tips to salespeople who act smarter than their customers:
dear salesperson. you have come to sell me something and it is in your interest that i listen; it is in your favour that i don't get annoyed. i understand that you wear an expensive (or one that looks expensive) suit and you sport trendy glasses; but you should not assume that your chic dress-sense will trump your rudeness. please do not be rude to your customers, if you want to sell them something. some old fashioned fool said that 'customer is king.' even if you don't believe it, at least, consider that your customer is an equal who should be treated with respect. we have heard customers being rude with salespeople, which is also not right, but salespeople take it in their stride, because it is in their interest to do so. salespeople being rude to customers is a new thing. talking of rudeness, do not be rude to others. you may be the CEO or director or owner of your own company – but you are not worth a farthing to me, even if you own four ferraris. regardless of their learning or maturity, people generally respect those who are polite and nice. if you are polite, i may even ignore the stupid, factually incorrect and irrelevant points you make in your bluff – but, only if you are nice. this is the art of human interaction; ask berne if you like. even dehumanised halflings are nice, if you are nice, preciouss. i may be a lowly administrator, but you have no right to act in a royally dismissive fashion. particularly, if it was YOU who called me a few times to set an appointment and then insisted that i meet with you. please do not act high and mighty.
dear salesperson. if i ask you a question concerning your product, do not get offended. you are here to sell, remember? even if my question is stupid, there are ways of riding through such situations without confronting the audience. worse, instead of answering my question, don't question my qualifications in a room full of people. it is downright rude. and do not ask me condescendingly about my position in the organisation. whether i know anything or not about security, it is not nice to ask me: 'what do you know about security?' not nice, not nice.
dear salesperson. do not try to match wits with me – it is futile. you will lose, even if you win; and particularly if you win. good salespeople do not argue with their customers and do not convert the meeting room into a presidential debate. and if you insist, at least be prepared. do a background check on those you pick for a fight. do not walk into a room of network/system admins who have been tinkering with systems from such a time when you couldn't tell the difference between a monitor and a CPU. in 2012, do not tell sysadmins with more than five years experience: 'this is new. this is not a traditional client-server app, you are using. this is all web based.' a nitpicky admin may quibble about the distinction, but others will ignore it – and mark you down considerably.
dear salesperson. you may be a glib talker but an average sysadmin spends most of his time wandering on the web; most likely, he chalks up more internet time than you do. no doubt, there are some very skilled and knowledgeable salespeople out there; but an average sysadmin knows about newer technologies than the average salesperson already. of course, there are sysadmins by accident or fluke – who don't deserve to be sysadmins, but they are – and you have encountered a few of them. please do not generalise and expect all sysadmins to be dumb and clueless. we generally do not like it when a salesperson (who has no technical knowledge) lectures us on the basics of networking or systems administration. how would you like us to teach you the art of presentation? (which we generally feel like, looking at the haphazard fonts and dishonest salestalk – unless you ripped it off from the well-designed ones from principals like HP or CA).
and lastly, it is best to keep quiet after you have annoyed all who attended your presentation rather than sending a mail (to follow-up) asking when we shall be placing the order.
