I got asked to get a few quotes for a 3rd party to set up a Data Warehouse while my company works on a different project. The two projects are kind of sister projects for the client in question.
I know very little about the data warehousing business so I start google’ing to find a few companies to get quotes from.
I get a voicemail when I dial through to the sales department. I had to have this quote before then end of today, so I don’t really have time to get ignored until tomorrow. So I hung up and dialed the next person on the list.
Same thing.
I find a different number for the first company and finally get through to somebody. The quote $250K+.
I call another company. Right around the same price. I call a fourth company and get the voicemail routine again.
So, we have two quotes. Two companies that did not have time to talk to me and did not provide a way for me to talk to a human to find out if the person that would be receiving the voice mail was in the office or on vacation.
Seems like if I was selling something that I was planning on charging $250K for the low end version, I would make sure that every single call to the sales number was answered by a human. That human could route the potential buyer to a voice mail, but the buyer should always have the opportunity to ask a couple simple questions like is so and so there, is there somewhere online I can find more information, etc.
That’s a lot of potential cash to throw away because some irrational IT guy does not feel like leaving a voice mail.
Technorati Tags: rant, sales, IT
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