CMS list of tricky questions: welcome to the summer “CMS Sales Idol”
That could even be a new “Vendors Meme”… Jon started it with its “How to keep a CMS vendor on their Toes”. The list was commented by several “usual suspects”, but it was well improved by Jeff Potts by its nice “Summer grilling tips for your CMS Vendor”.
I could myself add a couple more, but I am not a masochist – I am myself a CMS sales person. That said, we all agree, it is an excellent idea to focus at the people and not only at a product when a buyer is about to start a new CMS project.
So it makes a lot of sense trying to guess how trustable people are during the presales. But I am far from believing trust may appear from a list of (tricky) questions. Whereas most of these questions can be very relevant for a given project, it is about trust and the question is more “how grilling tips can help choosing the most trustable vendor?”
How the BBQ cession is actually the CMS Sales Idol
Well, thanks to this BBQ cession I believe you will certainly choose – with some sadism btw – the best sales person. Managing tricky questions is a sale’s routine. Some are gifted for such shows, some are not. It won’t mean they will be more – or less – honest than the others, it will mean there are better sales people than the others.
I understand the audience had funny – or sad - experiences with terrible sales people; we all have had terrible experience with sales people, we are all buyers of something in this world. And a demo is a demo, the unique chance to make a first impression, fair enough, but trying to grill your sales representative will have mainly two effects:
- Satisfy your sadism if you get some pleasure making people miserable (why not),
- Detect how good the sales person is.
The sales’ grill cession is not a trust challenge. It is a sales academy to detect the best sales persons.
Maybe I am wrong as a sales person myself, but I am much more in favour of pragmatic meetings, and making people comfortable: it always help to see how they really are.
My opinion: the best way to manipulate a vendor is to make him comfortable and make him believing you are not so skilled, not so aware, and not so clever that you actually are. If dishonest, the person will take the opportunity to use your fake weakness/lack of knowledge and will bullshit you in a way you won’t miss. If the sales person only wants what a sales person should (making a business successful, not only a sales itself but the whole project), he/she will behave accordingly.
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Of course, in the real world, that's not always the case and I've seen a lot of sales people be at least less than truthful. Or worse, not very knowledgeable (which is an insult to the customer -- and word does get around about that). Still, that doesn't mean customers should stoop to the same level as a bonus-driven flashy sales guy. You get the attitude you deserve, so if you start behaving as obnoxious as the worst salesperson you've come across, it's unlikely you'll get a beneficial relationship going with any vendor...
That's not to say customers aren't allowed to ask pointy questions or make a vendor sweat a little. But the relationship should be mutually respectful, or better still, friendly, so that those questions would be taken as challenging, not torture :P
Other than that, on a less serious note, the questions are just plain amusing to read. It reminds me of Monty Python: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP0sqRMzkwo :)