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No Calls

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1603 points ezekg | 2 comments | 16 Jan 25 14:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.483s | source
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stego-tech ◴[16 Jan 25 20:04 UTC] No.42730185[source]▶
This guy and I are on the same page. Love his boldness at committing to the “No calls” bit, and I wish them nothing but success.

Speaking as an introverted engineer myself, the number one turn-off on any given product is a lack of transparent pricing info or locking any sort of demonstration behind a mandatory contact harvester for a call or email chain. I don’t want to commit to a bunch of social “dances” when I’m trying to solve a technical problem, nor do I want to deal with overly pushy salespeople who either don’t understand my problem or immediately want to upsell to meet their own goals or quotas.

If your tool solves my problem, I will pay you money. That’s the transaction. Everything else - the swag, the sales calls, the free lunches, the conference tickets, the sportsball box seats - is extraneous to my core goal, which is solving the problem.

replies(1): >>42733361 #
1. portaouflop ◴[17 Jan 25 02:16 UTC] No.42733361[source]▶
Then don’t do calls, tell them “this is my problem”, describe it well, and insist on email communication. Tell them X$ is the price that you are willing to pay and stay firm on it. I think this will work for most companies - if not then you probably don’t want to do business with them. Who is forcing you to do social dances? State the problem, state what you want as solution and sign the contract, done.
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2. stego-tech ◴[17 Jan 25 02:50 UTC] No.42733583[source]▶
Yeah, that doesn’t work unless you’re in the C-suite generally. Every time I’ve tried to throw up that sort of firm wall, the sales people just reach out above me - and ultimately usually end up forcing the sale even if the product doesn’t meet our needs, because they’re able to convince the higher-ups that it actually does and that their Engineers (i.e., me and my team) are mistaken.

Right now, unless you’re some sort of 10x rockstar extrovert, you’ve gotta play the game by the existing rules. It’s why I applaud this particular company’s position, since it means I don’t have to worry about being undermined by some outside salesperson with a quota to meet and a gift budget they haven’t emptied.