn’t return any customers isn’t a lot of value.  There is a LOT to learn about creating websites that work.  From design (read Blog posts from our Creative Director to appreciate how important good design is – yet another example of amazing staff) to prominence in the search engines, to integration with back-end sales systems – they’re all important aspects of creating websites that work.  It’s not too hard to do the math on what a good website will return for you when compared with other marketing medium, but it’s futile if the site isn’t built with ROI in mind.

6. Your professionalism online – this may sound pretentious, but have you ever driven a BMW, then gotten into a Hyundai?  Not that Hyundai’s are bad cars – I actually think they’re exceptional value for money, but you’d obviously notice the difference in quality and experience if you had the M3?.   If your potential clients look at your Hyundai website, and your competitors BMW website, who do you think they’ll choose?  We’ve found that making a BMW quality website, while more expensive, ends up returning far more to customers in leads, inquiries and sales, and so we focus on delivering quality websites that sell.

BUT I JUST WANT A WEBSITE – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?!

Here is how you can decide – checkout the portfolio of the providers. Are they of the quality you would like?  Are they BMW’s or Hyundai’s?  Are their customers of a similar size/level of professionalism to you?  Maybe even call a couple of the customers – get some honest feedback.

Bottom line, if you get a price that is considerably lower, you should expect a compromise on some or all of the above.  That doesn’t mean you can’t get a cheaper website, but (wait for the Cleche) “You get what you pay for!”.  When ever we compete against agencies of a similar size to us, the prices are always comparable.

When we compete against smaller agencies, they’re always cheaper.  The clients that understand the difference, are the ones that we love to work with.

Most DIY projects end up either saving time OR money; rarely both.  Managing your own newsletter campaign, believe it or not, will save both of these precious resources.

Bockers & Pony (www.bockersandpony.com.au) recently saved a small fortune by managing their own newsletter marketing campaigns.  There are really good email marketing tools available now, allowing non-technical users the ability to create professional, html newsletters with very little effort.

Typically to achieve this, clients would write their content, select some images, send them to their agency with a list of subscribers, and then have the campaign constructed and sent manually.  The process of getting the content together, going back and forth with your agency a few times, run some tests, make some tweaks, etc, takes just as long as actually doing it yourself!

Tools like www.campaignmonitor.com and www.mailchimp.com allow the construction of these emails via an easy to use wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor.  The systems also integrate seamlessly with just about any website, so all subscribers, etc are stored directly into the email system, rather than having to be imported each time you run a campaign.  The unsubscribe functionality can also be integrated, meaning there is effectively no manual work required to manage your subscriber list.

Simple wysiwyg content editing

You’ll need to have an agency design, construct and test your email template once only, and you can then re-use that template over and over for each campaign you send out.

The cost of getting it setup right is typically about the same as having 2-3 campaigns sent by an agency – so you will recoup your costs very, very quickly, and create more flexibility about when you send your campaigns.

First thing to mention, is that it’s not often I see a business succeed with little or no money invested to get things started.  However it usually takes someone at least one try to learn this truth – and hopefully this Blog post will help save some time and pain in that learning process.

I always recommend engaging a professional agency (like us) to help execute a web project, as it’s often an important part of getting a new business up and running successfully.  This article is aimed at those that don’t want to spend that sort of money, and instead are looking for a cheap & nasty solution to help get them started.  Salsa doesn’t provide these services, but here is what we’ve learnt over the years.

Sorry I know it sounds cynical.

Once you’ve taken care of the paperwork (register a business name – https://online.justice.vic.gov.au/cav/br-home, and register your domain name – Google “cheap domain names”), you need to get a website built.

If you have $1,000 – $2,000 to spend on a website.

The cheapest way to get this done is to use a pre-existing Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, or Joomla, or Magento or OSCommerce for an eCommerce website.  You should then look to download free, or buy a template for the site, instead of paying for a custom design.

Some places to get templates from:

WordPress – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

Joomla – http://www.joomlashack.com/

Magento – http://www.silverthemes.com/

www.templatemonster.com is also a source of hundreds of themes, but the quality is inconsistent.

Once this is done, you need to then get someone to build it for you.  www.nachomedia.com.au can help put together a template website at low cost.  Or if you know a freelance developer, have them do it for you – should be around $1,000 for a WordPress/Joomla site, and $2,000 for an Magento/OSCommerce site.

They can probably help you with hosting also.

Credibility is important – so perhaps set up a 1300 number if you can – and have it direct to your mobile phone or land line – makes you look more professional, and doesn’t cost much.

If you have nothing to spend on a website!

Try setting up a Facebook page.  It costs nothing. See this post on how to do that: http://lazarus.salsainternet.com.au/2010/06/howwhy-to-create-a-facebook-page/

Take a look at Twitter also, if you have the time.

You can also redirect your domain name to your facebook page if you want to advertise the domain name, instead of the facebook page in your marketing collateral.

Get people to find you.

Once you’ve setup some sort of online presence as above, people need to find it.  To be honest, this is often the hardest part.

First, you should run a Google Adwords campaign (ads on the right side of a Google search results screen), as this is relatively low cost, and works instantly – you can setup a campaign, and get it running in a couple of hours – gets traffic to your site immediately.  You can check keywords, etc  at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

You can also read about how to setup a campaign here: http://www.salsainternet.com.au/adwords-explained.html

Once you’ve proven the model works online, you can start to work on getting the site to rank well in the free/organic listings in Google (left side of Google search results screen).  There are 3 things that make this work – Structure, Content & Links. More info on how this works here: http://www.salsainternet.com.au/search-engine-optimisation.html

You also want to put your web address on your business card, flyers, email signature, etc to help get the word out.

As mentioned, this approach in my opinion is speculative at best, but costs very little, so maybe it’s worth a shot for those that haven’t tried before.

Good luck!

As a digital agency, we often take over projects for clients that have previously been handled by a freelance designer/developer, and find us regularly coming across the same reasons for the switch.  It’s important to note, however that for some businesses, I believe it is a good idea to actually use a freelancer instead of a digital agency to save money.

It’s fairly obvious I suppose, but sometimes, freelancers are a good choice for sole operators, or businesses with smaller budgets.  They have much lower overheads, so can charge lower rates.  It’s important you’re aware of all the pros/cons of such relationships however.

Nimble – often a freelancer can be quite nimble in the way they operate – you get to deal directly with the operator/owner/designer.  Changes can often be accommodated easily, and work is done quickly (as long as they’re not working on too many projects at once).

Pricing – as I already mentioned, freelancers typically charge lower rates as they have lower overheads such as office expenses, project managers, marketing, etc.  You just want to make sure they’re highly experienced, so costs down blow out later (look for a fixed price quote, with a detailed inclusions list).

Support – some freelancers are able to provide really good support if they’re easily accessible.  If your freelancer has too many projects on the go, you may find that the support is poor, or non-existent.  A digital agency may also suffer the same problem, so it’s important to ensure they have a dedicated support infrastructure to provide the help when you need it.

Expertise – obviously using a freelancer means that you’re limited to the expertise of one person.  This may be suitable if you’re after a good designer only, or just an SEO expert, for example.  If you’re after a provider that can provide strategic input, a wider range of design skills (often they’ll employ more than 1 designer), online marketing expertise, larger scale development expertise (in case your business grows rapidly), high-end technical support, then you should consider using an agency.

Stability – freelancers sometimes disappear.  A large number of the new customers we get from freelancers are the result of them disappearing into an agency, or taking a ski trip to Canada.  This can sometimes mean your site disappears, or you suddenly have no support.   Agencies can also disappear, but if you do a little research, and you see that they have a load of happy customers, have been around for a few years, and the owners have a stake in the day to day running of the business, then you should be OK.

Contactable – Agencies are often a lot more contactable than freelancers, with a team of people that can usually help you.  Freelancers may be in meetings, working on an urgent new project, or just too busy!

In summary, freelancers may be suitable if your business is very small/not well funded, if the web is not a huge part of your business strategy, your business is in an experimental phase, or your company has an internal infrastructure to manage the freelancer.  Otherwise, go with an agency.

Consider all of the above, and make a decision that best suits your business.

We find that clients these days are not just after a website.  The web is often such a crucial part of their strategy, that they can’t afford to just hire in the skills once-off; they actually need to partner with a company and group of people that can join them on their business journey, for the long term.  It’s about building a relationship, and then maintaining it.  And like all relationships, it needs to be built on trust and strong fundamentals.  Here are 4 things to consider:

1. Ensure you’re confident in their abilities

Obviously, you need to check out their portfolio.  Often they won’t have clients in your specific industry, which is no big deal – you just need to make sure they design beautiful work, are familiar with the technology they’re using, and the sites they build are well presented and work well!  You should also speak to a couple of their key clients (3 or 4 if you can).  It’s helpful if they at least deal with businesses of a similar size to yours also.

Dodgy website salesmen also sell 2nd hand cars & stereos from white vans

Companies that have been around for a few years are more likely to be around for a few more.  The web industry is famous for having low barriers to entry – so many small businesses, or sole operators go out of business, creating huge problems for their clients  (For the record, about 20% of our new customers have come to us from this exact predicament!).  Do they have a solid team of professional staff members?  Decent office?  Do they charge enough?

3. Do you have a realistic price quote

If you get a quote that is considerably lower than the others it may be a sign of inexperience (they aren’t familiar with what it takes to get a good site built, and so under quote). The project may then become contentious later, when the developer invests more time than budgeted, and are very hesitant to cater for any alterations – could also become expensive for you.   You should look to get a fixed price quote if you can, and ensure your proposal covers the important items you need.

4. Do you like them?

You need to be able to get along! Like any relationship, you need to understand each other, trust each other, and be able to rely on each other.  Do they respond when you email or call them? Do you enjoy dealing with them?  Can you get easy access to the company stakeholders or key staff members when you need to?  I know whenever I choose a supplier I often rely on my gut (it’s not always right, but has served me fairly well over the years!)