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Hit Me!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrFrylock, Nov 9, 2010.

  1. DrFrylock

    DrFrylock
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    The White

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    You've got it backwards...where do you think Brooklyn cab drivers come from?
     
  2. scotchcrotch

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    I've been in sales in one form or another my whole life.

    Waited tables, sold insurance, retail, and now logistics.

    Sales vary greatly depending on the job. I'd rank B2B logistics at the top, and my door to door insurance as the worst job I've ever had (below working fast food).

    I don't think gimmicks work in the long run. Closing is all about trust, why risk your name for a quck sale? (Which you may or may not go thru).

    Customer is always right, despite what you may have heard. Sure, you can tell them they're wrong, and you'll probably lose the business. Reoccuring sales in my industry means I'd rather take a loss on the customer's fuck up to retain the business, granted it doesn't become a habit.

    A business relationship that's generating sales will almost always make up for any short-term losses.
     
  3. Nettdata

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    Anyone who's gotten laid in their life has been in sales, even if they didn't know it.
     
  4. Nettdata

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    Totally depends.

    If you're talking commission sales on items, like paper or something, then sure, that works.

    When you're a small software development shop, like me, and you have problem or difficult customers, it's not worth it.

    The best thing you can learn to do with them is say "no", not take their business, and refer them to your competition.
     
  5. scotchcrotch

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    Why not jack up their rates for the headache?

    I'll never turn down business, but you'll be paying for my headaches.
     
  6. Nettdata

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    Mr. Toast

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    Quality of life, happiness, and sanity trumps cash any day of the week.

    Sure, there are times when you need the cash and you sell your soul to the devil for it, but work is actually FUN when it's with customers that get it. And having a project manager that doesn't want to eat a gun all the time does wonders for team morale.

    The older you get, the more you appreciate that.

    I just bailed on a contract that I was making a solid 5 figures per month at because it was sucking my will to live, and it was getting to the point that if I had a dog, I'd be kicking it. (Instead, I found myself yelling at the bears wandering through my yard).

    I'm now quite content to be walking around my house in my underwear playing the bagpipes and drinking, unemployed, for the foreseeable future.

    Never, EVER, underestimate the effects of stress or unnecessary shit. It's too easy to get into a death spiral. When you're happy, you're fun to work with, and customers get a good feeling from you, you'll have more work than you know what to do with, without the bullshit.
     
  7. scotchcrotch

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    That's why I hire employees to put up with the bullshit.

    When it doubt, delegate.
     
  8. Nettdata

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    Ahhh... the old "Delegate and Disappear" concept. Looks good on paper, great way to fail.

    I'm sure you're being tongue-in-cheek, but a lot of people in management positions make this mistake.

    A company or team is akin to a living organism. If you have one bitter employee, he/she will spread that bitterness to the others, and productivity and morale will drop, and shit will go wrong. That is bad for business.

    I've always found that the best way to avoid death by cancer is to not voluntarily give yourself cancer in the first place.

    I also have enough respect for my employees that I look out for them, and try to protect them from that kind of shit as much as I can. (Not saying you don't, or at all imply you don't respect your employees or anything).

    "The men come first" headspace, if you know what I mean.


    Case in point, I have a friend who is a project manager for another dev company, and he was hired to do exactly what you describe... he's dealing with the BS and shit from asshole clients. He's really good at his job, and because of that, all the problem clients have been handed to him. He's been doing that for almost two years, and our fishing trips have become bitch and therapy sessions for him. He's become so preoccupied with the crap, it's infringing on his life.

    He recognized this a while ago, and as a result he quit last month because it was taking too much of a toll on him.

    The upshot of this was that the biggest problem client's CEO called him to get a post-mortem of what the hell was going on with the project, as my friend was the third PM with 2 dev companies to bail on it. End result was that the PM on the client side was a dick who though being a hardnose asshole was the most effective way to get shit done, and was summarily canned. My friend was hired on for the job at almost twice the pay, and with a nice signing bonus as a bit of an apology for having to deal with the prick.

    They've now seen more progress in three weeks than in the past 6 months.
     
  9. Guy Fawkes

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    But at the end of the day everyone has their own limit to the amount of shit and stress they can take and in the end the effort and subsequently the product/service will suffer which points back to you. Leading to more headaches than if you had just let that order go somewhere else.

    I've been doing industrial sales on some level for 10 years now (fuck that seems like a long time). Started out selling catalog parts that we ordered overseas, tripled the price on and resold. Did everything from taking the order to ordering the parts to breaking down the bulk orders to packing and shipping the shit to the customer.

    Now I manage a pair of divisions for the equipment manufacturer that bought out that original operation oh so long ago.

    For the last eight years I've been number one in personal and divisional; sales, new customers, and mental health (vacation) days taken... by far on all accounts.

    I never high pressure sell, I never chase orders, and I work a lot less than most but I focus on two things. Number one is my customer's potential for growth. I don't want to sell two systems a year for six years I want to sell six systems a year for the next four years. The second thing I look for are customers who know their identity. They, like me, aren't chasing orders for projects they know they can't handle nor are they looking for the impossible from their vendors.

    Then I keep a working formula going where I make a certain number of new customer inquiries a week. Touch base on a certain number of open/unsold projects each week, and update a certain number of customers on current purchased projects each week. It keeps irons in the fire on every sales front and keeps my greed in check so I don't become the obnoxious sales guy calling every other day. It's an exercise regimen for sales growth.

    Finally, every sales person should have some portion of their compensation linked to a commission structure.
     
  10. Dcc001

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    This is off topic, and my apologies. Perhaps there is another thread in what I'm about to say, but the notion of "the stress isn't worth the money," I think, comes from a position of luxury. I'm sure there are people out there who are working full time at Walmart with a second job at McDonalds (both the very bottom of the job barrel, and if you think people at that level of the customer service food chain don't have a significant amount of stress, then you've never worked that level of the customer service food chain) who would LOVE to say, "Fuck it. This is wrecking my health and I'm not doing it."

    However, the rent still needs to get paid and the car still needs gas and the kids need clothes and...you get the point. The ability to say, "I won't do the work because it's stressful and therefore harmful" is not a position most people can take.

    I agree with Scotch...when I see a pain in the ass job come through, I don't tell the customer to PFO - I jack the margin up 50%. If we're going to hold your hand through the design process (something your architect should have done...AHAHAHAHA!) then we're going to get paid for it.
     
  11. rei

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    The problem with 'customer always right' mentality isn't so much for clients that will give you a bullshit project as much as people trying to game your business for free product

    [examples include people who repeatedly move product around and then try and call you out on your signage policy]
     
  12. Nettdata

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    I agree, to a certain extent, which is why I made the comment about selling your soul to the devil... sometimes you have to put up with the crap for the cash.

    I've been there, and done that.

    But I also think people set themselves up for too much unnecessary bullshit when they don't have to. And when you're dealing with all the other shit for the problem customer, that's stealing your time and resources for another, good customer.

    And not just in business related stuff... also in things like friends, etc.
     
  13. scotchcrotch

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    All valid points.

    It's kind of hard to compare different industries as the variables are so diverse.

    For instancee, I've never had a customer that's made me hate my job. I have had a couple that wasted enough of my time though that it wasn't worth it without a price increase.

    I also provide a service with clearly defined contracts that aren't negotiable, so I don't deal with a lot of the BS that comes with selling goods.


    Dunno, I just have the mentality that any business is good as long as the profits justify the time spent. Especially in this economy. But then again, in my 8 year career I've maybe had 2 customers that were assholes.
     
  14. Nettdata

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    That's one of the real challenges with custom software development.

    A HUGE amount of time is spent just educating the client about how the process works.

    They (for the most part), don't get it.

    If you're building a house, and have a cost overrun, they at least have some background or basis for understanding, and it seems reasonable to them, because they're exposed to the basic concepts.

    Software is totally different. If a piece of the puzzle (like an interface into another business system) doesn't exist, and we have to build it, if we even CAN build it, they don't get that it might take trial and error and cost to do so. Cost overruns make it look like we're screwing them over, because they don't have a basis of understanding.

    I've had a lot of problem customers because they don't understand the time it takes, the costs involved, or they wouldn't put in the time required by them during the process.

    The worst stiffed me for $140k. THAT was fun. I had to max out every credit card and line of credit I had in order to pay my guys. (It was a private jet firm, and what makes me laugh to this day is that now, 3 years later, they are still forced to take the long and expensive routes and patterns when any of their jets fly into Vancouver, thanks to some friends I have in ATC... I still get texts every couple of weeks like "_____ did an extra 22 minutes in holding patterns today")

    Hell, I've mentored a few members on the TiB about building web sites and programming, and with just a few short emails opened up a whole line of thinking that they never even considered. Never mind if we dug into the details. "Never thought of that..." is a common refrain.


    Mind you, I also may be talking more about Project Management issues, rather than sales issues. In my business, larger companies generally have the pre-sales engineers and sales guys that track down the leads and sell them on stuff, then they have the poor schmucks in post-sales implementation that have to try and live up to what the sales guys promised the client. Don't get me started on that shit. More than once I've had to "have words" with some pre-sales idiots over-promising and under-budgeting shit.

    My services company sales is WAY different than my software product company sales.
     
  15. Frank

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    Same with my field, we spend a ton of time trying to explain (relatively) complex mathematical modeling to complete laymen, generally people who have non-technical degrees. Most of them shut up, nod their heads and pass the information along to their accountants to put on the books, but every once in a while we'll get someone who wants to get into the nitty gritty and argue with us about our assumptions which are mostly industry standard. Most of them go away when their accountants tell them to shut up, but very recently we dealt with one guy who basically went to war with us for not recognizing certain assets as part of the valuation (because legally we could not).

    If he's not fired or doesn't quit/resign by the next go around we'll probably gouge them on price to the point that they won't renew.
     
  16. big B

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    FOCUS: Have you ever been in sales? What was that experience like?

    I sold meat door to door, and one time I traded a box of steaks for sex.

    One summer during college I took a job selling meat door to door. Working for 'The Meat Man', we sold frozen pre-packaged steaks by the case. I found out pretty quickly that I was not a very good meat salesman. I did however meet some really interesting people.
    One time in particular I knocked on a door and a young lady answered. After about 10 minutes of talking she mentioned that she didn't want to pay for any steaks but that we could trade something for a box of Filets. She led me inside the house and to the back room where she opens up a desk drawer and pulls out a condom. Being a hornball 21 year old, I gladly took the invitation, and one thing led to another. Thirty minutes later, I realized that I had just had sex with a complete stranger, and to be honest, it was fucking awesome. It's weird thinking about it 10 years later, but dammit I didn't get the herp, it was fun as hell, and it makes for a funny ass drunken story: "Have I told you guys about the time I traded steak for sex?"
     
  17. Volo

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    No where is this more true than the restaurant industry. The number of people who try to pressure their servers into giving them free shit is staggering. I'll gladly comp a meal if I fucked it up, or for whatever reason it isn't up to par, but don't expect a round of shots just because your table of 12 dropped $600. Yeah, I appreciated your business, and if a server comes back and tells me that $500 of that was food I'll pay for a round myself, but don't go out and ask for it.

    I feel your pain. I really do. I imagine what you suffer through is similar to explaining to someone why their 8oz striploin served with baby red roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus costs $24/plate, when just that morning they were at the grocery store and saw the same cut of meat for only $6.80. Or why they are being charged $6 for a bowl of broccoli and cheddar soup when they can get a can of Campbell's for under two bucks.

    There's just cost that isn't always out in the open, and a surprisingly complicated process involved in getting the product prepared and sent to your table.

    FOCUS: Thus far I've only experience high-pressure sales when I visit local suppliers while wearing my whites. In my street clothes I don't demand attention when shopping for food and supplies, but if I'm suited up I get swarmed by any number of salesmen, and in some places, the owners.

    It wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't so much dick-waving and posturing. I mean, I'm a fucking chef, and if I'm still in my whites while visiting your establishment then it likely means that I'm in a hurry and need something right away, otherwise I would've changed back into my street clothes before showing up.

    It should be pretty simple, I'll ask you where something is and once you tell me we'll exchange goods and services and I'll be on my way. Thank you. Instead, I get a sales pitch on every damned item in the store, and oftentimes no one even bothers to ask me what restaurant I'm from, or what my needs might be.

    I suppose I can't call foul on them, since it's their business and they see a guy like me as a potential gold mine, but it's certainly frustrating when I have dinner service in 15 minutes and I can't get to the till to pay for my block of gruyere because the owner is telling me about his wonderful line of fresh pastas. Useful information, yes, but there's a better time for it.
     
  18. Volo

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    Missed this on the first go...

    I'm going to go out and assume that you had to pay for whatever product you didn't come back with, right?

    If so, they you essentially paid for sex. Only difference is that you didn't actively go looking and that you didn't find her on the street.
     
  19. Noland

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    At a low point in my life I did in fact sell Cutco knives. While it was a miserable existence, those are some damn good knives. I sold those fucking things in 1995 and I still have all of them and they are still sharp.

    Sales is a funny business. But, spend enough time in the real world and you'll find that pretty much every business (possibly excluding government or academia) is sales at some point. No matter what you do, there is probably someone else that can do whatever it is you do and they will probably do it cheaper just to lure that particular client, customer, whatever away from you.

    I'm sure that many people believe they are indispensable. They aren't. Very few people are. One of the most obvious examples of this is the legal business. Even if you graduated order of the Coif and you were editor of the Law Review from an Ivy League school, so what? Wait 12 months and there's another one coming right behind you with exactly the same credentials. You are an entirely fungible asset.

    The only thing that makes a lawyer indispensable at a law firm is clients. Consider this situation. You're the above well credentialed Ivy League guy and there is a fat slob drunk who graduated from a Caribbean law school and got his job because his father was a founding partner who managed, because he's a hell of a salesman, to bring Exxon and all its business to the firm. The partners meet and decide they need to fire someone. Who is it going to be?
     
  20. Frank

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    It also means that girl values her cooch at or around the value of a box of frozen steak.