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[Eschar]

Sales people have to understand the product for that to be possible.

Why wouldn’t they understand the product?

Because they don't need to in as much detail. Their job is getting people to believe they need the product, thus they don't need the level of knowledge needed for designing or servicing it. So the companies see no benefit in spending time telling them about the product's innards.

Also Eric's post is a jab at salespeople.

[wierd]

It's the "Sales people exist to make customers think they need the product" part that is the issue.

While you might need specialist knowledge to tell a detailed specific lie, you don't need that to say "Oh yeah, it does that."  where "that" is some specific thing the customer needs it to do, that it probably doesn't.

Which then necessitates the conference call, and the demands that it be fixed.

For example


Customer: So, I have a VERY old deployment of Lotus 1,2,3 installed on a legacy back-end system. I really need your cloud based document solution to read those legacy files, can it do that?

Sales Rep: Of course it can, it can do that and much more.. (blah blah blah).



Weeks later:

Customer (to support rep):  WHY DO MY LOTUS 1,2,3 DOCUMENTS NOT LOAD!?

Support rep: (Pulls out wikipedia to find out WTF customer is talking about) Dude, Lotus 1,2,3 hasn't been a thing since the 80s... WTF are you doing?

[Reelya]

I think more often than not it's ignorance rather than malice or deliberate lying. Think about how often people convey technically wrong information that they think they "know" or is "obvious".

It's also the known-unknowns vs unknown-unknowns problem. Sometimes, a marketing person doesn't know the answer to a question, and it would be lying if they said they did. However, other times, perhaps more often, they don't even realize that there is question, so they can't conceive that it needs to be asked.

[Baffler]

It makes me happy that I only ever really deal with other professionals in my own field at work. Although considering the work we do that sort of complaint is probably not so much of an issue as customers complaining to us that our product didn't work for them because of a problem with their own systems that we don't have anything to do with or give a shit about.

I think more often than not it's ignorance rather than malice or deliberate lying. Think about how often people convey technically wrong information that they think they "know" or is "obvious".

It's also the known-unknowns vs unknown-unknowns problem. Sometimes, a marketing person doesn't know the answer to a question, and it would be lying if they said they did. However, other times, perhaps more often, they don't even realize that there is question, so they can't conceive that it needs to be asked.

On the other hand, even a lot of supposedly reasonable people are willing to stoop pretty low to save a nickel. Especially when it's tens of thousands of nickels on the line instead of just one. Although fucking over (what sounds like) a software vendor whose products are a fundamental part of running your business seems like a stupid thing to do regardless of how much you might save in the short term.

[dragdeler]

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[Yoink]

Oh lawdy, I have a lot I need to do in the next... two weeks?!   
Huh, things feel a lot more urgent than that. I sure hope the realisation that I have a reasonable amount of time to do everything in doesn't inspire me to start procrastinating! Although finding a place to live is certainly still rather pressing, but for that I kinda need to wait to hear back from others. I do have a fallback plan, however, so I don't exactly need to panic about that side of things.   

[Naturegirl1999]

Oh lawdy, I have a lot I need to do in the next... two weeks?!   
Huh, things feel a lot more urgent than that. I sure hope the realisation that I have a reasonable amount of time to do everything in doesn't inspire me to start procrastinating! Although finding a place to live is certainly still rather pressing, but for that I kinda need to wait to hear back from others. I do have a fallback plan, however, so I don't exactly need to panic about that side of things.   

How many tasks do you have to do in the two week timespan? If 2 tasks, give yourself a week for each task, is 6 tasks, give 14/6=2.333333333 days/2 days 8 hours for each task,  if 7 tasks give 2 days for each task. If you know some tasks will take longer than other tasks, do the tasks that will take longer first, than divide the remaining amount of tasks by the remaining time

[pisskop]

checklists are the way to go.  There are three things I feel like I hang on my walls more than other people.

- mirrors. mirror above my bed, at my wardrobe, by my front door, in almost every room.  Good for self image.
- calanders.  I have one on my phone, one on my wall, and one for work.
- dry erase borads and post its.  I use these to make checklists and updates on those lists.

seriously, make a checklist and try to knock off a few a day.

[Iduno]

Verify that your sales people are not telling lies about the product.  Thats a common source of this kind of headache.

They work for a different department, and are considered important because selling things is what businesses do. It seems like they'd also need a product to accomplish that, but businesses are frequently short-sighted.

The 2 responses you'll get are 1) nice: fuck you, just do it, and 2) less nice fuck you, get out, we'll find someone else who can do it.

I think more often than not it's ignorance rather than malice or deliberate lying. Think about how often people convey technically wrong information that they think they "know" or is "obvious".

It's also the known-unknowns vs unknown-unknowns problem. Sometimes, a marketing person doesn't know the answer to a question, and it would be lying if they said they did. However, other times, perhaps more often, they don't even realize that there is question, so they can't conceive that it needs to be asked.

I think it's more willful ignorance, and lack of consequences for their actions. If they're big enough dicks about it, they can force people to do unpaid overtime to make it work like they said it does (even if it's not physically possible), and if it does come back to bite them, it's after they got a bonus for making sales.

[Akura]

Bleh, I hate having to have a birthday on a sale day, forcing me to work on a Monday that I normally have off.

[scriver]

WTFy Birthday, Akura?

[Iduno]

Bleh, I hate having to have a birthday on a sale day, forcing me to work on a Monday that I normally have off.

Go in your birthday suit so everyone knows.

[TamerVirus]

Oh boy! China's got that newfangled Wuhan disease right before Chinese New Year (a.k.a. one of the largest migration of humans in modern times). Spread it all over the place!

Should have moved to Greenland or Madagascar....

[Loud Whispers]

It's cool man, there's a disease outbreak every other sunday, the only thing that changes is media coverage of them

[MaxTheFox]

Why do certain people believe that killing video game NPCs, like DF dwarves or even enemies in FPSs is immoral? It makes no sense, they're just some data inside RAM.

Hurting one, from the game's POV, is (usually) like substracting a number from another number. But only an idiot would think that using a calculator is immoral.