Vendors need to do some homework

Our friends over at Layer 8 are relaying a story about vendors that are not doing their homework before showing up to sell their stuff. The point of the article is that technical folks will very quickly poke holes in a vendor’s story because tech folks at least try to know what is happening in their related fields.

I’ve noticed myself. Not only do I have trouble differentiating vendors’ products, they have trouble differentiating themselves. I spent some time quizzing a SIEM vendor rep, and every time he said, “We’re the only ones who do X,” I’d sweetly name some other vendors who were also doing the same thing. Why aren’t they doing their homework and at least reading their competitors’ brochures? Source: Layer 8

There is a lot to say about knowing what vendors and others are doing in your field. To ignore what folks are doing in your competitive market place is generally a bad idea. Especially if you get into a company to hawk your stuff, make wild claims that are easily dismissed or proven wrong. At that point, the sales person has lost the trust of the people in the room, and the chances of a sale are slim.

Well they are slim in regards to the technical people, if management does not trust their technical folk, then the manager will make some decision along the line and the vendor might still have a sale against the advice of company IT.

Which people in IT have seen happen far too often, some technical person makes a recommendation based on very good research, and the manager buys something based on marketing and sales speech alone. Nothing about integration, work flow, or usability to solve a business problem.

Then of course we all have bias about the things we love and hate, a windows shop might have a hard time getting Linux in the door and vice versa. That only generally happens under compelling need or strong personality in the decision making process.

Vendors still need to know what is happening in the sales space they exist in. you don’t start a company on a half baked plan (well at least not in this years current tech bubble), and you can’t make wild promises without someone figuring out that those promises are not true along the way.

Great additional reading on this can be found here.