So how do YOU wanna be sold to?

Posted by fadingcross@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 500 comments

I had a vendor visit me recently and the topic of sales methods came up, and I was asked "So how do sysadmins or IT decision makers actually want to be approached, what is your prefered method?"   And I realized I didn't really have a good answer on what method works on me. I've been making decisions on hardware and software decisions for over 10 years as of a few months ago, and I've obviously gotten cold calls, cold emails, cold meetings, approached vendors myself, attended summits and god knows what and I've bought products from all these methods. It's pretty much been about timing.     If I was _forced_ to make an answer I think I would actually prefer a very raw, information dense, no bullshit marketing cold email with in the style of; "We sell / develop product ABC. It does Y, Z, W thing to solve problem X for you. Our pricing model is 10$ / device/user/month. [Insert technical capabilities/details list]"   Whatever type of IT Infrastructure / Software job you do, we obviously can't know everything about every product for every use case in todays landscale (Or, ever). So we SOMEHOW have to learn what products we might need in our professional lives.   I thought it was an interesting thought, and I'd like to hear others - So how do _YOU_ want to be sold to?