So we’re having a meeting with a software vendor about a new ERP solution. Representatives of every department and the boss himself present.
Since all they know is some ancient piece of shit software that had the worst search imaginable, they keep yapping and asking about the search features.
Vendor’s representative demonstrates and explains the different search options in depth and mentions the possibility of using wildcard search, the wildcard being an asterisk, as in pretty much any search tool anywhere.
This launches a salesman (who was specifically selected to be on this meeting for being the most IT competent in that department) into a tirade, wildly gesticulating and waving his open and running laptop all about the place while pressing random keys on the keyboard, about how unusable that is, because his keyboard doesn’t even have an asterisk. (it does) Anyone who actually knows a thing about computers or two sinks into the ground in embarrassment. Boss keeps nodding in agreement and making supporting interjections on behalf of the salesman.
The end.
My experience of sales is that it is mostly full of people who:
- love the sound of their own voice
- firmly believe that speaking without being interrupted is the equivalent of deep thought; and
- are stupendously bad at admin and detail tasks
This makes the kind of situation that you were in both their natural playground and a complete nightmare. The c-suite tends to fetishize sales as the engine of the business, which also leads to an over inflated sense of importance.
Pretty accurate description of my experience with sales and management.
For the benefit of everyone else who didn’t recognize the initialism ERP, I think it’s Enterprise Resource Planning software, which seems to be a suite of applications for managing a sizable business.
That makes more sense.