Ask HN: Why do sales reps make it so difficult to buy things? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do sales reps make it so difficult to buy things?

16 pointsbkraz8 comments

Me: Hi. I'm an engineer at (very well-known company) I am interested in your products, and would like to place an order for a few samples to test them in my application.

Sales rep: Hello. I am the West Coast regional district inside sales manager for MegaSupplier. I will be in your area in two weeks. When can we meet in person?

Me: Thanks. I'm under a tight deadline, and need to get my project working. May I purchase some samples now, and we can meet after I've had a chance to test them?

Rep: No problem. I'd like to understand your application, business goals, and ways that our companies can work together. When do you have time for a video conference?

Me: I really appreciate it, but I'm focused on engineering the product, and cannot make progress without some test results. May I purchase the samples?

Rep: Sure, but first we'll have to setup your company in our database and learn about your application. Would you mind filling out the attached company information forms, credit application form, nondisclosure agreement, and sales volume estimates? Also, we'll have to setup a quick call to discuss your application with our technical staff.

Me: The project is confidential, and these components are fairly generic. May I purchase them?

Rep: We don't sell directly. You must contact one of our distributors. I've cc'd our West Coast distributor coordinator who can help you contact a distributor.

Me: (buys slightly less-perfect part on Digikey. Receive it next day. It goes into the design.)

A lot of people are correct in stating that sales reps are there to find the path to the most sales (not just today, but tomorrow as well), and that path is learn as much as possible about your use case, company, and people. That provides a path to how they can upsell tomorrow.

I know you are talking about hardware, but let me offer some perspective on the sales side when it comes to software sales. The job of the sales rep is also to prevent wasting the time of the sales and technical PreSales teams. They do that by qualifying a sales opportunity.

I've seen plenty of situations where "Can you just give us a trial or single license of your product" turns into A) A massive drain of time as the customer basically has the sales team chase a "We liked the trial, but there are a few points we need help with before we make a bigger purchase" and it turns out after a lot of work that the software wasn't a fit in the first place. B) The customer doesn't really have the skillset to utilize the software they are trialing so they get a bad impression. Then they badmouth the software internally so other teams avoid it as well without even evaluating it. C) The customer is actually looking for free services but they don't realize it (or worse, they do and are malicious about it), so their desire for a software solution ends up being them getting free services/consultants.

The sales qualifications process, in theory, prevents these kinds of situations. However, I would agree 100% that there are situations where you should just let the customer put in a credit card number and buy what they want. Especially if a competitor lets you do that. I worked in company that had a product that got hammered in the market because they only entertained large enterprise deals and the main competitor started letting people buy a monthly license with a credit card on the website.

well said. I run a SAAS business ($200-$450/Month price point) and even though it is not enterprise sales and we have a 30 day trial (credit card required), we have learned that the best clients are those whom we have talked to before they bought the trial because we can qualify them. A lot of tire kickers are out there who need a lot of customizations and are not worth the time.

I think the problem's origin is twofold:

1. Salesmen come in two stripes- poodles and pigs. The poodle is nice, courteous, and will do what you ask it to. Most salespeople are poodles. Pigs, on the other hand, are aggressive, will stick their nose in to wherever, have no use for courtesy, aren't afraid of offending anybody, and are self-driving. They're relentless, and they convince you the only way to get them to go away is to buy. You can't turn a poodle into a pig. There are a lot of poodles out there to fill sales jobs, and not as many pigs. You may want to beat them both to death, but for polar opposite reasons.

2. Sales managers set up these flows, and they hire poodles to follow the flows. Company ownership is out to lunch and doesn't test out their own sales flow. It's incompetence on a higher level and it's a major factor in why weak companies fail. Compare the sales manager at a successful automobile dealership and the one in this company- the more daylight you see between them, the worse the staffing decision.

I see it written that salespeople can't be bothered with piddly sample orders, but the fact is that samples today are six-figure orders next month and career-makers the following year. Sometimes the incentive structure is obviously a problem- in some orgs a senior sales rep can snatch the customer the peon spends 6 months developing, along with any incentives. The peon thus does the bare minimum until they "season" into the senior position.

Suffice it to say, this is a major, if not the major, problem with commerce today. Companies like Amazon and Walmart are killing their competition for a number of reasons, but not having stupid incentive structures that end up looking to the first-time customer like a big middle finger is definitely not hurting them.

Don't talk to the sales rep.

1. Talk to the technical rep. Ask a few technical questions, ask for a budgetary quote. And then ask for some samples.

2. If you are moving any volume at all you'll have a distributors inside sales rep assigned to your company. Those women can move the world for you.

You want to place an order for $200 worth of stuff.

Sales rep needs to make a quarterly number to get his bonus and commissions, which is by pimping you $200,000+ worth of whatever.

Here's a disconnect.

They don't track their failures properly. Sometimes they have a pitch/SOP/flow and a number at the end that shows conversion rates. Analytics does a terrible job of capturing customer annoyance.

Very often they optimize to the point where the customer annoyed just short of walking away. This optimum usually maximizes sales to timid people - the ones who wouldn't have bought without an aggressive salesperson.

A lot of tech does the same thing too. They will spam you with mail and notifications, just short of the point you delete the app.

What they don't capture is that if you push a little harder, you get the Groupon effect. People will start quitting in masses because they've had enough.

I've experienced this and think it seems likely that the good sales reps are out chasing big deals, or golfing, and the ones available to answer the phone are lazy or incompetent. It is very confusing to want to have a business make it impossible for you to send them money.

Take it a few levels up. Msg vp of whatever on linked in and start a conversation.

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