10 Foolish Things Vendors Do

Market products based on features rather than the pain points the customer has.

Nothing shows the customer that the vendor doesn’t have a clue more than a conversation about speeds and feeds.

Hide the need for expensive add-on services that are needed to make a product work.

Essentially, this amounts to fraud in the eyes of the buyer.

Make cold sales calls in the early morning or late at night to do an end run around assistants.

IT people will tell a person anything to get off the phone.

Inundate the customer’s e-mail systems with special offers.

Spamming the customer is never a good idea (especially when selling storage products that all that e-mail is filling up).

Quote lower prices on vendor Web site than what is available from vendor’s partners.

The partner does all the work selling the product, but purchasing rules require multiple bids. So, if there is a lower price, the vendor alienates the partner and unnecessarily complicates the deal for the IT department.

Try to sell more products directly to the CXO.

As soon as that executive moves on, chances are there will be new contracts out for bid.

Highlight allegedly successful customer accounts that received massive discounts in return for agreeing to help the vendor sell the product.

Needless to say, you won’t be getting those discounts.

Give salespeople additional incentives to push products that everybody knows are about to become obsolete.

The cost of owning the product will far exceed any benefit to the customer.

Dumb down complex products for small and midsize businesses by making the products easier to install.

While making things easier to install is nice, if they are still complex to manage, it doesn’t really help the customer.

Charge for training.

In an age when customers can’t find enough skilled IT talent as it is, charging customers for the privilege of learning how to use a product so they can then actually buy it only adds insult to injury.