Any experience with bluesteps.com?

Background (repeated from antother topic):
I am a CIO, managing a fairly large IT shop (500 people). I expect that if I move to comparable or better position elsewhere, the position is likely to be filled through a retained search (the other likely possibility is hearing of an opening through a peer, vendor, or former co-worker, but that is not likely unless I put the word out that I'm looking).

Question:
With a retained search, you are not likely to hear about it unless you have a relationship with the firm that is doing the search. Because of that, I'm trying to cultivate relationships with several of the largest firms.

In my target geography, the culture is to steer away from national service firms, and support local firms. This is true for IT consulting, accounting, etc, and is likely true for search firms as well. Because of that, it seems wise to have relationships with some of them as well.

Many of them encourage using Bluesteps.com (http://www.bluesteps.com/). This is a database of candidates, maintained by the Association of Executive Search Consultants, exclusively for retained search firms. It seems wise to be in this database, to make sure smaller firms can find me. However, it flies in the face of the excellent MT advice to not just post your resume around. Is bluesteps.com a different case, because of the nature of retained search?

Any advice or comments?

wisccio