The scummy sales person is a stereotype. They exist sure but if you’ve ever worked with a good one they can really help particularly if you’re buying something complex. I used to work for a company that sold complex manufacturing equipment and without a salesperson theres no way most customers would know what they needed to maintain it etc.
As an engineer i hate both, technical sales never have an understanding of their product and are never able to answer any of my questions (because i’ve read through the datasheet as their words are meaningless to me) but they are mooooorrrreee than happy to schedule an in person meeting to come to my office and show me their product line.
Tell me what i want to know or find me someone who can, im not going to buy 10,000 of whetever if i cant even determine if they will work for my use case.
The last time i had to deal with one of these assholes it took 3 phone calls and 2 emails to get a simple answer which wasnt in their datasheet, which was all of one page long.
My favorite experience with technical sales is we had these component guys come in, they had openned up our product and wanted to show how much better their “equivalent” components were (genuinely a great idea), but they had no context as to what the components were being used for so they all fell flat.
In my experience both are only a waste of my time.
The scummy sales person is a stereotype. They exist sure but if you’ve ever worked with a good one they can really help particularly if you’re buying something complex. I used to work for a company that sold complex manufacturing equipment and without a salesperson theres no way most customers would know what they needed to maintain it etc.
Technical Sales Vs Sales
One’s an engineer with something to sell. The other is a grifter.
As an engineer i hate both, technical sales never have an understanding of their product and are never able to answer any of my questions (because i’ve read through the datasheet as their words are meaningless to me) but they are mooooorrrreee than happy to schedule an in person meeting to come to my office and show me their product line.
Tell me what i want to know or find me someone who can, im not going to buy 10,000 of whetever if i cant even determine if they will work for my use case.
The last time i had to deal with one of these assholes it took 3 phone calls and 2 emails to get a simple answer which wasnt in their datasheet, which was all of one page long.
My favorite experience with technical sales is we had these component guys come in, they had openned up our product and wanted to show how much better their “equivalent” components were (genuinely a great idea), but they had no context as to what the components were being used for so they all fell flat.
In my experience both are only a waste of my time.