On Dec 14, 2007, at 9:24 PM, Lynn Fredricks wrote:
That's true. A lot of those kinds of sales presentations are correctly
targeted at decision makers that make financial decisions. I don't
consider
it a bad thing - it's really a necessity to be competitive. The bear
in the
woods isnt evil, he's just hungry like the other bears :-)
It is bad for the company you are selling to because the wrong people
are making these product decisions within these companies and it is
clear that these sales presentations take advantage of that. It is
potentially bad for your company if your product is not suitable for
their needs and you successfully sell it to them; you may endanger
your company's reputation. While you are not responsible for the
structure of any company you sell to, you are responsible for your own
integrity. Making the claim that you're just doing what everyone else
is does not absolve you or your salespeople of this responsibility.
Your analogy about bears and competition tells me you and your
salespeople might feel justified using tactics that give used car
salesmen a bad name. A more appropriate analogy is to say that you
would take candy from a child because you can, or that you would you
sell a sub-prime mortgage to a borrower you know is not credit-worthy
so you can earn a higher commission. If you knowingly convince
decision makers who do not have the skills to make such decisions to
buy products that are not appropriate to their needs, it is
essentially the same thing. I would not trust any company that is
afraid to sell to my engineering department.
I think what you are seeing is evolution of the software industry.
It really
isnt necessary for there to be such an extreme split between
engineering and
management - and by evolution I mean that engineering has to adapt
to a
tighter relationship with management, or they are destined to have
their
roles outsourced. Noone should know the product than its own
engineers, and
its those who can bridge that divide that will be running the
engineering
and IT departments.
It is not the role of management to understand the engineering details
or decisions, but to understand the impact that those decisions have
in their own role of providing and managing the resources that their
engineers and others need so they can build the best products possible
at the lowest cost and sell them to their customers. Managers
rightfully step in where there are resource issues or constraints, but
they have no business making the technical decisions on component
selection where the complexity of integration of those components is
high and the resource constraints are not at issue. If a company's own
engineers do not understand their own products I fail to see how
managers can step in and make better engineering decisions.
It would be ideal if engineers could explain things in ways that
managers could understand, but engineers are usually hired for their
engineering skills, not their marketing or sales skills; to then say
it is engineering's own fault that they cannot compete against
professional salespeople and marketers is disingenuous. There are
engineers who can bridge the gap fairly well and maybe they are or
will be the ones running the engineering and IT departments, but the
implicit assumption that it is management's role to make technical
selection decisions still remains and it is that assumption that must
be challenged. If it is true that management requires a tighter
relationship with engineering in order to be successful, then it is
beyond me how outsourcing those engineering roles could lead to that
outcome.
The best feedback you will get to improve your product will be from
the engineers in your customer's companies; the managers can only help
you improve your ability to persuade other managers, but improving
your sales pitch won't improve your product. It is your engineering
department's responsibility to create a relationship with the
engineering departments of the companies you sell to; doing this can
create potential supporters within the engineering department of your
customer's company and an understanding of where and how your product
falls short and can be improved.
Any manager who overrules their engineers on technical selections is
not making wise financial or product decisions and is not doing what
is in the best interests of their company. That it happens all the
time and that salespeople take advantage of this does not make it
ethical or beneficial to anyone, even though it may look beneficial to
the seller in the short term.
/s.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
