INDUSTRIAL QUICK SEARCH (IQS) - Key Persons
Mike Meiresonne has been selling advertising into industrial directories since 1975: first at MacRAE'S Blue Book, then at U.S. Industrial Directory, and finally moving to Thomas Register in 1981 where he rose to become a senior sales contractor and was awarded one of the company's top ten sales franchises. Having reached this coveted position, with $6 million in sales revenue and 22 junior sales reps working for him, it is indeed remarkable - some might say crazy - that Meiresonne walked away from all this in early 2002. With one of his sales managers, Janet Pratt, he went to work full time at Industrial Quick Search (IQS), a company he had started on a part-time basis in 2000, and for a while had sold as a complement to Thomas Register advertising programs. Meiresonne's epiphany: that search engines were going to run right over traditional buying guide publishers who weren't adapting themselves quickly enough to the rising importance of search engines.