IT executives are being deluged with sales calls from technology vendors every week.
A slew of states have adopted legislation that lets consumers who don’t want to receive telemarketing calls add their names to a “do not call” list that marketing companies are required to honor. Unfortunately, there’s no such remedy for IT executives bombarded every week with hundreds of sales calls and e-mails.
A slew of states have adopted legislation that lets consumers who don’t want to receive telemarketing calls add their names to a “do not call” list that marketing companies are required to honor. Unfortunately, there’s no such remedy for IT executives bombarded every week with hundreds of sales calls and e-mails from software, hardware and IT services vendors.
“I’ve finally forced myself to start being nice to printer toner telemarketers,” says Kevin Garrity, a network administrator at Trans-Lite, a lighting manufacturer in Milford, Conn. “For quite a few years I was as rude to them as they were to me. Now I smother them in kindness then hang up. I guess they are regular people who need a job, not the monsters they seem.”
However, the call volume is too much for most IT executives to handle. “I stopped answering my phone months ago,” says David Young, IT manager at a manufacturer in New England. “For a while I at least tried to call back those who left a professional voice mail, but I just don’t have the time to keep up with the call volume.”
Joe Moore, director of IT services at the Arizona Office of the Auditor General, agrees. Moore got so many calls that he began having them screened by the Phoenix agency’s operator.
“Most sales calls are directed to my voice mail,” Moore says. “If there is an item that interests me, I will call the individual back. If it is a cold, unsolicited call for a product I have little interest in, I will ignore it.”
Moore says he’s learned the hard way that he can’t respond to every call. “I used to think that I owed everyone that called me a callback. I’ve learned that that is very counterproductive,” he says.
Desperate times
Most users Network World talked to don’t bother to count the number of calls they receive, but they agreed call volumes have gone up in the last couple of years.
The poor economy is a big reason salespeople have become more aggressive. Worldwide spending on IT products and services declined in 2001, according to Gartner. Total hardware spending fell 13.1% to $327.4 billion in 2001, and dropped another 1.3% to $323.3 billion in 2002. Software spending fell 5.7% to $74.2 billion in 2001, then managed to gain 3.6% in 2002 to hit $76.9 billion.
With no relief in sight – analysts predict IT spending will remain flat or fall slightly in 2003 – vendors are scrambling for the sales they need to survive. Many won’t make it: Gartner predicts that 50% of IT companies that are well-recognized in their sector or in the general IT industry will merge, change direction or go out of business by the second half of 2004.
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Meanwhile, salespeople are doing everything they can to get the attention of folks who have the authority to buy IT gear. Sometimes they cross the line, IT executives say.
Young recalls one salesperson who left multiple voice mail messages, each time sounding more irritable than the last. A few days later, Young received a package in the mail that contained a brick and a note that read: “I’m trying to build a relationship here! Call me!”
“I’m sure it was supposed to be funny, but it just further irritated me. . . . Our receiving department wasted time handling that box,” Young says.
Badgering doesn’t help, agrees Drake Emko, a computer programmer at the University of Florida’s Northeast Regional Data Center in Gainesville.
“Sometimes the decision process for buying a product can take a while, and frequent, high-pressure phone calls won’t make me more amenable to their company’s product,” Emko says.
Even if there’s a valid pitch buried among the hundreds of misfires, buyers agree they’re probably not going to find it.
“Honestly, I don’t have time to spend weeding the sales pitches out,” Moore says. “If I have a need for a particular product or service I’m more likely to have my staff or myself do some research and identify sources. Then I will seek out those and other sources for more information.”
Likewise, a network manager for a state government agency relies on his own research and puts little credence in marketing hype. “Having been burned by mediocre and flawed products countless times, I am resistant to purchasing anything for which I haven’t read several in-depth reviews,” says the manager, who asked not to be identified.
Ruslan Zenin, senior system architect at a global financial institution, works the same way. When he’s interested in a product, he first checks news groups to find product recommendations and read what people who used a particular product have to say about it. “I’d like to keep things my way – not theirs,” Zenin says.
Zenin’s advice to vendors is to be more selective in their pitches. “Some people don’t like to be disturbed with the advertisements – so don’t,” he says. “Of course, if the product is bad, then there’s nothing you can do but send millions of e-mails in hope that a small number of people would actually buy it without thinking.”
