Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@guyinpv said
Pushy sales people are evil, but at the end of day, everybody has to sell something.
Pushy sales people are just bad sales people who don't know their craft. They've found a trick that works and they stick with it, one trick ponies.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
But I don't see why there is an "argument" at all? What is the argument?
Quite frankly, I don't understand why there is an argument about these definitions in the first place. The whole world is in sales. If you do "work", that means other people pay you for stuff, therefore you are in sales, you have to sell your services first and foremost.As I said earlier.
If you cook food once in your life, are you a chef?
If you play an instrument once, are you a musician?
The really GOOD sales guys, the guys who do a lot for us, sales is their career, their profession, something they do practice and hone like a good tech.How could you compare someone who bakes a cake once to a "baker" who does it day in, day out as their main profession?
That's why I'm getting hung up on the definition because it's wrong to label someone an X based on something they do little of.
I don't think your analogy is great though, because nobody cooks just once. I don't think there is any such thing as an IT person who never has to sell someone something, or recommend a solution, or sold something just a few times in their whole career.
If you do technology work, you pretty much have to sell things. Unless you are a tech whose only job is to sit in the back room and like apply scratch protectors to cell phones all day or something. Maybe he doesn't have to sell anything. But any other general purpose tech is going to recommend solutions. They will have to "sell" it one way or another. How does this fix the issue? How does it add value? Increase productivity? Solve a problem? Reduce overall costs? Mitigate risks? These are all selling points, not "features" or requirements.
Speaking of mechanics, they rarely "sell". Usually it's like, "the belt thingy is broke, here is the belt thingy we replace it with on our shelves, costs $x". They typically don't have much to sell, the work is done.
When I replace my tires it's like "we have 3 options, little bear, medium bear, and big bear, which do you want?" I already NEED the tires, the sales are done, I'm just given choices so I can feel like I have a choice in the first place. It's like, you're on death row, you gunna die, but hey we don't want to be pushy so you have three options, firing squad, injection, or watching Hollywood actors discuss politics.
But with IT work, it's like, we really believe you need this, not because you need it, but because we think it will help. Oh and there are 3,683 different providers of said thing.
In this case they don't have an absolute need, we have to "sell" them the benefits of it.
People don't "need" backups, unless they experience data loss.
People don't "need" the extra RAM. They don't "need" a battery backup.
We don't "need" car insurance. Or health insurance, or air conditioning.All those things have to be "sold" to people. It's also why the best sales people don't sell tires or do mechanics. The best sales people sell stuff that people don't actually "need".
I think IT people often have to sell stuff that is very important, or acts as insurance, but isn't absolutely needed. Upgrades aren't needed, more power isn't needed, better software isn't needed. We have to sell it to them. -
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
But I don't see why there is an "argument" at all? What is the argument?
Quite frankly, I don't understand why there is an argument about these definitions in the first place. The whole world is in sales. If you do "work", that means other people pay you for stuff, therefore you are in sales, you have to sell your services first and foremost.As I said earlier.
If you cook food once in your life, are you a chef?
If you play an instrument once, are you a musician?
The really GOOD sales guys, the guys who do a lot for us, sales is their career, their profession, something they do practice and hone like a good tech.How could you compare someone who bakes a cake once to a "baker" who does it day in, day out as their main profession?
That's why I'm getting hung up on the definition because it's wrong to label someone an X based on something they do little of.
The difference is that cooking one time doesn't make you a chef. But going into work and being offered money to try to cook everyday while working in the kitchen does.
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You are mixing that someone tries something once with someone who tries something all the time. You are using a wrong comparison.
It's someone who bakes every day but only once pulled off a viable cake. Do you not call them a baker even though they are just a bad one?
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
As for the VA part, What value added? It's getting more and more silly out there now.
Then you are getting the wrong VARs. Ours are great. We get loads of value from the ones that we choose.
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Can a consultant also be a sales person?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
Yes, and it is something I strive hard to avoid.
I recommend solutions to clients. but to help ensure impartiality, I have zero partnerships and deals with vendors. I get nothing for any recommendations.
I mean not even referral agreements.I want zero reasons for someone to call me biased for getting a kickback.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
Yes, and it is something I strive hard to avoid.
I recommend solutions to clients. but to help ensure impartiality, I have zero partnerships and deals with vendors. I get nothing for any recommendations.
I mean not even referral agreements.I want zero reasons for someone to call me biased for getting a kickback.
The reason I asked that is because that was the initial crux of my discussion with him. I felt that if you did your due diligence, and wanted to recommend product ABC, why should it matter if you make some money off of it? I would never recommend a product that wasn't good JUST to make money. But why not be a reseller for the things I really like? And he basically said (I think) the two of them should never meet. (And there's also a reseller tag to add into this mix.)
Most of the arguments in this thread seem to support the idea that, yeah, why not make money. But @scottalanmiller (and clearly you, as well) seem to feel that is not the case.
I definitely see your side, though.
It's a lot of the same argument with how the sales people from CDW really aren't helping you. They are either against you, or against their employer.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
Yes, and it is something I strive hard to avoid.
I recommend solutions to clients. but to help ensure impartiality, I have zero partnerships and deals with vendors. I get nothing for any recommendations.
I mean not even referral agreements.I want zero reasons for someone to call me biased for getting a kickback.
The reason I asked that is because that was the initial crux of my discussion with him. I felt that if you did your due diligence, and wanted to recommend product ABC, why should it matter if you make some money off of it? I would never recommend a product that wasn't good JUST to make money. But why not be a reseller for the things I really like? And he basically said (I think) the two of them should never meet. (And there's also a reseller tag to add into this mix.)
Most of the arguments in this thread seem to support the idea that, yeah, why not make money. But @scottalanmiller (and clearly you, as well) seem to feel that is not the case.
I definitely see your side, though.
It's a lot of the same argument with how the sales people from CDW really aren't helping you. They are either against you, or against their employer.
If you are getting money from a vendor or supplier, the. You are biased period. You cannot avoid that.
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@JaredBusch said
If you are getting money from a vendor or supplier, the. You are biased period. You cannot avoid that.
See, that's the part I do not fully understand.
I mean, I understand the bias, of course. But if I am an honest person, and I honestly think that ProductA (a Synolgoy NAS, for example, which is often recommended as the solution here) is the best product, that's what I would recommend. Now, if I can be a reseller for them, and make a little money off it, why not? I would never look at EVERY NAS in the world anyway. I'd have a selection of a few I know work well, and pick from those.
But to be honest, I am not in the business like you guys are.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
No. Sales essentially overrides all other things. Sales pays you to anti-consult, you can't serve two masters in that case. You have to unethically fail to represent one party or the other if you mix the two together. Logically, you only mix the two when you intend to scam the customer, not to scam the vendor because under normal payment schemes you get nothing that way, vendors know better.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
Yes, and it is something I strive hard to avoid.
I recommend solutions to clients. but to help ensure impartiality, I have zero partnerships and deals with vendors. I get nothing for any recommendations.
I mean not even referral agreements.I want zero reasons for someone to call me biased for getting a kickback.
Exactly. It's not that the two "can't" be mixed, it's that doing one means you aren't doing the other ethically. If your job is to do sales, you can't do honest consulting. If your job is to do consulting, you can't do honest sales. You can try to mix the two, but there is no way to honestly do at least one and possibly both. It's a conflict of interest. CAN you have a conflict of interest? Sure, but it is what it is... unethical. No one is 100% unbiased, but there is a big difference between trying to be as unbiased as possible and "getting paid to scam the client when the client is paying you to represent their interests".
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
The reason I asked that is because that was the initial crux of my discussion with him. I felt that if you did your due diligence, and wanted to recommend product ABC, why should it matter if you make some money off of it? I would never recommend a product that wasn't good JUST to make money. But why not be a reseller for the things I really like? And he basically said (I think) the two of them should never meet. (And there's also a reseller tag to add into this mix.)
So here are the points around that...
- Unless you make totally equal money off of ALL possible solutions (or at very least all reasonable ones) how do you keep the money from influencing you?
- How do you keep the money from influencing you to recommend doing things that don't need to be done at all?
- If you really have zero influence from the money, then you aren't a sales person, I'd agree there. But I don't believe that a person can not be influenced by money. If you tell me that if I offer you $100 in order to tell someone to do something mostly reasonable (not like telling them to jump off of a cliff) that you will have literally zero influence from that, I simply won't believe you. If you are willing to get paid for doing sales, that means you are at least a little influenced by the money.
- Nothing wrong whatsoever with being a reseller. The wrong is being a reseller but pretending to be a consultant.
- You CAN hand the bias responsibility over to the customer... "I sell Dell and will be influenced by the fact that I'm a reseller, if you still want coloured advice from me... so be it." Then the bias is still yours, but the ethical issues with it are the customer's.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
Yes, and it is something I strive hard to avoid.
I recommend solutions to clients. but to help ensure impartiality, I have zero partnerships and deals with vendors. I get nothing for any recommendations.
I mean not even referral agreements.I want zero reasons for someone to call me biased for getting a kickback.
The reason I asked that is because that was the initial crux of my discussion with him. I felt that if you did your due diligence, and wanted to recommend product ABC, why should it matter if you make some money off of it? I would never recommend a product that wasn't good JUST to make money. But why not be a reseller for the things I really like? And he basically said (I think) the two of them should never meet. (And there's also a reseller tag to add into this mix.)
Most of the arguments in this thread seem to support the idea that, yeah, why not make money. But @scottalanmiller (and clearly you, as well) seem to feel that is not the case.
I definitely see your side, though.
It's a lot of the same argument with how the sales people from CDW really aren't helping you. They are either against you, or against their employer.
If you are getting money from a vendor or supplier, the. You are biased period. You cannot avoid that.
This ^^^^ I'm unaware of any way to have an exception to this. If you aren't biased, then why did you even care that they paid you?
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I mean, I understand the bias, of course. But if I am an honest person....
But you can't be. See the dilemma? You can't offer consulting while being paid to sell the client things that they don't need and be honest. It just doesn't go together.
Unless you tell the client that you are biased and then whoever hires you is just foolish.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But if I am an honest person, and I honestly think that ProductA (a Synolgoy NAS, for example, which is often recommended as the solution here) is the best product, that's what I would recommend. Now, if I can be a reseller for them, and make a little money off it, why not? I would never look at EVERY NAS in the world anyway. I'd have a selection of a few I know work well, and pick from those.
So you seem to be saying that you weren't going to consult anyway but were going to act like a salesperson anyway, so might as well get paid for being one. I understand that I am taking this to an extreme, literally on one is going to consider EVERY option, but can you honestly tell me that you've investigated and would investigate all reasonable options, keep up to date on them, look for opinions on them regularly, would know the popular solutions, compare them, understand why some are good at some times and others at others, etc. but would still offer advice as if you were a consultant in that space? See the problem? You are not acting as a valuable consultant but acting like a Synology salesman from the onset if not... sure it's a good solution, easily the most common in a limited space, but it's certainly not the only great one, and only applies in certain scenarios (very few, actually) so the issue that I am seeing is that you are starting from a position of bias to a degree that sound unethical to me, and then failing to see why making a quick buck off of that ethical failure would be unethical..... because it is hidden behind an ethical problem already.
Does that make sense? Basically you aren't consulting, you know one product (in this example) and are selling it rather than doing your due diligence, doing your research and recommending what fits the customer's needs best (and offering all roughly equal solutions that you can find as equal). So you've introduced all (or essentially all) of the unethical behaviour of the salesman acting as a consultant before hand... hence why the ethical problems in the sales money don't crop up as an additional problem.
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@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
But to be honest, I am not in the business like you guys are.
As people who provide consulting as our business, we can't just have a single go to solution for anything. For example, I'm often asked to recommend servers. I always recommend several, often specific models, but from lots of makers. Even if the customer makes it clear what vendor they like, or I make it clear which I prefer, it's still "Dell has this model, HPE has this one, Oracle has this other one and SuperMicro will work with this configuration."
In your Synology example, even though I love Synology, I never have that discussion without ReadyNAS getting mentioned. And often QNAP, Thecus, Buffalo and others get mentioned with proper caveats listed so that the customer can make reasonable determinations and understand what non-sales biases I bring to the table.
Consulting means a lot of work on our side to do research and know the options, plus lots of self reflection as to our biases, plus a lot of disclosures to customers, etc. It's a complex world to do in a reasonably honest way.
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I think that companies with really good processes and enough size can mix VAR and consulting in the same company, but it requires a lot of customer trust, good internal processes, top down oversight and dedication to the process and careful separation of duties.
For example, NTG could resell Synology as a VAR and recommend it as a consultancy. But it would require that the Synology resales team never have any influence on the consulting team. That's VERY hard to do. Consultants will always know that their decisions might help pay their coworker's bills. But you can do things like... not let the consultants even know what the VAR team sells! But that's hard, too.
You can never remove 100% of bias, but I believe that you can remove reasonable bias and that you can disclose proper bias to customers. NTG does no reselling (other than Webroot of which I am aware... if they do sell other things, that's how good the secrecy is) but I still have regular bias discussions with customers to help them understand where I might be bringing bias into the discussion (like I do tons of work with Scale, use it internally, have it in the lab, etc.... but neither I nor NTG get compensated for selling it, but I still disclose the strong working relationship because even though it is not a sales one, there is no way that I can't be influenced by the strong internal communications channels, heavy knowledge and experience on the product, etc.)
But some things that I think can be combined to have a VAR/ITSP mixed firm would be...
- Top down management with a clear management of the separation of duties.
- Separation of duties between VAR and ITSP functions with zero overlap of functions.
- Zero direct compensation to ITSP functions from sales.
- No bonus or profit sharing schemes.
- Obfuscation of sales options from consultants.
- Coverage of options via sales (for example, if you want to sell Synology, you might also sell ReadyNAS, ReadyDATA, SAM-SD options, Drobo and maybe one or two others.) If you cover all reasonable options, this minimizes bias heavily.
- Existing biases are disclosed to customers.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Can a consultant also be a sales person?
No. Sales essentially overrides all other things. Sales pays you to anti-consult, you can't serve two masters in that case. You have to unethically fail to represent one party or the other if you mix the two together. Logically, you only mix the two when you intend to scam the customer, not to scam the vendor because under normal payment schemes you get nothing that way, vendors know better.
I have some problems here.
"Sales overrides all the things" <--- huge assumption about human greed. Non-sequitur. It's entirely possible that a consultant cares more about the work they do and providing the right solutions, than about whatever paltry affiliate fee they might get from promoting a solution they must KNOW is not the best.
"sales pays to anti-consult" <--- Really? By offering an affiliate/commission system, the product automatically becomes the worst choice in all scenarios? It's very possible that the product BOTH fills the need perfectly, AND offers commission. Another non-sequitur.
"You have to fail to represent one party or the other..." <--- False dichotomy. You're assuming that if a product has a commission program, therefore it can never be a good solution for a client. Because either the client is somehow screwed, or the vendor is (if you don't promote/use them in a particular case).
OR the product actually IS a good fit, AND has commission. OR the product is not a good fit, so the consultant does their job well and recommends something else. This doesn't mean the other vendor is screwed, they simply weren't an option on the table, commission or not."you only mix the two when you intend to scam the customer" <--- Seems like another non-sequitur. How is it you can sell Synology to hundreds of clients with good success, but if you change and now receive a small commission, it becomes scamming? The very same customers would have been scammed rather than helped, by the inclusion of a commission?
This discussion does assume a lot about human nature, and it's NOT a matter of logic. It's entirely possible that a commissioned option is available for a particular customer, but the consultant ignores that option if it's not the best choice.
It's entirely possible that a consultant is honest enough to not push services the client doesn't need.
It's entirely possible that the small commission potentially made by a product is insignificant next to the entire job. If a consulting + labor job is going to be $2k or $3k or $5k, then a $100 finders fee from some service provider means nothing compared to doing the best job I can for $5k. $100 won't swing decisions one way or the other, and if the provider that I like so much I've signed up to be an affiliate, happens to work in this scenario, and I make $100, this is definitely not "scamming" the customer. I would have recommended the same product regardless.My opinion is that in most cases, especially independents like me, the small affiliates I get from my favorite products are a simple value add, or bonus, for me. I would be recommending the product anyway.
I don't recommend the product because of the affiliate, I signed up for the affiliate because I like the product so much.This entire things basically seems to come down to whether human natural greed always wins over simple human honesty and sincerity.
Where things fall apart are the grey zones.
The simple product would work, but my affiliate product which is a little more advanced and more than they need, will easily fit too, but hey I get paid!
The super quick job that might cost them $200, but where I could get a $100 bonus, that's a pretty hard-to-reject offer. It's 50% of the entire job!
However, the $5000 job, a $50 or $100 finder's fee is not very cloudy. Maybe one or two little poofy clouds, but mostly a clear sky.Lastly, commissions are not the only thing can cloud someone's view. If the client is cheap and wants as fast as possible, you might be tempted to recommend products you are most familiar with and can work quickly with.
Or maybe the client themselves "know" about a product you already happen to have an affiliate for, they demand THAT product, and you get a bonus, you feel even better about it.
Or maybe you're being clouded by cloudiness! You can go with the non-commissioned simple product, but the client (and you) feel like maybe you should go with something more powerful in case of future growth or needs. But the more powerful option is an affiliate, so now you actively don't want affiliate to cloud your judgement, so you feel almost an anti-affiliate pull to not recommend it just so you don't feel guilty! lolAnyway, interesting conversation. I'm not fully convinced that I should never do affiliations for products for which I already love and recommend, and have affiliate programs available. My loyalty is to the client and doing a good job, I view affiliate commissions as little more than happy bonuses should there be a sale.
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@guyinpv Everything you are saying is correct in theory.
Unfortunately, greed is part of everyday life and in the real world nice guys finish last. If you're too nice you get walked all over. We do that with open source software all the time. Even if it is way better than paid solutions. We will use everything we can for free, it's human nature.
All your potential clients care about is what they can get out of you with as little investment as possible. If you let them walk all over you they will.You cannot by 100 unbiased if you get paid to sell software. There is NO way, you wont want to pad your pockets.
