Re: IBM is proud to be in the forefront of workforce training and development
"... even when the thing you useless sellers promised to the customer was impossible, non-existent or undervalued."
Hit the nail on the head !!!
This is NOT just a IBM problem.
I have spent the whole of my career in IT, digging the same trenches. :)
Sales is the most powerful group in the company and yet they are usually the cause of the most problems because they think that a 1 day 'Buzzword Bingo' filled 'Training Course' makes them the expert to define and reccommend the solution the Customer wants.
The training is usually very reluctantly taken because it eats into time spent selling. The attention span is minutes at most and everything needs to be turned into a set of bullet points that can be learnt by rote.
They are supported by some sort of 'Sales Support Techies' that are only there to answer difficult questions BUT must never contradict anything the Sales People say even if it is some impossible made up rubbish. (Been there done that and had no end of threats thrown at me (out of Customer earshot !!!) when I have tried to gently steer away from an 'Expensive Foot in Mouth Event' ).
I fully understand Sales processes and how they are supposed to work BUT you cannot work around promises to do the impossible (Technology and/or Time & Resources and/or Integration with existing Systems etc).
The idea was always get the signature then you can fix the problems later when you are doing the Services !!! ???
Sales were for ever costing up the 'Deal' with the discount being on the Services required to deliver the working solution. They never could understand why we could not 'Give away' the services to win the deal.
[Services obviously don't cost anything to provide and their sales commisions were mostly driven by the Hardware sales with a much smaller banded commision on the Services so cutting the Service costs in half did not greatly impact their commisions. .... Quelle Surprise :) ]
To be fair I have worked with very good Sales BUT that was because it was an Ex-Techie who had moved into Sales and was very very good at selling while understanding what could and could not be done with the Technology. That was enjoyable :) :)