Calling all NANOG'ers - idea for national hardware price quote registry

Sat Sep 17 12:03:09 UTC 2005

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Matt Bazan wrote:

> I don't know about you, but how many times have you wanted to know the
> price of hardware vendor a, vendor b and vendor c's product offering
> only to find out that you have to contact one of their sales reps, give
> them all your contact & company info (I'm sure you know the drill)
> listen to a sales spiel (or two, or three) maybe a webinar, or
> conference call or..etc. before finally getting a quote some time later?
> Only to then be bothered by endless follow up sales calls?

This isn't an price list or an NDA problem. This is what I call a "vendor
BS management" problem.

I too hate webinars, conference calls, "breakfast forums" (Who the hell
thought that one up? Someone who has never been called out in the middle
of the night, probably) and other sorts of BS.

If you're in a market where there is some competition, just tell the sales
rep that if he wants you to jump through the hoops listening to the
marketing BS and wasting your time with webinars and powerpoints, where
you're force fed their propaganda, you ain't interested, you'll go
somewhere else, and thanks for calling.

I find it either a) re-focuses their mind to actually *listening* to you
(now there's a shock), or b) they don't get it, and you can then ignore
them (e.g. present a wall of voicemail, and fail to return their calls
talking about "synergy" and similar BS) while they make even bigger fools
of themselves, or until they give up.

Yes, I know that option (b) sounds a bit rude, but they have shown you
discourtesy by not listening and insisting on ramming marketing down your
throat. The fun part about (b) is that if you do call them back after a
few weeks, they have become so desperate, they will usually listen to you.

The hardest part I find is dealing with companies with a high turnover of 
account management and pre-sales, where you seem to have to break a new 
salesman in every few months. That's almost as annoying as the webinars 
themselves.

Cheers,
Mike