Konnessi LLC is a 15-employee business founded in April 2010 by David Sisti. Konnessi is not his first venture, however; Sisti founded Equity Concepts Inc. at the age of 23 and served as the company’s president for 17 years.
Sisti has also served as CEO of Trust Life Settlement LLC since October 2009.
“Many people assume David’s business success has something to do with dedication and ambition, but those who make frequent visits to his office can attest that at least some of his success is built on a foundation of iced coffee and somewhat-organized chaos,” according to his biography.
PBN: You’ve gone against the grain, so to speak, founding Konnessi in 2010 when most people are content with hanging on to what they have.
SISTI: We started from dust. … It was just two of us in the beginning and me with a vision for what the company could become. I had learned innovative marketing and tech-focused business strategy during the nearly two decades I ran Equity Concepts. My friends realized the value of comprehensive Web strategy back when I was at Equity Concepts, and I often provided this type of support pro bono because, after all, these were my friends, and I had the opportunity to help them. I still believe very strongly that we provide unparalleled value to our clients. I realized that this was a marketable service and that, by offering it, I could really help businesses right here in Rhode Island to compete on a national level. We never sought formal funding – the idea was to grow organically and to earn every penny we needed to move to the next level.
The people who are with the company today have put in invaluable “sweat equity”; without their dedication and their belief in our mission, we never would have grown the way we have. I couldn’t have built the company the way I have without them. Today we have 15 full-time employees and 3-5 rotating internship positions for local university students. We grew incredibly quickly in a short period of time – for a while it was difficult to keep up with demand, and we were announcing multiple openings for new employees each day. What surprises me is that nobody thought of offering all the components of a total Web presence, along with expert business strategy, before we did.
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PBN: You’ve also recently launched the Small Business Web School which, from what I understand, offers the same services as Konnessi but specifically for small-business owners. Tell us about this venture.
SISTI: The two are similar, but the Small Business Web School was created with the small-business owner in mind – he doesn’t have a bottomless marketing budget, he wants to understand how his website works, and he wants to learn how to market his venture online. The Web School gives local entrepreneurs the tools they need to develop a web presence – we help them to set up a website and provide six months of classes on everything from site design to SEO, customer relationship management and social media.
The Small Business Web School caters to the niche market between the tiny mom-and-pop stores and the massive national brands with internal tech departments. As an entrepreneur myself, I can appreciate the struggle many owners are going through right now. Because I’m fortunate enough to have a strong background in technology, I have a unique opportunity to help other business owners, like myself, make the most of Web-based business strategy.
PBN: What is the most common mistake small-business owners are committing with their website?
SISTI: My philosophy is that the only thing worse than having no web presence is having a website that’s so bad you drive away potential customers. Web development isn’t generally something an entrepreneur can do on his own. It’s more than worth the investment to seek professional services. You’ll end up bringing in more revenue and developing your brand more quickly if you’re willing to collaborate with a web development firm like ours. In a similar vein, many small business owners don’t appreciate the value of a cohesive web presence, because they don’t understand the potential value it can generate. That’s why our focus is on a demonstrable increase in ROI.
PBN: One of your services is social media consulting; it’s is an obvious, low-cost tool for small businesses, but how do you quantify return on investment for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube? How do you know if you’re getting your “bang for your buck,” so to speak?
SISTI: Social media lends itself to product-focused analysis of changes in sales, so by tracking mentions and feedback, we can get a fairly accurate idea of which customers are buying which products. This helps us to adjust our strategy to bring in new clients through social media engagement, as well as giving us a clear picture of increased sales to show our clients. We also use a technique which will probably be familiar to law enforcement professionals – we always keep one fact to ourselves. When detectives publicize a case, many times they leave out a detail in hopes that one of their suspects will slip up and expose himself as the criminal. Similarly, we pick one product or service to promote and wait for the client to see results for himself. For instance, one of our clients is a Boston restaurant for whom we do extensive social media marketing. Without mentioning it, we started promoting one of his desserts, a special-recipe bread pudding. He commented that sales of this dessert in particular had skyrocketed recently, at which point we told him about our secret. By waiting for the client to see the results with his own eyes, we’ve already proven to him that our social media team is giving him “bang for his buck.”
PBN: What cutting-edge trends have you been observing in Web-development/Web-presence strategy recently? What trends will we see developing over the course of the year?
SISTI: Many companies have tried to implement web strategies by farming out different Web-based tasks – running a Twitter feed, tracking reviews on Yelp or blogging, for example – internally. This is problematic because the approach to social media is less uniform when several people in different departments all work on their own tasks, and because these individuals rarely have a strategy for building social media engagement.
More than anything else, the Internet has given power to individuals – bloggers, businessmen and self-designated news spreaders. Slowly, companies are beginning to realize that tweeting every hour is useless unless someone is there to read what you have to say.
By engaging individuals – people who are active in social networks and who are likely to spread the word about things they like – a brand or company can essentially let these social networkers become their willing ambassadors. It’s a trend I think will be adopted by other firms successfully in the near future, and one which we certainly embrace when providing services to our own clients.
