Stop Buying Hardware Before You Have Designed the System
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@Dashrender said:
And while we've hashed over this topic time and time again, I haven't gotten to the point where I fully accept that the end user is to blame when they buy something a sales person sells them.
Here is why I feel this to be so:
- The salesperson is not at fault as they (with exceptions, but generally) are completely above board and honest - they sell things, they are not engineers and not paid nor trained on what they are being asked to do. They are not IT people!!
- The salesperson has well known and understood moral and legal obligations to their employer.
- The salesperson has well known personal motivations to do a good job and get paid.
- The salesperson does not control the engagement.
- The attempted use of a salesperson to do the job of the IT person is completely controlled by the customer.
There is one and only one party with the power or choice to truly control the situation. And that is the customer. Only the customer can engage the salesperson as something other than a salesperson. Only the customer can attempt to get "free IT" out of a uncompensated non-IT person. Who else could be at fault?
(All assuming that the salesperson is not lying, which happens, but we are assuming the normal honest situations that we deal with every day.)
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@Dashrender said:
It's arguable that consumers (and IT) have the time/resources to spend on the massive amounts of research that it requires to get to the best/reasonable answer. Additionally not knowing what you don't know is a huge killer is making the right decision.
However, all of these things are what we hire IT staff to do. This is the job of IT. Sure, we might not have the necessary resources. But there is one party (the business) responsible for paying for that advice and another (IT) responsible for giving that advice. The fault either comes, as I see it, from the business trying to get away without engaging the necessary IT resources (internal or external) or an IT department either not able to do the work that they are tasked with doing or hoping to not have to do it.
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Much better example - Where we run into problems is the sales person asks us our current dilema and we tell them, and they propose a solution to that problem within their offerings. Now the question is, will they suggest the best, least expensive option within their offerings, or the most expensive they think they can get away with?
Also, because these projects can rarely only depend upon a single vendor for a holistic solution, perhaps this is the flaw in my desire to put some onus on the vendor. Only ourselves, or someone specifically working with our best intentions in mind (i.e. a consultant) is able to consider all vendors, but then we are back to the resource issue of the research.
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@Dashrender said:
Additionally not knowing what you don't know is a huge killer is making the right decision.I know I'm going to get a tongue lashing over this, but there it is.
Maybe for some of the other... but I agree with this last statement for sure. You have to be willing to admit when you are in uncharted territory and you don't know the answer to a question. That is when you absolutely must do your own research, and as you mentioned if you don't have time for the research, bring in a paid consultant to help you figure it out, not a sales person.
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@Dashrender said:
I know I'm going to get a tongue lashing over this, but there it is.
it's not that they don't have the resources, no one has unlimited resources. Everyone has to make due and decide how much to invest versus how much risk to take. There is a difference between making due and doing the best with what you have, which is what SMBs need to do and what the IT people are there to do for them, and trying to ignore that responsibility and hope that by burying your head in the sand that a salesperson will feel a personal obligation to take the responsibility upon themselves for no reason, defy their own self interest and their job, learn to do the job of IT and do the job that the company and the IT people at that company decided not to do already themselves.
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@Dashrender said:
Much better example - Where we run into problems is the sales person asks us our current dilema and we tell them, and they propose a solution to that problem within their offerings. Now the question is, will they suggest the best, least expensive option within their offerings, or the most expensive they think they can get away with?
That's true, but if we recognize that they are just trying to make a sale we can know to either not tell them about issues at all or to ignore them when they make recommendations.
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@Dashrender said:
Also, because these projects can rarely only depend upon a single vendor for a holistic solution, perhaps this is the flaw in my desire to put some onus on the vendor. Only ourselves, or someone specifically working with our best intentions in mind (i.e. a consultant) is able to consider all vendors, but then we are back to the resource issue of the research.
Exactly. IT is not a single vendor "just buy it" affair. If it was, we could do it all without IT staff.
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@dafyre said:
@Dashrender said:
Additionally not knowing what you don't know is a huge killer is making the right decision.I know I'm going to get a tongue lashing over this, but there it is.
Maybe for some of the other... but I agree with this last statement for sure. You have to be willing to admit when you are in uncharted territory and you don't know the answer to a question. That is when you absolutely must do your own research, and as you mentioned if you don't have time for the research, bring in a paid consultant to help you figure it out, not a sales person.
Or be willing to take the risk of having someone someone who is obviously acting mostly against your interest (salesperson trying to make money off of you) make the decisions on your behalf. That's a BIG risk and if you cross that line you should question your business goals and if this makes sense. Given that there are ways to get free advice, like here in ML, where the payoff to people is primarily is building reputation and publishing advice for many people and using issues as a learning experience rather than making money on a sale.... it is pretty hard to justify having a salesperson put in the position of doing the engineering.
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@scottalanmiller said:
- The salesperson is not at fault as they (with exceptions, but generally) are completely above board and honest - they sell things, they are not engineers and not paid nor trained on what they are being asked to do. They are not IT people!!
- The attempted use of a salesperson to do the job of the IT person is completely controlled by the customer.
The first point above is what I have issue with. If this was the case, the sales person would be nothing more than an order taker. You call, you tell them what you want, and they make a PO and you buy it. But that's not what happens at all. Instead they ask you all kinds of questions about your environment and then they pitch what they believe to be the best solution, within their product line(s).
If they limited themselves to only selling you want you ask for, or answer specific questions about products that you ask, then I would say the sales team has no onus on the situation at all.
But this is rarely the case. They use sales tactics to get you to do things you might otherwise never do, buy things you don't need. These tricks of the trade are difficult to avoid and protect yourself from. Sure some people can avoid them some of the time, but I'd say it's darn near impossible to avoid them all the time.
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@Dashrender said:
The first point above is what I have issue with. If this was the case, the sales person would be nothing more than an order taker. You call, you tell them what you want, and they make a PO and you buy it.
That's a cashier. Not a salesperson.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
The first point above is what I have issue with. If this was the case, the sales person would be nothing more than an order taker. You call, you tell them what you want, and they make a PO and you buy it.
That's a cashier. Not a salesperson.
So, what is the point of a salesperson in your mind?
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@Dashrender said:
But that's not what happens at all. Instead they ask you all kinds of questions about your environment and then they pitch what they believe to be the best solution, within their product line(s).
Right, they try to make a sale. That's the sales bit. But it isn't dishonest in any way or pretending to be an engineer. They are just pitching stuff to get you to buy it. There is no pretense of them actually assessing your needs, IMHO. You know that they are just selling what they have, they don't pretend to not be sales people.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Right, they try to make a sale. That's the sales bit. But it isn't dishonest in any way or pretending to be an engineer.
But it is pretending to be an engineer. They are providing a solution - that's engineering.
They are just pitching stuff to get you to buy it. There is no pretense of them actually assessing your needs, IMHO. You know that they are just selling what they have, they don't pretend to not be sales people.
I disagree, they do offer a pretense of assessing your needs. If you tell them that you have 1 TB of data and see a 1 TB growth over the next two years, they are going to try to sell you a 2+ TB system, most likely not try to sell you a 5TB system.
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@Dashrender said:
If they limited themselves to only selling you want you ask for, or answer specific questions about products that you ask, then I would say the sales team has no onus on the situation at all.
Well the problem there is that then they are account managers, but are they salespeople? Salespeople are there to push products. No onus, that's what they do. No need to read into it.
As the customer, you also normally control this transaction. Tell them that they can't attempt to make sales and in return you will keep your business with them. If you can't promise the latter, why would they do the former? If you make yourself a good customer not swayed by other salespeople, then they can do that. If you don't, they can't afford to not be those salespeople either. Again, with rare exception, this is controlled by the customer. The salesperson, paid through sales, much do what is necessary to make the sale - as dictated by the behaviour of the customer.
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@Dashrender said:
But this is rarely the case. They use sales tactics to get you to do things you might otherwise never do, buy things you don't need. These tricks of the trade are difficult to avoid and protect yourself from. Sure some people can avoid them some of the time, but I'd say it's darn near impossible to avoid them all the time.
They aren't tricks at all. It's completely open, honest and common sense. And avoiding it is trivial. The situation never need exist except at the whim of the customer. As a customer, this literally never happens to me. I don't allow it. I don't engage someone trying to sell me something I don't want or need (in business, in personal life, sure.)
I don't accept calls from sales people. I put all sales email directly to spam (with a blacklist filter.) I don't go out and find sales people and ask them to sell me things. It's so little effort to have it not happen at all. And when it can't be avoided... just walk away.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Right, they try to make a sale. That's the sales bit. But it isn't dishonest in any way or pretending to be an engineer.
But it is pretending to be an engineer. They are providing a solution - that's engineering.
I don't agree. When someone tells you that you should buy a Ford, you don't get the impression that they are a solution engineer. They just sell what they have on the show floor. We would never mistake a car salesman for a logistics or transportation consultant or engineer, right? Why do we mistake a server salesman for one? No different. All they do is tell you the features that they offer, paint a rosy picture and attempt to leverage what little they know about your needs to pitch the products that they guess are mostly likely to entice you. That's not engineering. It's not pretending to be engineering. They aren't offering solutions. They are making a sales pitch and hoping that you fill in the gaps and decide to apply the engineering label to them on your own - which most people happily do.
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@Dashrender said:
I disagree, they do offer a pretense of assessing your needs. If you tell them that you have 1 TB of data and see a 1 TB growth over the next two years, they are going to try to sell you a 2+ TB system, most likely not try to sell you a 5TB system.
Selling what sounds good based on your needs and assessing your needs are not the same thing. This is, again, something that the end users assume is happening for whatever reason but I've never or very rarely seen a vendor pretend that they were actually looking at your needs rather than just trying to make a sale.
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You bought up a going point - the difference between getting a call and calling a sales person.
Like you I don't accept sales calls either. If I wanted anything from your company I'd call you.
Using these and other forums have definitely helped me find solutions that are more likely to fit what I want, but when I'm still clueless about a situation/solution, I need help. Now I'll take the information I get from the sales group boil down what I think is useful and make a post, but I don't think the average person does this. I guess that's the ultimate hangup.
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@Dashrender said:
You bought up a going point - the difference between getting a call and calling a sales person.
Like you I don't accept sales calls either. If I wanted anything from your company I'd call you.
When people have these kinds of issues, it seems to be universally that they reach out to salespeople when they should be reaching out to engineers. If a salesperson calls me, they clearly can't engineer me a solution but can tell me about their latest products. This is where they are really useful. They can list features and I can ask for details on the ones in which I am interested. That's a useful way to use a salesperson relationship. I can ask them to alert me when that product is publicly available and ask for a demo.
No hint an engineering solutions, just getting information out there. Giving me the tools that I need to do the engineering.
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@Dashrender said:
Using these and other forums have definitely helped me find solutions that are more likely to fit what I want, but when I'm still clueless about a situation/solution, I need help.
Sure, that's when consultants or more forum time is needed. The one person who can never be part of the solution discovery is non-IT people like salespeople or janitors.
