This will be short and to the point. If you WANT to sell me your product do NOT do the following.
Call my CIO and try to convince him that he needs your product AFTER I have told you to wait until after the first of the year to talk more with ME about this!
I don't know if this sales person reads my blog or not but if you do you have absolutely no chance of selling me your product now. Not here. Not at any other company that I may work for in the future.
Security's Everyman
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
How to NOT sell me security products
Logging you in...Comments by IntenseDebate
Michael Janke · 855 weeks ago
Other annoyances?
- Proposing solutions w/o asking what the problem is.
- Power points with more slides on what a great company they are than what their product actually does.
Anton Chuvakin 77p · 855 weeks ago
andyitguy 23p · 855 weeks ago
This case is different though because my problem isn't with the company but with the sales person. In my dealings with her I would be hard pressed to believe that this is due to company pressure and not just because she is a high pressure sales person. I would be willing to bet that she would have done this very thing no matter who she worked for.
Anton Chuvakin 77p · 855 weeks ago
I get the argument ab a sales person; in this case, I'd say that keeping it private is likely being complicit in her being an annoyance for other IT sec pros as well..
Anton Chuvakin 77p · 854 weeks ago
Sam Van Ryder 42p · 855 weeks ago
On top of this, it sounds to me like you're making a business decision based on a personal experience with a salesperson. That doesn't sound like the right thing to do, either. What if the company offered a great solution? You're going to pass it up because a salesperson ticked you off???
I'm not saying you are, but my experience has been that many customers lie just as much as their sales folks do. Two sides to each coin.
bob · 855 weeks ago
What happens if you don't need this product? What happens if Andy was actually telling the truth and call him back in the new quarter?
CIO's in my experience don't tend to know their ar*ehole from their elbow as they don't normally come from a technical background and rely on their security managers and IT managers to explain technical related issues.
By going to the CIO and pitching at this level you are bypassing the people that actually implement these products. Many a time I have walked into companies after they have bought products that just sit on the shelves as there is no use for it.
The IT/Security manager is the first port of call to see if a company really needs a product and at the end of the day its the IT/Security manager that has to spend his budget in other areas first before implementing a new solution (firewalls, encryption, switches, servers etc).
Sam Van Ryder 42p · 855 weeks ago
There are some specifics in this case Andy doesn't mention (he does in his most recent post) but it doesn't sound like he doesn't need it - he just wants to postpone the discussion. I recommend that if you don't want my product, tell me up front and let me move on to the next prospect.
On your comment about CIO's - by the same token - most technical security guys don't understand the potential business value of a product. No offense to the security guys - they're usually not supposed to. That's what the CIO is for. Kudos to those who try to understand it and articulate that upwards. Those are the next CIO's and CISO's.
The implementation aspect is a discussion that shouldn't be happening in the first sales call anyway. Why would anyone waste their time on such a time-eater before you even know if the product fits your requirements? (As an example, for all I know, maybe my product will create some initial workload you don't want, so you're going to block it, regardless of benefit.) And have you even sat down to put together requirements (i.e. "decision criteria")? In my experience, most customers don't. Heck, many "kick tires" before they even try to find budget.
I'm not disagreeing with Andy's take on this rep's sales tactic - I am just saying there is a much, much bigger picture here.
Ralph Logan · 854 weeks ago