No Salespeople Ever

Lancom will never send a salesman to do an IT professional’s job

Key Points

You need to be talking directly to people who know how IT works
Talking through an “account manager”, who couldn’t pass even the most basic IT quiz, can only result in poorer solutions for you.
Getting this right will recover tens of thousands of dollars robbed from your bottom line.
Lancom will never send a salesman in to do an IT professionals job.
You must get your Information Technology from Information Technologists

Here’s a quick IT quiz:

What is the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?
What is the difference between Ethernet and IP?
When you send me an email how does that message get from your Inbox to mine?
What’s the difference between Web Email and email in your Outlook Inbox?

These are basic questions about how the IT that you use every day actually works. It’s common to be a little surprised by how little you might know about how IT actually works. This is understandable because it is easy to confuse years of using IT with knowledge of how IT works.

If you don’t understand the basics (and the not so basics) of how it works you will need someone who has expertise and experience to guide you in planning and reviewing your Information Technology. This should come from your IT partner. Lancom believes that someone at the table needs to know how IT actually works – the basics and the not so basics – and that should be us. In New Zealand this is a contentious idea.

Most IT companies appoint a non-technical “Account Manager” as the primary contact point. Apart from a very small minority, most of these “Account Managers” would fail the most basic IT test like the one above. They know as much (or often less) than you do.

The person you see most often and approach first for IT expertise has none. Welcome to tens of thousands of dollars of bottom line damage from the over-engineered, over-priced, underperforming, and failed IT that this situation inevitably produces.

Why wouldn’t you have an IT professional at every meeting – isn’t that what you are paying for?

We call this model “Reseller IT”. Reseller IT will argue that they can bring along people with IT expertise and experience anytime they think it is needed. But why wouldn’t you have an IT professional at every meeting – isn’t that what you are paying for? Lancom’s customers engage with us to get the full benefit of our expertise and experience. We don’t understand why our expertise should be rationed out like some foreign food aid.

Reseller IT exists to sell Information Technology. That Information Technology may or may not involve expertise. It all depends on how the salesman wants to shape the deal and he will always be incentivised to shape the deal to sell more. Non-technical salesmen won’t shape the deal towards the best technology outcome because they can’t, and they are paid not to.

Real Estate salesmen and Car salesmen are disliked by most because they have an incentivisation system that rewards completed sales above everything else. Reseller IT puts this system at the centre of their IT service.

Gartner Research tells us that, for NZ sized businesses, over 80% of the IT information comes from their primary IT provider. You are in the position where your primary source of information has no expertise and is incentivised to drip feed that expertise to you.

Here’s some of the ways that tens of thousands will be wasted. We have seen all these ‘outcomes’ from Reseller IT. Here are some approaches that we have seen from Reseller IT, perhaps you will recognise a few.

Unsellable IT

Why would I suggest to you, Mr. Customer, a solution that doesn’t involve us selling you something. That’s my job and that’s how I am incentivised. If you are unhappy with the price of the data link I will sell you an optimiser. But we won’t negotiate because (i) I wouldn’t know how and (ii) there’s no money in it. ”

Some of the greatest work we have done at Lancom has also been the least expensive. The reconfiguration of existing infrastructure or the renegotiation of vendor contracts is usually a small cost or often just part of the service.

The problem for Reseller IT is that there’s nothing to sell here. So you go years paying thousands of dollars more than you should for data, Internet, Telco, mobile, and printing contracts because no one reviews them. You suffer chronic underperformance because buying new equipment was the only solution offered when reconfiguration would have achieved the results.

Over Engineering

Reseller IT incentivises its people to sell you more than you need.

I am likely your primary source of information on IT matters so you aren’t going to know any better so the deal sticks. I don’t really understand how the technology I am proposing works, so it’s always better to suggest more than less.

I sell you four servers when two would have had plenty of capacity
I sell you the Enterprise license when you could have run on the SMB license,
I quote you three days of time when one would do

Trading Relationship

Some of our business relationships are trading. The success of the relationship is measured only by the last deal, as long as both parties came away happy from the deal then it’s OK. At the other end of business relationship is the partnership where the long term health and wellbeing of both parties is the measure of success. This is the kind of relationship most of our customers want.

If you are like most New Zealand businesses you are looking for an IT partnership. Reseller IT is built from the ground up to trade.

As a Reseller IT salesman I need to maximise each deal for revenue. That’s how I am paid. As long as you turn up for the next ‘deal’ it’s all OK. You’re long term wellbeing is someone else’s business.

Promotion as Prescription

I know nothing about how this stuff works, but somehow I have become your primary IT advisor. I am incentivised by my employers to sell you as much as possible.

But it gets better. This month I am in the running for a fully paid holiday to Fiji if I can sell enough XYZ routers. The company usually sells ABC routers, but I think this month we can sell something different.

This practice is not poor in its own right, but is incredibly destructive when the incentive is being aimed at your primary source of IT advice.

Failure Expectation

I am non-technical and I find IT to be weird and wonderful. You know that sometimes it just doesn’t go but that doesn’t matter. It’s a good thing because I will have to sell you some more.
When you don’t know how it works it is easy to say it can’t be done.

It is the prerogative of the ignorant to assert that failure was unavoidable. We have many times achieved “the undoable” by putting proper expertise on the job.

Reseller IT lives in a bubble where their limitations are projected onto you.

The Yes Test

Yes, the solution will do that! (I mean maybe but that won’t close the deal I am incentivised to close and, you know, sometimes IT just fails, so if I hope that it will work that warrants a Yes)

This is a natural follow on to Failure Expectation. Once your IT advisor starts predicting what can’t be done from a place of ignorance it is a short step to explaining failure from the same smoke and mirrors.

When you are advising on technology that you don’t understand it is very easy to say “Yes” to an answer when you mean “I guess” or “I hope so” because, you know, sometimes IT just fails.

Division of Responsibility

Sales and delivery are separate. I will make promises when I have no understanding of how they will be delivered and no direct input into the delivery”

Even though the salesman will have had a profound influence on the deal they can have no part in the delivery.

When the conjured promises of the salesman start deviating from technical reality, you will often find yourself dealing with two IT Providers - the now hard-to-get-hold-of sales company and the disapproving technical team.

Co-opting

What a great idea you, Mr. Customer, have come up with. I have no idea whether it will work but I will close the deal and sell you your solution without (you don’t know it yet) responsibility for success. I mean, you asked for it”

When you deal with Lancom sometimes we are going to tell you that your IT ideas are wrong. Often we are going to ask for more information.

Reseller IT loves it when you suggest ideas because you can share the responsibility of failure.

The Deal Filter

I won’t bring in expertise on this one. You seem happy with the hardware refresh. It genuinely might fix your speed problems. The only thing an engineer could do is come up with a solution that’s cheaper. If you insist on seeing someone more technical, I will make sure the engineer is properly briefed on the deal.

There’s always more than one solution to an IT problem or challenge. Some are better and some are much cheaper. Of course, some are better and cheaper. These are generally the technical solutions that the salesman doesn’t know himself but will need to bring in IT expertise – if he chooses.

IT expertise is rationed according to the benefit of the deal and this will often filter out the free/near free solution.