> As a customer who has been on a number of these calls, the thing I dislike the most is getting "yes" for every question I have. Just be honest with me.
Joke: what’s the difference between a used car dealer and a software salesperson? The used car dealer knows when he’s lying to you.
Having been in B2B sales for a while now, if I was on the buying side I would never listen to an answer about a product feature/function from an account manager (the “business sales” person in your example) — only their sales engineer (the “someone who is more technical”.) If the SE lied, I’d never buy anything from their company for any reason.
Now, that said, documentation is sometimes out of date (although a better way of answering in those scenarios is for the SE to say something like “we didn’t do that until version x.y which came out/will come out last week/next month, etc. and our documentation isn’t up to date.” And, sometimes, prospective customers do “2-3 full days of hardcore research” and aren’t nearly as “super prepared” or knowledgeable as they think they are.
So, I guess be open to the idea that your SE understands their product better than you do, but if they really are slinging BS, run. Expect the account manager to be wrong about the details of their product (there is a reason SEs exist, and it isn’t because tech companies enjoy an artificially high cost of sales.) so don’t listen to much they have to say about product features.
Joke: what’s the difference between a used car dealer and a software salesperson? The used car dealer knows when he’s lying to you.
Having been in B2B sales for a while now, if I was on the buying side I would never listen to an answer about a product feature/function from an account manager (the “business sales” person in your example) — only their sales engineer (the “someone who is more technical”.) If the SE lied, I’d never buy anything from their company for any reason.
Now, that said, documentation is sometimes out of date (although a better way of answering in those scenarios is for the SE to say something like “we didn’t do that until version x.y which came out/will come out last week/next month, etc. and our documentation isn’t up to date.” And, sometimes, prospective customers do “2-3 full days of hardcore research” and aren’t nearly as “super prepared” or knowledgeable as they think they are.
So, I guess be open to the idea that your SE understands their product better than you do, but if they really are slinging BS, run. Expect the account manager to be wrong about the details of their product (there is a reason SEs exist, and it isn’t because tech companies enjoy an artificially high cost of sales.) so don’t listen to much they have to say about product features.