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Posted 2/25/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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… before you get on my case I know I’m technically a sales person but I would never admit that to anyone – when I’m asked what I do I simply say “I work for a web design company” and leave it at that. As an account manager, my role is to gain new business, and foster that business relationship for years you could call it “Serial Monogamy” for website owners “I love you and will treat you all equally but it’s important for me to have more than one client.” Then there is the other type “The bottom feeder” the kind you think of when you hear the term “sales person.”
Last Saturday (Feb 2nd), I went to the Detroit boat show to buy a boat. I happen to live on a lake, I decided I wanted to purchase a luxury item for the summer months; I work hard so it’s important that I relax on Sundays so there is some kind of break in what I do, now here is the part of why “I hate sales people.” Travis a colleague at 352 is a professional skier, he sent me some details on boats so I had a fair idea of what I was after. I stopped by the Nautique display and had a look at the boats, they looked fine ecstatically, got some details from the staff and moved on to the Malibu section. This is where the fun started, the sales person swooped in like a bird of prey, I did not see him coming, he asked what are you looking for? and I stupidly said “I'm looking to buy a boat” as he had taken me by surprise.
He launched into a tirade of boating acronyms, nautical terms, and analogies comparing them to American cars. My mind when blank, I stopped him, as I travelled to seek information on the best boat for my needs, (wake boarding, fishing, and a few leisurely beers). And I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, I told him straight – I’m from Europe, I know nothing about boats, American cars, or anything nautical for that matter, so he made some more references to Malibu boats been the best thing since sliced bread -- how safe they were, the interiors where great, the engine was amazing. Still using acronyms, nautical terms, and analogies to American cars, after I had specifically suggested that he didn’t.
He made 3 mortal sins in his sales pitch (1) he slagged off the competition, he told me that Malibu were the best boats ever, better than all the rest, I replied -- I thought that Nautique where top of the heap, as a colleague had told me so, his reply was “he is obviously not a skier” I explained, he's actually a pro skier, and he knows his stuff. Moving on to the second and worst thing he could have said,
(2) he noticed a Bayliner boat brochure, in my hand and he made a comment “we in the industry call Bayliner’s AIDS,” I said sorry… say that again, as I was so bored, I thought I heard wrong. He said “AIDS” because once you have it you can’t get rid of it. Now I’m not medical expert, but the doctor with me was, -- is there a rule that people with AIDS can’t buy a boat – what if I had AIDS and he made that comment, firstly I would take this a huge offence, he would've been fired Malibu boats would have been sued for what…. because some slimy sales person made a derogatory comment, in order for me not to buy a boat that he didn’t sell.
(3) He lied to me – he said every woman that came to his ski school for lessons (his other job) that had a "Bayliner," he had sold them a new Malibu that very day, what a liar, if he was really that good of a sales person I would have paid the 60k for the boat there and then.
Now this seems like a little bit of a rant and it is, – its people like him that make me embarrassed to say what I do for a living (sales!) As sales people you need to be very careful what you say, and how you say it, as mis-truths can come back to haunt you. They can cause clients to jump ship after a project is finished or worse during, because they don’t trust you – a happy informed client will stick with you forever because they trust your knowledge, experience and what you’re doing is in their best interest. If they get a whiff of sneaky underhanded tactics, they will leave you and go to your competitors, so all that hard work of trying to win and keep them is all in vein and you get nothing.
The bottom line is he tried to sell me a Mercedes when I wanted a Honda. I will not be buying a $60,000 boat unless Travis replies to this post with some compelling reason why he thinks I need a Malibu, for four usable months of the year. And even that I still won’t be spending that amount of money -- for those whom personally know me, you will understand that I'm the sort of person that would reverse the boat in a wall the first time I try to put it into the water.
My parting thoughts -- How you sell is a reflection on you and the type of person you are. If you can sleep at night knowing you sold something even if you knew it was the wrong product -- karma will come back to haunt you. If you sell something because your company puts high sales targets that you have to reach – leave get and get a job with a decent company with a conscience, you’re doing nobody any good selling them something that is not the right solution for their needs.
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Posted 2/5/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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We attended the career showcase at the University of Florida last week to snatch up some great talent. In preparation for the even, Kelli and Dan, our creative and technical development directors, asked me what we had to use at the show. Between the short notice and our general disdain for tradeshows, we didn't have much to go on. That is until I remembered our massive "pop-up" booth from the past.
This booth is truly a "trade" show booth, since we got it in trade for Web development services. However, there is nothing "pop-up" about it. Luckily we decided to do a test run the night before, just to remind ourselves how it goes up. Thank God we did. Imagine building the eiffel tower from springy tent poles, and then covering it in printed vinyl.
So hats off to Kelli and Dan for not only helping me get that goliath up the night before, but for repeating the feat the next day! The show was a success, and here are Kelli and Jodi, the development director of project management, to prove it. Now if only they could figure out the iron! :)
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Posted 2/3/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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So, I have purchased a few apple products over the past few months, iMac, Mac Book pro, Apple TV, iPod Touch and software. I had a few issues this week, which has made me question my purchases and apple as a company.
1, iMac –
Problem, I sent a client a word document during the week, and he couldn’t open it because he was a Mac user, so I told him don’t worry I will set up the document in “pages” and mail it to you, except I couldn’t add the attachment to entourage because it needed “Stuffit” (similar to WinZip for Mac), after the download it still wouldn’t attach to the mail. Solution -- revert to my windows laptop, change the doc to a pdf, and email it to client.
2, Apple TV –
Problem (1) Bought the A-TV at the Mac store, got home there was no leads in the box to connect it to my entertainment system, luckily I bought an HDMI cable as I was fuming when I saw there were no cables. Upside, the HDMI cable was only $20 at Best Buy they are $50. Bottom line, do not sell a product unless it comes with at least some cables to get you up and running.
Problem (2), Rented two movies Friday night from iTunes (it took approx 90mins to download). The problem was they where downloaded on another Laptop that we have in the house that was locked down by admins (not 352), and would not wirelessly connect to apple TV. Not Apple's fault, so we decided to call the Apple support line to see if we could remove the two movies and re-download them on one of the machines that did connect to the Apple TV. After 30 mins of being on hold and passed off to different departments, they finally said “No” because the feature that allows you to stream rented movies from your machine to A-TV is not available for another 2 weeks. Great, it would have been nice to know that, since in the time I wasted downloading the movies and calling support, I could have driven to the local video store, watched one movie and dropped it back. Not a great start to what I thought would be a beautiful relationship. The reason I bought it was to make my life easier and save some time in my already hectic life.
3, iPod Touch.
Problem, (see video -- http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features.html#maps) notice what it does and how easy they make it look. Well, mine doesn't do that…mine displays an error; “Your location could not be determined.” So, I googled “iPod touch maps and your location could not be determined” which brought me to and Apple Forum where everyone has my same problem. However I did not find one reply from apple offering a solution, but “drumboi88” offers fairly good solution that I'm going to try right now
All you need to do is get your latitude and longitude from Google Maps:
--> Go to maps.google.com
--> Continue to double click until your zoomed in as close as possible (double clicking causes Google Maps to zoom and center).
--> When you are exactly on top of your position, copy/paste this link into your address bar of your internet:
javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));
--> This will bring up your lat/long of the location. Copy/paste that to an email.
Next you need to get your MAC address:
--> Using a software helps (iStumbler, or NetSumbler work well).
--> Usually looking on your router will give you info.
--> Google if all else fails.
Once you get that, you just mail it back to your techie, and they will enter it into the system.
My network got put in a week after I mailed them, and it works great!
Hope this helps.
My long/lat is (42.465100845742, -83.88319820165634). I am going to download http://www.istumbler.net/, which must be done on my Mac as it won’t work on windows – hold on, while I rotate my chair 90º and download the software. Wait! .. no need to, I can type the IP address of my router into IE 7 and get my Mac address. Ok, I have all the details now -- but who is my "techie?”, I suppose this is me, but I don’t have a clue what to do. Should I email the details to skyhook or my local ISP?
· I will look at the forum again as I assume someone else has had this issue....
· Ok, I can’t see any info.
· I will check www.skyhookwireless.com as iTouch uses Skyhooks WPS (WiFi Positioning System) to find my position.
· Checked the coverage area, and my home address is covered.
· What do I do now?
· I downloaded the SDK http://www.skyhookwireless.com/developers/sdk.php. Ok, that was no help; I do not know what to do with it.
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh! I'm going nuts here, for 3 hours I have been messing around with this crap while I could have been working. I ended up emailing skyhook support. I want to mail Mac support also, as I refuse to waste my time on the phone. But, I can’t find the appropriate area on the site (http://www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch/) to email; no support link for the maps feature.
To add more fuel to the fire, while seeking a solution I read on engadget, I discovered that if I had purchased my ITouch after Jan 1st I would not have had to pay $20 for the update,. I'm! pissed, I want my money, back screw you apple, you will never see 1 cent of my money ever again.
It’s not the $20 I'm worried about, it is the principle of the matter. You make me pay extra because I bought my iTouch Dec 18th? As a side note, I have spent nearly $6,000 in the past 3 months with your company. With regard to my Mac possessions, my Mac book is now a paper weight as it performs poorly on a sophisticated University network (admittedly not your fault). My 24-in iMac is a glorified personal email and Skype tool, as it is so much easier to use windows in my business environment. Furthermore, at present, apple TV is only good for watching You Tube videos. If I did business this way, I doubt I could afford the exorbitant prices you charge for your products. I would be always be seeking new jobs because no one would want to hire a scumbag that rips people off.
Thank you Steve Jobs for wasting 3 hours of my time on Friday night and 5 hours of my time today (Sunday) when I could have been working or watching the super bowl ads.
Side note -- Sony, don’t think you're off the hook either. I opened the spare PS3 SIXAXIS™ Wireless Controller last night that I purchased at Christmas, and it had no mini USB cable to charge it. I had to wait 30 Min's to recharge it, as others played Motor Storm. When I did finally get it charged, I realized that Motor storm is a 1-player game, so we went and played Tiger Woods on the Wii.
Disclaimer - I have altered this apple landing page image, to include what they should say ….
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