Plus Delta was just selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Business consulting category by the Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA). The SBCA program recognizes the top 5% of small businesses throughout the country, and this year’s program consisted of 5 million nominees in 2500 cities all across the US. Plus Delta is thrilled to receive this award – even more so than the Inc 5000 award which was based purely on revenue growth over a 3-year period – because it’s a true testament of all our satisfied clients who provided the positive consumer feedback required for us to win the award. For that very reason, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our clients who allow us to improve performance and implement positive changes in their organizations. Without you, we would not be here, let alone receive such accolades as this!
Did you know this award is a scam?
Scott, if you are going to make such accusations then please provide all the necessary documentation and links to support your claims. As far as we know everything is completely legitimate on all fronts and there is no entity that has scammed or wronged us in any way. If you have any relevant and credible information of which the community is unaware than please share such information with the community. We have found no reason to question that organization or anyone in it – quite the contrary!
I think the line between scam and baseless is slim. I talked with the guy running SBCA and he actually works for Microsoft in Phoenix, AZ. He told me that he was just starting the SBCA organization and was awarding the “Best of Business Awards” to raise money to help get them going. In the future he plans on providing a valuable service to small businesses but as of now they haven’t really done anything. The reality is the award is baseless. Meaning, SBCA has no recognition, no office, no phone system, no history, no affiliation with any known organization, and most important no accreditation. You could give yourself the same award and it would have the same meaning. The best thing to do is to look at your business and decide if you think it’s the best. How do you rate among your competitors? How long have you been in business? What are your revenues? What is your profit margin? What is the satisfaction of you and your employees? After answering these questions, if you say “I’m the Best in Business”, that’s all that really matters. Good Luck!
David,
After this discussion thread was started we looked deeper at the SBCA and — in the beginning — uncovered suspicions about it being a marketing ploy, but we researched it enough to satisfy our concerns.
We appreciate everyone's heightened awareness to “scams” like this on the internet and very much agree with you that it is in the eye of the beholder. We believe that we are doing great things with our clients and that we have much to be proud of. We're confident that we've done some things so well this past year that it tells us something that even a now-questionable organization like the SBCA would consider us an appropriate “target” for such a “scam.”
The Inc award clearly put us on the map thanks to our almost 250% revenue growth over the past 3 years, and it's likely the SBCA found us via Inc.
We recognize that for Plus Delta to be the “best” at what we do, we must be the best strategic partner for our clients and must continuously reinvent ourselves to meet our clients' evolving needs — we continually aim for this and challenge those around us to do the same. Thank you for sharing your perspective!
Dear PlusDelta,
You have been scammed and in turn you are scamming people into believing that you were awarded something based on what they purport to have a “selection committee” which they will not provide information for and their monthly surveys, consumer rankings and reports, which they also can't provide. The Inc award is legit, but I'm shocked that a business owner like you could defend such a baseless award as this one. And how do i know all of this, because I too was awarded this fictitious award after receiving the small business person of the year award from the actual Chamber of Commerce. These types of companies prey on small business, just like the “who's who” lists do. Nobody with any business acumen believes these and neither should you. You certainly shouldn't be announcing them because it makes you seem slimy, especially if the press were to get a hold of you announcing a fictitious award.
Hi Damien,
Thank you for your note. We recognize the frustration and potential damage that comes with being scammed and appreciate your efforts in bringing this to light. As you’ll see in the other comments here, we have heard about the possibilities of this from others and until now have chosen to maintain our position with the award. While the SBCA may not exist and may simply be in this to make some money, we are quite proud of the positive feedback we continually receive from our clients – as the Best of Business Award suggests – and specifically have not provided any money or other financial support to the SBCA. Given your charged comments though, we will now remove the SBCA logo from our website and other marketing materials. We will however leave this blog post as it stands so that everyone in our public community can see what has transpired here and thus make their own informed decisions about how to act in such situations in the future. We specifically do not want to filter your comments (even though we have no way of validating your claims). These online communication channels are evolving over time, and we at Plus Delta are proud to be a positive role model for their use in creating real dialogue between people.
Thank you again for voicing your concerns. Please feel free to share your real name and real contact info with us if you’d like to discuss the matter further. We do not want to invade your privacy but when you do not provide a full name or standard email address, at least to us privately (entering “[omitted]Up4fun@[omitted].com” does not strike us as your “real” email address), you hinder our ability to communicate with you. We encourage all comments, but particularly those who embrace the spirit of transparency and community dialogue in which we are all participating; therefore we have made it easy to do so by providing one of four popular login methods above the commenting box. One also has the option of entering their full name and standard email address below the commenting box, without fear of spam.
My company receives several legit awards each year. We submit to them or are nominated by our customers. I just received an email for the sbca, and of course notification via email has to make you suspicious. As a consulting company, i feel obligated to reach out if i see someone taken advantage of, so I'm not posting on your website for a negative reason.
Any real award is going to come from an organization you know and probably is in your geography or industry, you would be notified of being “nominated” prior to receiving the award, and you definitely would not be asked to pay for the award. You also would not be allowed to edit the award to say anything you wanted, as you can on the website–so you can pretty much order up any award you think of. I suggest you google “sbca award scam”…to date there are 5400 examples. Google w/o “scam” and you still get more examples of scam alerts than the victim businesses who posted the press release on their website. They simply wanted to sell a plaque, same as Who's Who selling you a book. I emailed a couple other companies who have posted the press release on their website and so far each one has confirmed that they now realize it is a scam and will be taking down the pr. The sooner businesses take it off their website, the quicker this scam will be closed down.
An award is only as valuable as who issues it and who you competed against to win it….and of course if you earned it. I'm sure you have a great company and can complete for an award in your industry or local SBA, but it's unfortunate you continue to believe this is of value. Once you do agree it's a scam, please post your confirmation on your site, I'm sure it will help close down this group.
Thank you Lisa for your comment. As you can see from all the threaded comments above, we've already looked into this as you have, and we have pulled their logo off our site and materials and suggest that others do the same.
Again, thank you for reaching out to the community to share your experiences. It's activity like this that generates the “5400” examples during a Google search in the first place. We wish you the best of luck for your company.