At Dara IT, we are constantly researching new products, seeing what is available for our clients and also finding solutions for problems we have in house. You might have a brand, a product, a service whatever that thing is, there is a good chance we want to deploy it in house or for our clients.

We consistently have mixed experiences when trying to learn a new product, speaking to sales teams or hearing horror stories from clients about how much of a night mare it was to deal with brand x. At the same time we might discover a company or a product that is so amazing, we want to tell everyone about it, we use it internally, we recommend it to our clients and we really stand by it with a positive recommendation.

The techie in any company acts as a very powerful filter for business decision makers in choosing the right product or service, why would you not want to have a marketing plan in place to reach this influencer? How powerful an ally would you have if they were in your corner championing the product inside their own organisations?

How to make a techie buy _______? Fill in the gap with what you have to offer. Let me play out 1 scenario for you below.

** A live chat entry appears on your website **
Potential client: “Hello I’m hoping to learn more about product X”
Sales: “Hello, yes my name is Bob, what specifically would you like to learn?”
Potential client: “Well I was wondering if you did trials of product X so I could get a feel for it”
Sales: “Yes that’s certainly something we can talk about, can you give me your contact details and I can have one of our team book a call with you so we can discuss your needs?”
** Chat disconnects **
Can you spot the mistake?
Two lines into the conversation, you’ve asked me to commit to an ask, you want me to give up my details and in return, I need to book out a slot of time when I can talk to someone in sales. Key suggestions would be:

• The customer chose to talk to you via email/chat/phone – Moving them from their preferred choice of communication to another is already working against what they want on a subconscious level.
• At this point, they might know nothing about your product but you are already asking them to find the time to listen to a sales pitch, why would they give up what is likely 30 minutes of their time, just to get what they wanted initially which was a product trial?
• Tech guys tend to be detail focused people, they could have easily read reviews, looked over the website, even watched videos which you have on the product, so if they are close enough to saying they want to actually test it, you are already ahead of other competitors but if you put a roadblock in the way, they’ll go somewhere else.

Remove the roadblocks! Don’t lose out on a sale to a competitor

This week I received a mass mail out from a business which stated that they had produced a personalised e-book tailored just for me. It sounded awfully nice of them but when I clicked on the link I was taken to something which can only be described as an info wall.

The basic principle, you have something people want and for them to get that something, they give you their contact details and you then give them the prize behind the wall. On paper this works brilliantly for sales teams, you get to harvest all these contact details just for giving away something you already have.

That something could be, here is a trial of our software, here is a PDF about the product. Perhaps you even have a video which is going to sell the product to a potential client and all it takes for the client to get it is to fill in a simple web form, easy trade right?

What every technical person out there expects to happen in 2016, after years of this happening, is for their details to go onto a list of “leads” probably 1 of hundreds of names and we’re going to be fielding emails/phone calls chasing us and trying to “help” us into a buy.

So what we’ll do instead, they might look at the form and skip the product and move onto a competitor, who bizarrely has every piece of content they have available for instant download and usage, yet they seem to be making money.

Then there is the sad truth that a lot of people will lie on these forms and fill them in with bogus details. Sure you could put in systems to verify it is a genuine lead but are you just putting in more road-blocks?

The best way I can describe to win over a techie can be summed up in 3 easy rules.

• Help them get what they want, as quickly as possible. Roadblocks are bad. We feel the jaws of the sales funnel closing and we’ll simply break sideways out of it and do something else, leaving you wondering where that promising new client went.

• Be honest, be open, if you are asked questions and you don’t know the answers, get someone who does but don’t lie/bluff about the product, we’ll find out sooner or later and when we do, we will never trust you or your company again.

• Forget the client in front of you now. Don’t think about the size of the order in front of you, think about where that relationship might lead to, if you leave such a good impression on someone, if ever they get asked in the future “We have 3 products to pick from, who should we go for” wouldn’t you love to be the product they recommend and talk about?

Finally and this is a very controversial biggie. Give frank guidelines about pricing. If I have to go through a 2 hour process to discover that your product is a 500K completely out of my SMB budget product, you’ve wasted time for both parties. At the same time if I hear that your product is in the price range, I’m more likely to want to spend time on a possibility.

I’m Breffni, I run Dara IT, I’ve been a techie for years and years constantly trying out new products and researching new ways of doing things. In my mind I have a select few companies who I would completely recommend to clients in a heartbeat as a sure thing. Do you want me and other tech guys to be that ambassador for you?

The market is getting more competitive, don’t wait until it is too late. You’ll notice the title says how to “make a techie buy” – That’s not a mistake or a typo, that is how quite a few companies are going about it “How do we MAKE this happen” when actually, re-read the article, think about what happens when you remove the roadblocks, listen and respond honestly, instead of “making” someone do something, the story is very different.

@scottalanmiller said:

Self learning is the best way to prove to employers and to yourself how ready to you are to tackle the ongoing growth and educational demands of the industry.

And yet this is the single biggest problem in the industry, many employers don't understand this as a concept so we have the certification/degree game still being played.

This reminds me of this.

You guys are way braver than me transporting all that gear in a mini van rather than insured courier :P

This is Dara IT. This is what I do.

https://vimeo.com/185023708

Three different examples.

Someone in my family is at school, parents received a report which is laid out like this.

Current Progress = B
Current Progress = 2
Current Progress = F
Current Progress = 6

They use numbers and letters interchangeably to grade performance, an entire page of the 2 page report is to explain an arbitrary and overly convoluted system. Busy work for the sake of appearing productive.

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Someone I know who is doing an IT course, is assigned a project to design a system for a retail store, he has been assigned a budget of (fake numbers) 10 dollars but MUST spend at least 8 dollars otherwise the virtual businesses won't give as much money on the next project.

So people are paying to learn how to do IT properly for a business but are being trained and taught how to aggravate the business and work against it. The businesses are trying to hire candidates to help them but have a pool of people who are taught to work against the business.

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Putting aside the colossal levels of bureaucracy, politician decisions and bad leadership. Which undermines some of the amazing work I've seen happen in education environments. Businesses across the world are unhappy with the education system, yet the system has shown no desire or willingness to change, they are still selling the idea and concept and have not changed the pitch.

Come here, learn this, get a job because of this.

It's a bit of a rant/vent but I can't understand this. Where is the sanity?

I'll rent you pop3 email services from a VM under my desk if you like.

I have but one word:

@DustinB3403 said

In business administration....

No in computer science...because that's so helpful.

We're going Mac Or Linux. Windows 10 is banned as a time-wasting product from this moment on.

@aaronstuder said in VMware Support Sucks:

Does anyone know if I pay for a higher level of support, will I get better support? Maybe talk to someone in the United States?

Alternatively, work with a VMWare partner. Sometimes the best support does not come from the vendor directly.

Would you kindly delete this account?

Thanks.

"Paid software is awful because reasons"

Really tired of the herd like mentality.

Oh for heavens sake guys.

This has nothing to do with whether open source is a bad thing. Re-read the article before you lampoon it.

I like my money. I like not spending it, I like getting a good deal, finding a bargain or better, getting something for free. Many of us do

But its never free, its not free to the person who gave it to me, the company who made it or the resources used to create it.

So, free e-guide on how to backup your business is offered. In exchange for the "free" guide, you pay for it with your contact details and become a lead. This is called gated marketing, same way you'd pay a toll when crossing a bridge, you pay information to get free stuff.

Now let's look at free software. Starts with the words "I want a free thing which solves this specific problem" It could be CRM, Finance, Security, It does not matter, the problem is we often look at open source software as being fantastic because it is free.

It is great because companies can see all the raw code, they can audit it, different people can contribute and the product gets better but there is a cost to using it, its not in the buying of the software it lies in:

• Cost of training, do you know how to use it?
• Cost of deployment
• Cost of migrating from 1 system to another
• Cost of reliability, is this tool reliable? Is it tested? Is it safe?

Who pays for all the above? Have you factored it in?

IT professionals can introduce you to lower cost, lower risk, faster and more reliable tools to get stuff done but none of it is free. If anyone ever says "free tool" someone is paying for it.

If you are offered free, be suspicious, if someone offers you something at a big discount, beware.

Sometimes you do get a generous gift, sometimes you really do get a good deal but most of the time, its a trap for later down the line.

Ubiquiti supply is still really bad in Europe though. I could wait 3 months before a new shipment for switches. There's not enough adoption yet.

Yes but the time to try taking a backup is not when the HDD is in a failed state. Any backup tool might struggle to properly take an image of a failing disk.

Anyway. You need three drives, the old failing, a backup target and the new one.

The order should be.

Create rescue DVD on a working Win-7 machine.
Take image via Windows backup to a third HDD
Install Windows 7 on new HDD
Then restore from the backup.

Post back here after 2 months of usage.

The 2FA is data only right? And they can set it to only work on wifi?

It really depends on the team you have, if you have...cheap mean spirited people on the team. Then yes you'll have to pay a stipend but make it like...cost of storing the app on their devices. $2 a year?

A bigger question, what if they don't have smartphones?

@dashrender said in 2FA - when required by your vendors, do you stipend your staff?:

We aren't managing the 2FA - the vendor (hospital) is. We can't dictate what they use.

And no one on your team has work emails on personal devices?

"It depends" on way more factors than 2FA.

Do they currently have work emails on their personal device?
If yes, why does introducing 2FA suddenly require stipends? If no, then provide them with physical tokens for 2FA instead.