17. Red Flag: No knockout

Don King Productions, which promotes boxers and fights around the world, needed a Web site with a user-friendly home page, postings on boxers and upcoming bouts, and listings of upcoming events. Sounds easy, but when the company handed the project to a one-man Web firm, it got a proverbial punch in the face. After being paid a monthly fee for about eight months, the consultant came up with a site that was difficult to navigate and uninteresting to visit. To make matters worse, the consultant was hard to reach when the company needed him the most. Don King Productions flew the consultant from his office in North Carolina to its Deerfield Beach, Florida, headquarters, where he tried unsuccessfully to correct the problem before the company showed him the door.

Lessons Learned: Do your homework. "You really need to be careful about who is selling themselves to you," says Don King Productions' Greg Fritz. "From now on, until we can see the proof . . . we're not impressed."

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16. Broad appeal	18. Top speciality consultants