Dun & Bradstreet is a familiar name within the business world. I really don’t know much about D&B, but not long after being in business I was told I needed a D&B DUNS#. I think it must have been needed for some government related work we were doing. The process to register for it was not too involved, and I did it and once done, we received our own, personal DUNS# – a unique identifier for our business. It was not long after registering that I received my first call from a D&B representative who told me that someone had put information in my file and that it was imperative that I review it for accuracy and to correct any misinformation. I said, “Sure, I’ll do that; what do I need to do?” That is when the sales pitch started. “Well”, I was told, “to review the information you must pay for D&B Business Monitor services on an annual subscription. It all sounded so serious, so important, and I guess I was naive about this aspect of the business, so I signed up. I then reviewed the information, which was not negative, all innocuous, and not informative about anything. I then realized that it is more or less a scam to pay for such monitoring. I was able to call and cancel the monitoring, though enduring much arm twisting (if that can be done on the phone) to tell me I should keep it. Subsequently, on some periodic rotation, I get calls from them “wanting to help protect my business” when in fact, it is merely a disingenuous attempt to sell a service. I am left wondering why a D&B number is important. I still do not know. Companies can be identified by such things as tax ID numbers. If anyone knows why a D&B number is important, please let me know. Now, don’t get me started on the solicitations I’ve received from the Better Business Bureau…
Dun & Bradstreet is not a familiar entity for many people, including me, who are not “business types” like my partner. In fact, in order to be able to write my part of this post, I had to ask David to explain the purpose of Dun & Bradstreet to me. My familiarity with certain large organizations is often derived from working on their behalf when they are parties in civil litigation; other than that, the world of business is not something that usually interests me. David, in his role of managing the business aspects of Magnus, has far more interactions with a variety of people than me, including registering our company with organizations many people believe will help our business (including a recent registration with a women owned business group), as well as vendors and providers of professional services (such as our long time accountant and printer). When someone from a company such as Dun & Bradstreet call my company and ask for me, chances are their call will never get transferred to my extension, not because I am being rude, but because the person who answers the phone knows I will have no idea of who they are or why they are calling. Overall, I am unsure of the value of these registrations for my company and myself and, until I have to learn about them when they are involved in one of our cases, I prefer to have David do what he does best so that I may concentrate on doing what I know how to do. The bottom line of this post is to know one’s strengths and weaknesses and for me, this includes having David be the expert on Dun & Bradstreet.
Comments are closed.