What Are You Doing Right Now
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Now an InFocus sales guy has popped in.
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@BRRABill In my experience, yes, every sales person (particularly ones that work on commission) is trying to take advantage of you.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@BRRABill In my experience, yes, every sales person (particularly ones that work on commission) is trying to take advantage of you.
I've been lucky to know some nice ones, across all areas.
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@scottalanmiller said:
They play different roles, each one has to, by law, do what is best for their client. If they do not it is a breach of contract.
Fiduciary responsibilities are really serious. I don't think some people get how serious they are. Like, go to court and sue serious.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@BRRABill In my experience, yes, every sales person (particularly ones that work on commission) is trying to take advantage of you.
Well that is all that they are paid to do so....
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@johnhooks said:
@scottalanmiller said:
They play different roles, each one has to, by law, do what is best for their client. If they do not it is a breach of contract.
Fiduciary responsibilities are really serious. I don't think some people get how serious they are. Like, go to court and sue serious.
Exactly. The expectations that people put on sales people are actually often quite unethical.
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@BRRABill said:
@brianlittlejohn said:
@BRRABill In my experience, yes, every sales person (particularly ones that work on commission) is trying to take advantage of you.
I've been lucky to know some nice ones, across all areas.
Has nothing to do with nice. Remember that the nicest, best, most trustworthy, most ethical sales person is the one that will oversell you the most. Because that is their job.
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@BRRABill having done sales, I can tell you that 1) SAM is correct in his assesment that sales' job is to screw you over as much as possible, and 2) your "good" experiences with sales dicks were the result of you enjoying whatever line they fed you. "Nice" and "honest" are 2 very different things. I no longer do sales because of the crushing toll it took on my morals, and the irreparable damage done to my karma. You may have left a sales interaction with me smiling, but I f*cked you on the sale without a doubt.
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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?
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@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.
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@brianlittlejohn if I had been selling cars, I would have a much larger balance of evil on my soul. I just sold pro audio.
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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.
