Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Hated Sales/ManagerSpeak phrase of the week:

Sounds to me like you have a deficit of about 80 man-hours per week. They should either double your salaries or hire two more people to answer their inane questions.

We actually do quite well 90% of the time. I guess you can tell who makes life hell for us the rest of the time. I guess the most frustrating thing is that we get the sense they are upstairs just planning and waiting until we are at our busiest before they spring their harebrained schemes on us. We're right at the edge of needing the other half of our third guy though. If we could have him handle most of the every day stuff (AND S/M!) we would be sitting pretty. And they should double our salaries anyway!

I work for a consulting company. In the past two weeks, I have only had my regularly scheduled appointments, nothing else pre scheduled to fill in my time. 15 minutes before a big empty block, every day, without fail, there has been an "emergency" that i have to get to now now now. Usually, the emergency is poor planning, poor promising, or complete and total fear of the client on the part of the sales guy. Today, I'm at my regular, very good client, and a machine goes down. I call the sales guy to tell him that I just am not going to be able to make my afternoon appointment (which I already had him push back an hour because I was an hour late to work from TRAFFIC.) He panics. He's terrified of the client. Abso-freakin-lutely terrified. So he agrees with her that I'll go over there, even if it's only for an hour. Dollars to donuts, she will not have a list for me, and probably won't really have anything for me to do.

Doubleyou
Tee
Eff.

Mark, you crack me up. Anybody who can get "Jedi" and "Kibosh" seamlessly into the same paragraph deserves the rest of the afternoon off.

In reply to:

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Usually, the emergency is poor planning, poor promising, or complete and total fear of the client on the part of the sales guy.

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Heehee. Another "Stupid Sales Guy Trick:"

SG: I told them we'd schedule the upgrade for 4:30 on Friday.

IT1: You WHAT?!

SG: Errummummm I thought that would be best, umm, so as not to impact their schedule.

IT1: They can schedule a down anytime. They run 24/7!

SG: Errrummmumm, uh, huhuh, synergy.

Later:

IT2: He did WHAT?

IT1: That's what I said.

IT2: It's not like the upgrade will only take half an hour! F!ck! We'll be in here until 9. And their IT is off after 5 Friday until Monday morning! If something goes wrong we are going to have to troubleshoot it from 2500 miles away and with only regular mill operators to watch things on their end. F!ck!

IT1: I know. I'm expensing steaks from Ruth's Criss and having them delivered by a cab. The Boss will sign for it before taking a baseball bat to SG's office.

A few minutes later:

The Boss: F!ck! Too bad he sells so much. I'd like to take a baseball bat and smash everything in his office including him. Order the biggest steaks they have and I'll have HIM sign for it under HIS budget. Each of you take a day off next week too on flex time.

How to be a Sales guy in a tech company:

1) Use email as little as possible when communicating within the company. That way when things go wrong they can't trace it back to you.

2) When asking for something, be as vague as you possibly can. NEVER give any time, cost, specification, or ANY other parameters. The trick here is to make the other guy specify these things, therefore removing responsibility from yourself.

3) When a customer asks for something, NEVER EVER EVER SAY "WE DON'T HAVE THAT!" Always say "we have something similar" or "we can make that work" or "we're working on that right now."

4) There are no margins in computer hardware. So, even though our products are made to run factories 24/7/365, try to hammer on the IT guys to lower their HW standards on every piece. I mean, spending $75,000 on hardware only leaves us with $525,000 for the software and man-hours. I don't get commisions on the hardware part.

5) When in doubt, obfuscate.

6) From the Book of Redmond, 2:13:

"And yea, tho yon Product hath performed well, and shall continue, resteth thine weary head not, for Upgrades shall be the Path to true Peace. Sayeth unto thine Customer 'Yon feature shall only be available-eth in the next upgrade,' and Lo, the eyes of Profit and Commission shall smile brightly evermore."

My dumba$$ boss always uses the phrase "economies of scale" along with "think outside the box". To bad he never uses them in the right context.

Sometimes I wonder how some people become Directors/VP's/CFO's/CTO's/etc.... I guess I don't play the sucking up game and never plan to.....

I thought everybody knew this. Every member of the workforce loses a brain cell for each dollar they are paid over and above what their position actually merits. People who are paid less than they are worth gain brain cells. This is why people who work for non-self-funded non-profits are so smart.

>>This week: "Think Outside the Box."

I had a minor triumph at work this year. We are now (all 600+ of us) more or less agreed that all are forbidden from even TALKING about "thinking outside the box" until they have demonstrated that they KNOW WHERE THE BOX IS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

This has made things run much more smoothly. You have to manage at least one project and actually FOLLOW our current processes before you can start recommending that we throw everything out and adopt your new process.

I prefer to think outside the sphere.