Sales onslaught

With fewer people buying products and services in today’s economy, those who are buying are attracting a lot of attention. IT executives are always in the market for one product or another, which makes them prime targets for vendors and salespeople who are desperate to sell their wares.

This week’s Management Strategies story in Network World examines the put-upon IT execs whose voice mail boxes are taking a beating from salespeople. While many states have instituted tough antitelemarketing laws to protect the consumer, businesspeople aren’t so lucky. The IT execs we spoke with for this article agree that they’re receiving many more unsolicited sales-related voice mails every day. And while some may hold merit or offer legitimate savings, they’re getting lumped in with all the others, making it difficult to distinguish them all.

Add to that the usual time constraints IT professionals face, and there’s just no enough time in the day to screen the queries. Those in IT have several methods for handling the phone calls. Most simply don’t answer the phone. If you’ve got no time to risk being caught in a neverending pitch, route everything to voice mail or have a company operator vet the important calls from the junk.

IT execs who used to think they owed it to salespeople to return their calls, have resigned themselves to the fact that they simply don’t have the time.

Also, IT professionals are far more gun shy when it comes to spending money, given that there’s far less of it today’s budgets. There’s little room for error in purchasing an unknown or unresearched product, so net professionals are far more likely to really research their options instead of trusting in one sales pitch.

Check out this week’s Management Strategies story in its entirety for more information on how IT professionals handle the barrage of sales calls today: https://www.nwfusion.com/careers/2003/0210man.html