How to Get Technician Buy-In for an Outsourced Network Operations Center (NOC)
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
It is up to each MSP to understand how they can add value, if you are a dumb reseller of the service, then there is no value. This is true of ALL products/services.
If this is true, then the reasons why we can't get the prices are lies.
No, the reasons why you can't get the price is because of marketing choices. I've avoided them for months due to their marketing, the only reason I am talking to them now is to find out what they do, how good they are and if they are a good fit.
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Asking you how they are getting you not to disclose a price is nothing like assuming that they did it. I asked IF there was an NDA. You answered. I assumed nothing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Do they require a NDA to have a conversation with them? That's the same as telling us to jump off a bridge.
Then what's this?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
No, the reasons why you can't get the price is because of marketing choices.
Okay, so their choice is to tell us that they don't think that the value of the product is a selling point. Understood, the message is plain as day.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Do they require a NDA to have a conversation with them? That's the same as telling us to jump off a bridge.
Then what's this?
It's a question. How does asking if they do something an assumption? I'm not even sure where you think the assumption is in that statement.
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Do they offer cotton candy with their product?
This is a question. It is no way implies that I think they DO offer cotton candy.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Asking you how they are getting you not to disclose a price is nothing like assuming that they did it.
Well it was implied. You could have asked "why are you not disclosing pricing" instead you asked about the NDA.
@scottalanmiller said:
Okay, so their choice is to tell us that they don't think the product is good enough to tell us about.
As I said, I disagree with how they market the product. We're agreed they could do better.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Asking you how they are getting you not to disclose a price is nothing like assuming that they did it.
Well it was implied. You could have asked "why are you not disclosing pricing" instead you asked about the NDA.
How was it implied? I wanted to know if you were allowed to tell us of the price or not. I didn't imply that you were.
You made an assumption that I made one. I did not. But it's the one case where I wanted to know specifically if you were just not sharing or could not.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Do they offer cotton candy with their product?
This is a question. It is no way implies that I think they DO offer cotton candy.
Ok, point taken.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
As I said, I disagree with how they market the product. We're agreed they could do better.
I dont' agree that they can do better. That's assuming too much. I agree that holding back pricing is a bad strategy if your pricing is good. If your pricing is bad, holding it back is important. So since they don't tell us the price, I cannot determine if the marketing is bad or the product value is bad.
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We've been discussing offline and something that occurred to me as to why they is such a huge disconnect here... although I don't agree with the results anyway, is that this is an IT Professional community and Continuum is not a product for IT Pros, it is a product to replace them. Not eliminate them, per se, but replace what they are doing. That's not a bad thing (see my commodity line talks) but what it does mean is that IT Pros are not their customers. Business people are. None of us in an IT role would ever look at them even if the price were public because it's not our jobs to look at this kind of thing. It's not an IT thing, it's a business one.
Now, that doesn't change the basics. If I put on my business hat and look at this thread what I see is "my time isn't considered valuable." IT people might say that and might know their hourly billable rate, but business people have to be acutely aware of the value of their time and know that wasting thirty minutes isn't an option if you want to be a viable business and more importantly, you have to worry about starting a relationship that started on the sole assumption that one party had time to waste and the other was happy to waste it - that's effectively a poisoned well.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Do they require a NDA to have a conversation with them? That's the same as telling us to jump off a bridge.
Then what's this?
This issue I think @Breffni-Potter (I know I do) sees here is that you responded to the question as if the answer was yes.
If the second half of the above statement has been If the answers is yes, that's the same as telling us to jump off a bridge then we would know you were talking from a perspective of a yes answer.
You're audience sees things differently
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@Dashrender said:
If the second half of the above statement has been If the answers is yes, that's the same as telling us to jump off a bridge then we would know you were talking from a perspective of a yes answer.
It doesn't matter if the answer was yes or not, requiring an NDA sales is like telling customers to jump off of a bridge.
You're modification to what I said in no way changes what the statement was. I asked a question and said what the action I was asking about meant. Your modification makes a change that is inaccurate or unnecessary. If the answer was yes, then it would be like that. But if the answer is no it is still that, it just doesn't apply to the people in question.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
You're audience sees things
differentlythat weren't said.True, true.
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The assumption was in reading into what I said, rather than in reading what I actually said
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
If the second half of the above statement has been If the answers is yes, that's the same as telling us to jump off a bridge then we would know you were talking from a perspective of a yes answer.
It doesn't matter if the answer was yes or not, requiring an NDA sales is like telling customers to jump off of a bridge.
You're modification to what I said in no way changes what the statement was. I asked a question and said what the action I was asking about meant. Your modification makes a change that is inaccurate or unnecessary. If the answer was yes, then it would be like that. But if the answer is no it is still that, it just doesn't apply to the people in question.
I realize that it didn't change, but allows the reader less chance to read something that's not there, as so frequently happens.
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@Dashrender said:
I realize that it didn't change, but allows the reader less chance to read something that's not there, as so frequently happens.
But it adds information that implies something inaccurate. My statement was more clear, it was simply an explanation of the action. Yours adds a conditional that is confusing in its lack of necessity and/or implies that it would only mean it in this case, which is incorrect.
Your way implies that this is a problem with this vendor rather than with this general process.
I was not making assumptions about the vendor in the thread but making a statement about the process. That's the difference.
