What Are You Doing Right Now

JaredBusch

@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs you need to help separate this conversation.

You mentioning Ubiquiti to your Sales guy, was for what purpose?

The business you work for sells and supports POS systems correct?

lol the original post said they were looking for APs for software, so super confusing from the start

How are you confused?
ipad based software so it can not have a physical connection like the rest of the systems we support(hardware wise) so we need ap's for ipads that runt the software.

Because the iPad bit didn't come until later...

And iPads are not software.....

scottalanmiller

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I said I was trying to convince the salesman to go to with unifi ap's rather than cisco.

What purpose does the sale guy have to the conversation if not to be convinced to sell something?

FFS

OK. from the top .
He asked for suggestions, and I gave him my Opinion.
that was the conversation.

Yes, BUT.... that's not enough. HE is a reseller. Presumably the context of the question is "what can I resell that makes me maximum money?"

That is the only logical context to "him asking for suggestions." Why would he care about anything else, being a sales person, that is the only thing we have reason to believe your suggestion could be for.

Given the context of him being a salesman, it makes Ubiquiti just about the worst possible option, if an option at all.

DustinB3403

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I said I was trying to convince the salesman to go to with unifi ap's rather than cisco.

What purpose does the sale guy have to the conversation if not to be convinced to sell something?

FFS

OK. from the top .
He asked for suggestions, and I gave him my Opinion.
that was the conversation.

Yes, BUT.... that's not enough. HE is a reseller. Presumably the context of the question is "what can I resell that makes me maximum money?"

That is the only logical context to "him asking for suggestions." Why would he care about anything else, being a sales person, that is the only thing we have reason to believe your suggestion could be for.

Given the context of him being a salesman, it makes Ubiquiti just about the worst possible option, if an option at all.

Unless he specifically sold "support for this wireless POS system that uses OFE Ubiquiti APs".

DustinB3403

Which based on this entire conversation isn't the goal, which the sales guys goal is to sell as much hardware as possible and leave the support to the normal existing channel for the POS systems that @WrCombs supports with the highest possible margins.

Which leads us back to the same point of, the sales dick can't resell Ubiquiti because of the reasons explained.

scottalanmiller

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@JaredBusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

I said I was trying to convince the salesman to go to with unifi ap's rather than cisco.

What purpose does the sale guy have to the conversation if not to be convinced to sell something?

FFS

OK. from the top .
He asked for suggestions, and I gave him my Opinion.
that was the conversation.

And they are trying to tell you that you cannot give this kind of suggestion because you cannot resell it.

What I was taking from it is we cant be a reseller, but we can buy and sell as used, never opened.. it would be more of a headache, and super confusing, and probably less than adequate for the sales rep, but it was still a suggestion.

Right, but a suggestion that doesn't make sense given the context. Does Ubiquiti make an AP? Yes. Does it likely do anything he would want it to do? No.

Presumably he came to you because he was hoping that you would help guide him. But for his needs the Meraki does a great job and for the context, the Ubiquiti is terrible. You said he asked for suggestions, not options. The Ubiquiti would semi qualify as a "possible" options if nothing else existed. But it shouldn't be a suggestion unless nothing else exists.

I know you feel that you told us very little. But "salesman" and "suggestion" tell us way more than you think that they do.

scottalanmiller

@WrCombs the thing that I think you missed was empathy for the sales position. As an IT person, you are looking at what to recommend from an IT perspective. And Ubiquiti is great and Meraki would be out of the question. But Meraki is what you pick for sales people - huge margins and easy to sell.

When you gave him your answer, you were thinking of it from "what would we use if we were the IT department" perspective. But he's not IT, he's a salesman. You should empathize and think about what factors matter to him. And for him, Ubiquiti makes little sense as it lacks all of the things that would make a sales person happy (or your company by extension.) Empathy + context are the key here.

To you, you are stuck in an IT mindset and it seems like there are all these options and reasons for things. But he's not in IT and IT factors don't matter to him nor to the business. He, and the business, are in this to make money. What is good for an IT department, what is good for the customer, are not things that matter in sales or profits.

As with any IT advice, we can't really know the answer to anything until we know the goals and context. It's why it is important to learn general business, to learn to speak finance, to know operations, so that we know how our IT decisions play into the overall business.

WrCombs

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@WrCombs the thing that I think you missed was empathy for the sales position. As an IT person, you are looking at what to recommend from an IT perspective. And Ubiquiti is great and Meraki would be out of the question. But Meraki is what you pick for sales people - huge margins and easy to sell.

When you gave him your answer, you were thinking of it from "what would we use if we were the IT department" perspective. But he's not IT, he's a salesman. You should empathize and think about what factors matter to him. And for him, Ubiquiti makes little sense as it lacks all of the things that would make a sales person happy (or your company by extension.) Empathy + context are the key here.

To you, you are stuck in an IT mindset and it seems like there are all these options and reasons for things. But he's not in IT and IT factors don't matter to him nor to the business. He, and the business, are in this to make money. What is good for an IT department, what is good for the customer, are not things that matter in sales or profits.

As with any IT advice, we can't really know the answer to anything until we know the goals and context. It's why it is important to learn general business, to learn to speak finance, to know operations, so that we know how our IT decisions play into the overall business.

That makes the most sense, to me. So thanks for explaining that.
I talked to him and told him what I learned after the fact and he's still looking.

dbeato

More calls but lunch is coming.

DustinB3403

Just finished eating lunch, but still relaxing a bit.

dafyre

@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

More calls but lunch is coming.

Better than winter...

WrCombs

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

More calls but lunch is coming.

Better than winter...

was that a GOT joke?

dafyre

@WrCombs said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

More calls but lunch is coming.

Better than winter...

was that a GOT joke?