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"I wouldn't have approved it if I'd known it was wrong!"

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,562
24,182
media blackout
Sales people: generally the lights are on and nobody's home.

I'm amazed most sales people have enough mental capacity to remember to breathe without having to write it down.
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,232
20,015
Sleazattle
Our salespeople are absolutely worthless. They would have blamed it on someone else and would have claimed that approving projects takes up too much of their customer face time.
 

CrabJoe StretchPants

Reincarnated Crab Walking Head Spinning Bruce Dick
Nov 30, 2003
14,163
2,484
Groton, MA
One engineer I work with told me he was ordering some type of electrical wires to connect a power supply cabinet to some type of machine. He measured the wires to be XX' length.........but didn't take into account the extra length needed for inside the machine/power supply cabinet. He wound up ordering an absurdly large amount of wires, all of which were about 2' too short. Don't know how much $$$ it cost the company, but I bet it wasn't cheap.



He said that was strike #2 with that employer.:rofl:
 

firemandivi

They drank my Tooters
Sep 7, 2006
784
-1
a state called denial
Someone in my dept. misspelled one word today and it cost the dept. $100,000 to fix it.
Oopsie!
Was that someone named "Bluebug"

A sales rep for a hydraulic computer program called me again after I told him we weren't interested. "I told you a month ago we weren't interested, I'm at work and have work to do" and hung up. Now that I've been civil the next time he calls I can be uncivil :)
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
Anyone who does any technical work and deals with sales/marketing people should appreciate it.
While I agree that many sales/marketing people are douchebags, if it was left up to the technical people to do the sales and marketing, nobody would make any money.

At the very least, appreciate that they are selling the products that keep you employed.

Of course, that does little good when you are confronted with their whiny bitchiness face-to-face and can't see anything other than your desire to repeatedly stab them in the neck with the nearest sharp object.
 

CrabJoe StretchPants

Reincarnated Crab Walking Head Spinning Bruce Dick
Nov 30, 2003
14,163
2,484
Groton, MA
While I agree that many sales/marketing people are douchebags, if it was left up to the technical people to do the sales and marketing, nobody would make any money.

At the very least, appreciate that they are selling the products that keep you employed.

Oh no doubt, don't get me wrong. They do what they do very well (My company pretty much relies 100% on sales generation, which I could never do), but please, PLEASE, don't try to take over my end of business. :rofl:


Sales people = sell things
Engineer people = engineer things


In 99.999% cases where a crossover is attempted, disaster ensues.
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,232
20,015
Sleazattle
While I agree that many sales/marketing people are douchebags, if it was left up to the technical people to do the sales and marketing, nobody would make any money.

At the very least, appreciate that they are selling the products that keep you employed.
Here the technical people have to do the sales and marketing because we sell technical products. Here is how the typical sales process works around here:

Sales guy sets up a meeting with the customer from a lead. Leads most often come in as requests from the customer, we do no cold selling. I create the presentation, give the presentation. If everything goes well the customer asks for a quote. I put together a design proposal. The sales guy plugs it into a template and looks up prices adds them together then hands the quote to the customer. When a sales guy is on vacation or quits usually one of the engineers covers for them. It never works the other way around. The one attribute our sales guys have that the engineers don't is that all the salesmen want to become managment and the engineers are happy doing their current job.

We do have a few dedicated marketing folks who do great work organizing events and creating sales collateral. I give them a lot more respect as they do a real job.
 

dan-o

Turbo Monkey
Jun 30, 2004
6,499
2,805
Sales guy sets up a meeting with the customer from a lead......Leads most often come in as requests from the customer, we do no cold selling.... The sales guy plugs it into a template and looks up prices adds them together then hands the quote to the customer.
Those aren't salesmen. What you describe is an Administrative Assistant.
 

Westy

the teste
Nov 22, 2002
54,232
20,015
Sleazattle
Sounds like you guys should can your sales team and pay your engineers a commission on deals.

I agree. We have a few engineers that can't do the sales thing but they need to be canned too. The problem is the whole sales job is ingrained into the old boy network. Our sales jobs are structured around the old way of doing business where you took the customer out for golf, got him drunk and hooked him up with a prostitute. That doesn't happen anymore and customers don't have the time to shmooze with that kind of sales guy anymore. But all of our executive management came up in that kind of system and they think they need that kind of sales guy/girl around to do it.
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,562
24,182
media blackout
Here the technical people have to do the sales and marketing because we sell technical products. Here is how the typical sales process works around here:

Sales guy sets up a meeting with the customer from a lead. Leads most often come in as requests from the customer, we do no cold selling. I create the presentation, give the presentation. If everything goes well the customer asks for a quote. I put together a design proposal. The sales guy plugs it into a template and looks up prices adds them together then hands the quote to the customer. When a sales guy is on vacation or quits usually one of the engineers covers for them. It never works the other way around. The one attribute our sales guys have that the engineers don't is that all the salesmen want to become managment and the engineers are happy doing their current job.

We do have a few dedicated marketing folks who do great work organizing events and creating sales collateral. I give them a lot more respect as they do a real job.

It all depends on what is being engineered and in what quantities. I work in the toy industry. We produce large quantities. Therefore, our engineers have no need to interact with customers (thereby acting in a salesperson position).

My father on the other hand, designs cooling pumps for nuclear reactors. They can keep track of their annual sales accounts on one hand. In this case engineer/customer interaction is CRUCIAL.
 

H8R

Cranky Pants
Nov 10, 2004
13,959
35
Sales guy here, this morning: "Have we always had Outlook for email?"

Me: "Yes, you've used it for email since before I was here."

Him: "Oh. Is that a good one to use?"

Me: *blank stare*..."Yes."

Him: "I shouldn't use PDF?"

Me: "No."


:rofl: