Clueless Co-Workers on Shopping Spree

July 24, 2006 7:15 PM

Salesmen and clueless co-workers: how to cope?

Let's say you're a programmer or developer at a company or institution. Salesmen for third-party software call the office, manage to get through to someone who is unqualified or clueless, and give them the hard sell. The process starts to evaluate a purchase of a product that either 1) does something that existing software already does, 2) would not integrate with currently installed systems, or 3) is wildly expensive compared to comparable products or in-house development. Or some combination of those.

Obviously, looking for a better environment is an option.

But say you're stuck for now. How would you turn the institutional environment around to avoid these sorts of trainwrecks? Or is that an unrealistic expectation?

posted by gimonca to work & money (10 comments total)

I think you need to have a CTO / Technology Group (presumably with expertise and know-how) that must sign off on purchases of software or hardware above X amount of dollars before contracts can be enacted.
posted by visual mechanic at 7:22 PM on July 24, 2006

We had an issue like that, with salespeople calling in and getting ahold of people who were not qualified to make purchases for the company. A lot of these so called salespeople are even scam artists (e.g. the people who call and say they are your ink supplier). I've had people call me and try to weasel into getting me to agree to something.

Basically, an office policy was created that any and all salespeople, telemarketers, etc had to be directed to the ops supervisor and this was drilled into every employee's head via company-wide e-mails and memos. The example of the ink/toner scam helped to scare people out of having a conversation with any salespeople calling.

So, I think a policy with a specific go-to person needs to be created, along with a standard response to give these people. "Thanks for calling, unfortunately, I'm not authorized to make this decision. I will forward you to Joe Schmoe who can help you." It's simple, but it works. Letting people know what to tell pushy salespeople will prevent them from freezing up when dealing with pushy slimy cold callers.
posted by tastybrains at 7:53 PM on July 24, 2006

If it costs money it should be going to the CFO or equivalent within the organization. Purchasing power should not be given to rank and file employees. Requisition, sign for approval. Now if your executive or purchasing entity signs off on everything without asking you might have a problem.
posted by geoff. at 8:03 PM on July 24, 2006

I bet that at least some of this activity is happening as a result not of 3rd party salespeople prospecting, but because of dissatisfied users actively initiating system replacement or upgrade conversations with vendors. People hear a lot about computer systems and improvements from friends and colleagues in other organizations, and when they hear of something they think will provide a benefit to themselves or their organization, they check it out. A visit to a Web site here, an innocent request for free information there, and boom, "projects" start being spawned in every shady corner.

Centralizing purchasing control won't do a lot to stop this, if an organization has truly fallen behind in its technology, at least in the mind of its users. In fact, I've personally seen efforts to centralize systems acquisition control backfire, as people feeling freed from having to respond to salespeople themselves, yet supplied with the name of the person to whom they should direct all vendors, blithely signed up that person for contact by every solutions provider they heard about, and even handed out significant internal process information as part of their initial contact. I doubt you want to go there.

What does help, I've found, is putting together and running a deliberate, ongoing ISO 9002 type process review program, where systems and functions are regularly and cooperatively studied, in ways that attempt to involve and communicate the goal and the limitations of process/systems improvement to users. After all, if there is truly something better available, a forward looking organization will want to have its personnel reasonably involved in the review process as a regular part of their collective process improvement responsibility.

Users may not be systems gurus, but they probably are your subject matter and process experts. Find ways of meaningfully involving them in the systems improvement process, and enjoy a markedly improved workplace.
posted by paulsc at 9:18 PM on July 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

Is the problem that software is actually being purchased and you have to support it, or that you are getting roped into exactly the sorts of evaluation processes that the first few answers seem to recommend? I got the impression that you were upset at wasting a bunch of time evaluating unneeded software, though I suppose having to support software purchased by the clueless would be even more time-consuming.
posted by amtho at 10:37 PM on July 24, 2006

How would you turn the institutional environment around to avoid these sorts of trainwrecks? Or is that an unrealistic expectation?

Require some sort of business case for software purchases, and have these business cases evaluated by someone less clueless.

Far from an unrealistic expectation, I thought this would be de riguer.
posted by pompomtom at 11:16 PM on July 24, 2006

I had similar problems in previous emply. We invented a purchasing agent. In fact we called him Willie Lohman. Whenever an unsolicited sales call came in we told them that Willie Lohman was the buyer, and he was out. So whenever a call came for Willie we knew it was a sales call. By the way NO ONE cought on to the name. After a while Willie died (in Gulf War 1), and Travis Bickle was hired to replace him.
posted by Gungho at 4:24 AM on July 25, 2006

We maintain a double dictatorship - nobody buys software or equipment but us (IT), and anything over a few dollars must be approved by the CFO and/or CEO first. Surprising the CEO (who signs the checks) with an invoice is a really bad idea. Surprising the CIO isn't a great idea either, and when he's done with you he'll go get the CEO for Round 2. Even our Accounts Payable person can get a little scary over questionable invoices, because she's the first one who has to face the CEO and she doesn't want to take a bunch of crap because somebody else got crazy with the spending. So, really, fear is how we do it.

Giving out our names is also verboten. There's only two of us, and we don't have time to spend all day taking cold calls. If there is something you want, you ask us to look into it, we get you a ballpark on the cost for the solution that's going to best fit in with our existing technology, you discuss it with the big guys, and then we make arrangements for evaluation and you handle the actual evaluation work. And if you think we aren't trying hard enough or we're too dumb to get you what you want or whatever, you go to the CFO because he's not scary and you complain to him. We like cool stuff, and we like getting users good tools, so that's never been a problem.

Back before anybody was looking very closely at the checks we were sending out, we had a lot more freedom to buy interesting toys and I could replace an old desktop without having to write a short story justifying it...but I think I like it better this way. Nobody's demanding we install and maintain a bunch of crap anymore, nobody's going out buying inkjet printers, the wheedling for LCD monitors and stuff has stopped - you want something, you ask for the money through the proper channels. As it should be.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:56 AM on July 25, 2006

Gungho, a company I temped at did the same thing. I forgot what the fake name was, but whenever he got a call, we knew it was a telemarketing call. He even had an extension, and anyone we transferred to that line got to hear the message "We do not buy anything from unsolicited sales calls." ; )

I work for a large company now and when we get calls, we tell them they have to call corporate headquarters. In smaller companies there was always a person we were to direct any sales calls to - either the controller, the office manager, or the purchasing manager. That was fine with me, I didn't want to have to deal with them. : )

Now if the clueless coworker in question IS the person in charge of purchasing for your company, that's a whole different issue.
posted by SisterHavana at 7:10 AM on July 25, 2006

Communicate. Outreach. Set of a series of well-prepared info sessions where you present and/or demonstrate the current/potential capabilities of the existing system. Offer more training. Be more accessible to users, especially noobs. Solicit feedback. Treat users as your customers and see you job as keeping them happy, rather than just keeping a bunch of computers running. Anticipate their needs before they know what their needs are.

Get the hang of all this, and the other problems will go away. In addition, you will become worth more to this or any other company you work at in the future.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:36 AM on July 25, 2006