How to Balance Standards - Work and Personal
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@Dashrender said:
How are you suppose to know the difference between a sales person and non sales person - is it basically that you're paying someone?
If you are getting "free" advice something is wrong. You can get advice from friends, or by buying someone coffee or as a favour - those are not exactly free, we understand that you can get a friend to fix your car too. That's not a sales situation. But by and large, unless you have a relationship that covers the need to pay, you need to pay for skills like anything else. Skills are the most expensive commodity. Anyone can do sales, you don't need specific skills to do sales. You might be able to do even better by knowing more, but it isn't required.
To be a consultant in any given field, you need to have knowledge in that field. Sure, you could try to sell your services without having any skills, just like I could go claim to be an interior designer, but that's a separate issue. At least when you hire someone there is an obligation of them to you. When you work with a salesman, there is none. Their obligations are to the company, not to you.
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I couldn't agree more with everything you just typed.
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A good example is real estate. In the US at least, you have a buyer's advocate (consultant) and a seller's advocate (salesman.) The one represents you and protects you from salesman, helps you understand your needs, guides you in things you do not understand. There are legal protections (in the US) to keep seller and buyer's agents completely separate.
The seller's agent is just a salesman. They are on commission, they have only one job which is to convince people to buy the property.
When it comes to items as important as real estate, there are laws to make the sales and consulting pieces completely exposed and declared and to make sure that they never overlap. In things like IT, HR, etc. those conflicts of interest are for the customer to manage and to some degree this requires trust that the consultants are not lying about having a conflict of interest, but the basics are the same.
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@Dashrender said:
I'd argue that specialist that CDW bring on the line are not sales people - at least they are not suppose to be sales people ...
Do they work for a reseller? If so, how do you define not supposed to be sales people?
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@Dashrender said:
I couldn't agree with everything you just typed.
Any particular parts you agree or don't agree with?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I couldn't agree with everything you just typed.
Any particular parts you agree or don't agree with?
I left out the word more.... I've corrected.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I'd argue that specialist that CDW bring on the line are not sales people - at least they are not suppose to be sales people ...
Do they work for a reseller? If so, how do you define not supposed to be sales people?
lol Of course, they work for CDW - but by the definition anyone working for a reseller is a sales person and your above stated stipulations must apply - NTG sells O365, so therefore you're all sales persons and what?
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@Dashrender said:
....in talking to them the reality is that I have discovered them to all be sales people who are only trained in one or two products, maybe they know it well, maybe not.
Which is exactly how working for a store and what the social contract as I understand it states things would be expected to happen. A guy who makes his money selling you stuff while working at a store.... is a salesman no matter how he is presented to you. He might be more technical than the average salesperson, but no amount of technical expertise changes the sales factor. Is he paid to be a consultant or paid to be a salesperson (technical or not?)
I've considered pre-sales engineering jobs before and will entertain them in the future. There is nothing wrong with sales people, it is how people expect them to misbehave that is the issue. But if I do that job and someone things I'm not a salesperson, that is crazy because I would be being paid to make a sale. That I am technical is not a factor.
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The problem I have is that CDW sells itself as a solution provider - I guess the misnomer is that the solution is one in their best interest, not your best interest.
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@scottalanmiller said:
If you are getting "free" advice something is wrong.
Nothing is free, but the advice is included in the sales price. You are getting advice on the expectation that you will buy something. That doesn't mean that the advice is not valid. Many business models are based on the need for repeat sales and recommendations. The "value" of the company is based on its reputation. That reputation wouldn't be worth as much he sales staff just advised customers to buy items with the biggest commission. Many (most?) retail stores don't work on commission anyway.
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@Dashrender said:
The problem I have is that CDW sells itself as a solution provider - I guess the misnomer is that the solution is one in their best interest, not your best interest.
I don't have this issue. They make it extremely clear that they are a store. I've never gotten the impression that there would be any ambiguity. Once someone is a store, there should be no doubts.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Nothing is free, but the advice is included in the sales price.
Yup, but the advice has two key elements:
- The person's job and obligation is to the employer not to the customer (by convention, social contract, legal, etc.)
- The person or company is paid to make a sale. No matter how you word it, if they don't make a sale they don't get money, the more that they sell the more money they make, margins determine their income rate.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
That doesn't mean that the advice is not valid.
Absolutely, it could be completely valid. It simply means that there should be no expectation of validity.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
The "value" of the company is based on its reputation. That reputation wouldn't be worth as much he sales staff just advised customers to buy items with the biggest commission.
And yet Best Buy, Staples, CDW, etc. I don't believe that this theory holds up in the real world at all.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
The problem I have is that CDW sells itself as a solution provider - I guess the misnomer is that the solution is one in their best interest, not your best interest.
I don't have this issue. They make it extremely clear that they are a store. I've never gotten the impression that there would be any ambiguity. Once someone is a store, there should be no doubts.
They want to be your MSP - that's a bit more than a store.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
The "value" of the company is based on its reputation. That reputation wouldn't be worth as much he sales staff just advised customers to buy items with the biggest commission.
And yet Best Buy, Staples, CDW, etc. I don't believe that this theory holds up in the real world at all.
In the US at least, Scott is correct - these places don't care about repeat sales, they only care about this one sale today. Specialty stores care about repeat business, but big box stores.. nah.. they know there are 10 more people behind you looking to buy something.
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@Dashrender said:
They want to be your MSP - that's a bit more than a store.
You are missing a key element here.... store is a store. You can sell as many extras as you want, but once you are a store, you are a store. If they sell things "at cost", you could make an argument that they are only providing a service and are not a store or motivated financially by it. I know of no one doing that but, in theory...
But if you are being paid to sell products, all of your advice is suspect at best. It's very clear, the concept of a store is completely misaligned with the values of a customer.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
They want to be your MSP - that's a bit more than a store.
You are missing a key element here.... store is a store. You can sell as many extras as you want, but once you are a store, you are a store. If they sell things "at cost", you could make an argument that they are only providing a service and are not a store or motivated financially by it. I know of no one doing that but, in theory...
But if you are being paid to sell products, all of your advice is suspect at best. It's very clear, the concept of a store is completely misaligned with the values of a customer.
I'll give you that.
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@Dashrender said:
In the US at least, Scott is correct - these places don't care about repeat sales, they only care about this one sale today. Specialty stores care about repeat business, but big box stores.. nah.. they know there are 10 more people behind you looking to buy something.
Well it isn't that they don't want repeat sales. It is that there are many factors:
- Many (most) customers never evaluate the advice that they were given to see if it was good so are just taken advantage of over and over again.
- Switching stores would mean admitting their own mistakes of the past and most people would rather make the same mistake twice and claim it was not a mistake than to fix their behaviour and not make the mistake again.
- There might not be other stores available or they may have no idea where to go.
I hate Best Buy, but sometimes they are what is around. But I never ask them for advice, that would be ridiculous, obviously they have no idea about cables, audio equipment, computers, whatever. They know less than random people on the street in most cases.
