What Are You Doing Right Now
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@RojoLoco I used to install pro audio, I have first hand experience with AV sales people.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@RojoLoco That is exactly why I hate buying a car... It doesn't matter what I end up paying for it, I always feel screwed.
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/confessions-of-an-auto-finance-manager.html
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CIn the case of the plumber, in this situation he is the IT person. He is paid by you to do the research based on your stated needs. You hope that you hire an honorable one, just like you hope you hire an honorable IT person.
The plumber is not a sales person in this case.
Think about it this way. You want to remodel a bathroom. Just like your office needs a new server (or maybe doesn't). The plumber / it person should do everything in their power to get you the best solution they can.
There are only two conversations you should have with a sales person - 1) please give me information about your product, 2) ok I want to buy something, give me your best price...haggle.
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@Dashrender said:
CIn the case of the plumber, in this situation he is the IT person. He is paid by you to do the research based on your stated needs. You hope that you hire an honorable one, just like you hope you hire an honorable IT person.
The plumber is not a sales person in this case.
Think about it this way. You want to remodel a bathroom. Just like your office needs a new server (or maybe doesn't). The plumber / it person should do everything in their power to get you the best solution they can.
There are only two conversations you should have with a sales person - 1) please give me information about your product, 2) ok I want to buy something, give me your best price...haggle.
Yes, I think my good experience are with consultants who are selling me stuff, not sales people.
Like the HVAC guy we recently used. He sold me this and that. But he seemed nice enough. When the bill came, I almost fell on the floor it was so low.
He charged less for 2 pounds of freon, 3 hours of work, and the 2 things he sold me (to stop the lights from dimming in the house when the AC kicks on) than the previous guy almost charged for the freon.
See, yes, I got screwed by the first guy, but pleasantly surprised by the second. So that's the guy I TRUST and will keep calling.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Now an InFocus sales guy has popped in.
Ha I just made it there. Maybe I should pop in and sell them one I find on Amazon.
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Unlike @scottalanmiller -- I have no problems asking a sales rep, or a sales engineer, or a product engineer to point me at the right type of product for what I want to accomplish. As someone else said, "Trust but verify". The sales rep (especially one at a place like CDWG that deals with a lot of products) will likely know more about the types of products they have, and be able to get more technical folks involved if necessary.
After getting their answer, you then talk to another sales rep elsewhere and ask the same question with the same details and compare Vendor A and Vendor B (IE: CDWG vs Insight).
CDWG had a damaged relationship with my last employer because of some problems we had with their sales staff. After a lot of turnover, they got us a new rep (we had been going to other places for a long time at that point), and then he set about repairing their reputation with us. We would ask the new rep for some recommendations for say... Office computers. He would give us a spread of options and a list of prices, and then the IT Team would talk about it and check with other vendors and compare.
A lot of times for us (due mainly, to the size of the orders), CDWG was the winner in the quotes. Keeping in mind that was for office machines... What is wrong with that approach?
We didn't blindly go with what the sales rep said. We talked about it as a team and made our decision based on input from one another, and sales reps at the competing companies and the price tag that we were looking at.
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One of my biggest complaints was right there in the OP - the CEO saw something at Best Buy - now go find me an option that I should use in my business for that same or better price.
This happens to me frequently enough - Hey I saw a laptop for $299 at Best Buy - go get it for me. Then you have to take the time explaining that it's consumer level hardware and software and that assuming you did buy it you'd have spend $100+ upgrading to to Windows Pro, and the machine only has a one year warranty (which might be fine) and the fact that vendor will never support more than the OS which is on it now (which today might not actually be a problem if it comes with Windows 10 - the Last Version of Windows). It might not have an SSD, etc, etc, etc...
Then you point him to a $800-1000 unit and they are like OMFG! Why is this 3x as much?
Sigh!
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@Dashrender said:
One of my biggest complaints was right there in the OP - the CEO saw something at Best Buy - now go find me an option that I should use in my business for that same or better price.
This happens to me frequently enough - Hey I saw a laptop for $299 at Best Buy - go get it for me. Then you have to take the time explaining that it's consumer level hardware and software and that assuming you did buy it you'd have spend $100+ upgrading to to Windows Pro, and the machine only has a one year warranty (which might be fine) and the fact that vendor will never support more than the OS which is on it now (which today might not actually be a problem if it comes with Windows 10 - the Last Version of Windows). It might not have an SSD, etc, etc, etc...
Then you point him to a $800-1000 unit and they are like OMFG! Why is this 3x as much?
Sigh!
I get that a lot when people ask about a Mac for their kids.
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@BRRABill said:
I get that a lot when people ask about a Mac for their kids.
You get what?
Actually a Mac doesn't have this problem (other than - why is a MAC more expensive than a Windows machine). Apple only has one line of laptops/desktops/etc. And they are all expensive. Apple doesn't make low end shit.
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@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
NOOOOOOooooo --
blipFixed that for you.
"The Internet" is back on. RAID battery replaced, failing hard drive swapped out. You may now proceed with your regularly scheduled program
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It's amazing how lazy I've become. I complained because I can't use ansible to update my jump box. I have to log in manually because it has 2FA.
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@johnhooks said:
I use vendor's all the time to do the footwork. In the end, if they get greedy with markup, I finish the project, but a lot of times if they can do the research and come in under popular sites like Amazon or Newegg, I buy from them. Your CEO doesn't understand anything but $$$.
That's what he's supposed to understand? The first 2 sentences are about saving money (getting it where it's cheaper) and then he bashes the CEO for being concerned about money?
Yeah, the CEO asks him to do something super simple: run to the store and get a cheap TV that meets some basic needs.
He doesn't run to the store and he specifically does something that is anything but cheap.
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@Dashrender said:
There are only two conversations you should have with a sales person - 1) please give me information about your product, 2) ok I want to buy something, give me your best price...haggle.
And 3) verify information like compatibility, in stock-ness (new term I made up), time to delivery, news about old stock deals or new upcoming items, let me know about current sale items, etc.
Sales people can add a lot of value, you just have to use them for the value add rather than the value removal items.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
CIn the case of the plumber, in this situation he is the IT person. He is paid by you to do the research based on your stated needs. You hope that you hire an honorable one, just like you hope you hire an honorable IT person.
The plumber is not a sales person in this case.
Think about it this way. You want to remodel a bathroom. Just like your office needs a new server (or maybe doesn't). The plumber / it person should do everything in their power to get you the best solution they can.
There are only two conversations you should have with a sales person - 1) please give me information about your product, 2) ok I want to buy something, give me your best price...haggle.
Yes, I think my good experience are with consultants who are selling me stuff, not sales people.
Like the HVAC guy we recently used. He sold me this and that. But he seemed nice enough. When the bill came, I almost fell on the floor it was so low.
He charged less for 2 pounds of freon, 3 hours of work, and the 2 things he sold me (to stop the lights from dimming in the house when the AC kicks on) than the previous guy almost charged for the freon.
See, yes, I got screwed by the first guy, but pleasantly surprised by the second. So that's the guy I TRUST and will keep calling.
Exactly. I assume that the HVAC guy was getting paid. That's the key difference. Yes, there can be situations where you accidentally pay a sales person, whoops. But hiring a professional on an hourly rate whose explicit job is to advise you and represent you who might also sell some stuff does technically make them a salesman (as you said, everyone is to some degree) the advice is supposed to be coming from their paid consulting aspect (unless they state otherwise.) It's a social and generally legal contract.
Same with NTG, as an example. We are consultants, we don't make our money selling things. Technically you can buy some things from us... like MS Office 365 or hosted phone systems or AetherStore products. But there are some things that keep these from being problematic in the consulting process:
- The items are small and do not financially influence the conversation. Getting you to use us for just one more hour is far more valuable to us as a company than selling you pretty much anything. We work with long term customers, not one time "stopped in to get a deal" people so a sale that isn't valuable to the customer could hurt us a lot when the sale might only be worth $5.
- The consultants and engineers see zero commission. Zero. The only commission an engineer can make is from bringing in a new customer, not selling things to that customer. There is no financial incentive for the people giving the advice to skew things to make a sale. I doubt most even know what we sell. Just as @gjacobse if he knows that we can sell Meraki. I bet he doesn't.
- The consultants' jobs are to consult, not to sell. They have no corporate, social or legal mandate or even suggesting that they are to sell anything. They are customer agents, not vendor ones. But they do have the opposite: a social, legal and corporate mandate not to.
- Professionalism. The same professionalism that makes sales people ethically bound to sell makes consultants ethically bound to not sell when it doesn't benefit the customer.
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Having a bad day!
Can't get Windows 10 Deployment sorted!
It's my wedding anniversary! (Don't ask basics we and wife not together at the moment)
Got a headache (only a small one)
Got a CRM Developer moaning about his laptop because he's a pain and want XYZ so we bought one and it's not right!! -
@dafyre said:
Unlike @scottalanmiller -- I have no problems asking a sales rep, or a sales engineer, or a product engineer to point me at the right type of product for what I want to accomplish. As someone else said, "Trust but verify". The sales rep (especially one at a place like CDWG that deals with a lot of products) will likely know more about the types of products they have, and be able to get more technical folks involved if necessary.
After getting their answer, you then talk to another sales rep elsewhere and ask the same question with the same details and compare Vendor A and Vendor B (IE: CDWG vs Insight).
CDWG had a damaged relationship with my last employer because of some problems we had with their sales staff. After a lot of turnover, they got us a new rep (we had been going to other places for a long time at that point), and then he set about repairing their reputation with us. We would ask the new rep for some recommendations for say... Office computers. He would give us a spread of options and a list of prices, and then the IT Team would talk about it and check with other vendors and compare.
A lot of times for us (due mainly, to the size of the orders), CDWG was the winner in the quotes. Keeping in mind that was for office machines... What is wrong with that approach?
We didn't blindly go with what the sales rep said. We talked about it as a team and made our decision based on input from one another, and sales reps at the competing companies and the price tag that we were looking at.
I could go on for days as to why there are problems with this process, but here are a few:
- Unless you do this purely after and additionally to all of your own research, you are easily led astray. How do you oversee this process if you do not already have the answers?
- Salespeople have the job of misleading you to buy more than you need. Soliciting them to do so is tempting fate. You are tempting sales people to see if they can break your stamina or not or if they know more than you. Sure, you can resist this, but will you? I know that if I walk into ten car dealers and ask them all to show me what they got, even if I don't need a car I will walk out feeling like I do and I might just buy one. Because they are good sales people and I am human. To avoid having this happen, I don't go car shopping without knowing what I need and roughly what I want to buy. When I do talk to a salesman, I don't ask advice, I ask to test drive. The salesman is kept at arms length and I still do the deciding myself. When I bought my Chevy Spark ($13K) the dealer tried to talk me into the Corvette that they had the moment that they ran my financials. It wasn't about what was good for me, it was about what made commission.
- You might drop a vendor for a bad sales process, but remember that the sales people just move between them and it was the sales person that you were unhappy with, not the vendor. Every vendor is the same - the sales person is commissioned. So they act individually and the only thing that changes is the amount or type of commission.
- Every vendor is incentived from the same upstream vendors in the same ways. If one vendor upstream is having a huge high margin promotion, every downstream will react in the same way and even going to three or five or twenty resellers and asking for quotes will often result in the same misleading information based on the upstream vendor promotions. You do not mitigate this risk in this way.
- All vendors see similar margin ratios. This is a well known issue. No matter how many vendors you talk to they will always push SAN-based IPODs. The process of asking vendors for IT advice is what created the IPOD in the first place as it is the cheapest way to sell a SAN which has the highest margins. They all did it and millions of companies that were doing exactly this process fell victim to this design because it is the natural result of combining sales people giving advice, no IT checks and balances and the nature of storage margins. It is also what pushed RAID 5, all based on sales margins.
- Low cost products and free ones are not represented by sales vendors, as there are little or no margins so no means for them to get paid to sell them. If looking at software this would be a disaster as the landscape would shift from free to very expensive almost instantly. For everything. And low cost products that don't have a large number of resells would get missed as a product category. We see this all the time on SW as people do an RFP process and every time they miss the most obvious solutions for their problems because those solutions are free and going through sales people means that free or super low cost solutions, no matter how appropriate, were effectively eliminated from consideration.
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@BRRABill said:
That's about my point.
Giving them carte blanche and doing what they say is just dumb.
Of course, but even without a carte blanche how do you both use them and verify? The process of verifying requires you to do the full work and not use them. Having them do the work additionally and only after you have made decisions to reduce influence might be a decent double check, but unless you have completely above being influenced, I'd argue that it is more dangerous than it is useful. Just look at SW, even once people know why something is bad, sales people influence them dramatically. Sometimes with kickbacks and such.
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@Dashrender said:
One of my biggest complaints was right there in the OP - the CEO saw something at Best Buy - now go find me an option that I should use in my business for that same or better price.
Except.... it's a TV.
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@Dashrender said:
@BRRABill said:
I get that a lot when people ask about a Mac for their kids.
You get what?
Actually a Mac doesn't have this problem (other than - why is a MAC more expensive than a Windows machine). Apple only has one line of laptops/desktops/etc. And they are all expensive. Apple doesn't make low end shit.
Or they ONLY make low end shit. It's the high end that Apple is missing. Just because they only make one thing doesn't make it high end. Nor does that it is expensive.
