This article reminds me of my stint in high-end B2B tech sales. The fortune 500 I worked for spent more than $80k just to send one person (me) to one tradeshow. I was the nerd that was supposed to make all the demos work and answer the tough questions. I was supporting the sales team (princes) from another F500 company we had partnered with.
Watching the process was odd. Lot of marketing speak. Lots of expensive "sales lunches". Not one hard technical question was asked by any of the attendees.
The whole time I couldn't help but think of what $80k in equipment and a week of my time would have meant to the very project we were demonstrating. It was also interesting how trivial it was for the sales team to ask for (and receive) all this, when it would have been a month long fight for me to get half as many resources to improve the actual product.
This article reminds me of my stint in high-end B2B tech sales. The fortune 500 I worked for spent more than $80k just to send one person (me) to one tradeshow. I was the nerd that was supposed to make all the demos work and answer the tough questions. I was supporting the sales team (princes) from another F500 company we had partnered with.
Watching the process was odd. Lot of marketing speak. Lots of expensive "sales lunches". Not one hard technical question was asked by any of the attendees.
The whole time I couldn't help but think of what $80k in equipment and a week of my time would have meant to the very project we were demonstrating. It was also interesting how trivial it was for the sales team to ask for (and receive) all this, when it would have been a month long fight for me to get half as many resources to improve the actual product.