Salespeople
As stereotypes go, technical people aren’t supposed to like salespeople and vice versa. Salespeople are pushy, unethical buffoons while technical people are obstinant, socially crippled ninnies. Both camps contribute a great deal to their images, of course.
I’d like to hone in on a few things I’ve noticed over the years (and again quite recently) about salespeople. I’m talking about behind the scenes, corporate side observations that arise from working with salespeople. I very rarely interact with them in a situation where I might buy something, if it can be helped.
I’ve noticed that when they want something from you, maybe some help explaining a product they’re demoing, maybe some fixes to their website, they’ll email. Once you need something from them, though – clarification on their requirements, or maybe to get them to explain to a customer that their request is out of scope – they either won’t respond, will request a face to face or phone meeting with you, or will write back something terse and unhelpful.
“i thought we were clear on this
Send from my BlackBerry”
There are perhaps a couple reasons for this. In some cases the salesperson can’t be as precise as you need them to be, and they know that rather than emailing back and forth 40 times they should just show you on their screen why ‘the internet is broken on this website. please fix ASAP‘
I also think that their lives revolve around negotiation, to the point that it is built into the way they arrange communication. What seems like a stern and unwavering demand for something often isn’t – if you push back a little bit they’ll yield and try to find common ground. For example, I had sent about a half dozen emails over the course of a few days to a client, who happens to be a salesperson. I just needed some specifics. They asked for a meeting, I asked my questions again, they asked for a meeting, I relented. When falling asleep the night before, I realized that I could fake an emergency with another nonexistent client and ask them to respond to the emails. We were pushing up against a deadline and the work I needed to do couldn’t wait, but I couldn’t do the work without the answers.
I ended up not canceling the meeting, because I’m an honest schmoe, and so I drove 30 minutes each way to a 30 minute meeting in which the client brought up my emails onscreen and we talked through them.
In other words, I failed to negotiate properly, and as a result I lost an hour. In other words, next time I’m going to push harder to keep things on my turf (i.e., in my browser). Well, lookieloo, that was quick:
Hi Dude,
This week is a disaster for me. If you can make your notes on what
you want changed and email them (or mark up some screenshots) I'll do
the final round of edits.
Thanks,
Ehren
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On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 11:04 PM, Dude McPerson <excitingopportunities@ultraroi.com> wrote:
> Thanks Ehren!
>
> Can we schedule some time with you and Dan tomorrow to review the site. I see some minor issues we need to resolve.
>
> Thanks again for hitting the deadline.
>
> Dude</div>
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I’m not complaining – they pay their bills. Just an observation. Oh, another favorite tic is asking a question and ending it with a period.
