Conference 7.286::digital

What you are witness to first hand is one of the many disconnects that exists 
between the VPs that spew forth their grandiose plans and promises to the media
and our customers and then delegate the responsibility "to make it happen" to 
the dregs that have been screwing things up for years.  The middle management of
this company is still making their own agenda.

If you think accountability is now in place, you're sadly mistaken.

Until there is some action to go along with all the words that have been flying
around the past few months we will remain on a downward spiral.

    Your experience sounds similar to my brother-in-law's, who runs a
    small trucking company and who wanted to upgrade his computer
    equipment.  
    
    In the past, customers often had to beg us (literally!) to sell them
    equipment.  We could get away with that when we were pretty much the
    only game in town; customers would put up with the aggravation of
    buying stuff from us because they pretty much had to.  They don't
    have to anymore.  And they won't.  And they aren't.
    
    Why can't we make it easy for people to buy stuff from us???

    Small Businesses turn into BIG businesses sometimes...
    
    After all, look at Digital.. Digital started of in a barn/garage.. I
    wonder what would have been the outcome if some of Digitals' original
    vendors has taken the same attitude as Digital takes now..
    
    Digital can not afford to be so rightious as to turn down ANY customer.
    After all, there are many more small companys out there than larger
    ones...
    
    Someone has to fix this problem NOW..! Not later, NOW! No committee,
    NOW!
    
    My Opinion!
    
    Bob G.
    

    Sad - its more of the "same old same old.
    
    Ten years ago a civil engineer doing work for me asked me if I
    could get a response for him from our Sales department.  He wanted
    someone to come and talk to a convention of 1000+ civil engineers in San 
    Francisco, about what DEC had to offer.  Although each civil engineer
    there represented an individual business, the overall sales would have 
    been in the millions--their Association was trying for equipment 
    compatibility between their memebers, trying to get everyone on the 
    same equipment and software.  
    
    I think you can guess the outcome........after many phone calls and 
    a rather confusing conversation with a rather acid young man in Sales 
    I gave up and the CE's bought from a competitor.

    These examples truly demonstrate that we have not done our job to sell
    small amounts of our PC's to individual customers and/or small
    business.   What a shame !!!!!!    That is why there is still
    an excellent business for folks like DELL, COMPAQ, Radio Shack, among
    others, that are serving this one/two unit market needs.
    I personally do not think it is a matter of 'ease of doing business'.
    The real problem lies in the fact that we are in our 'Confort Zone'
    when the orders are in the $ 100,000.00 and over mark, but will not
    put enough effort on 'smaller' orders.   Get the biggest bang for the
    buck attitude, that's what I call this.   Folks, the sad news is:
    1) Small Business is the ONLY thing that is growing this days, with
    some few exceptions.   If we do not pay attention, we will become very
    small very soon.

    
    I wrote the basenote which presented the problem now, I'd like to offer
    a solution....}-)!
    
    The small business market is unique....as is, I am sure, every market we
    sell to....with the very great exception that the person who is drawing 
    up the specs, soliciting the quotes, running to banks for financing, 
    balancing the books, signing the payroll checks and sitting across the 
    desk from our DEC salespeople are nearly always the same person.  *And*
    that person most likely has put himself in hawk up to is a** for the 
    privlidge of working him/herself to exhaustion with alarming frequency.
    When you say to this person; ship date in 10 weeks, we will no longer 
    be supporting the cheaper of two solutions, you just can't buy one
    piece of (....) you have to buy a dozen to get any kind of discount,
    you are...1) being disrespectful because you haven't bothered to
    understand the "under the gun" nature of small business and that these
    people often have every penny right down to their homes riding on their
    business and...2) being judgemental in that as a salesperson you have 
    judged this account to be unworthy of your time based on the yields,
    not the importance of what you are selling to the small business
    person.  Sales helped me earn some of my undergradute dollars and I was
    trained by one of the most mean-spirited persons God ever let live but
    he taught me one thing I've remembered to this day....treat your
    customers...all your customers...as though you can't get along without
    them and do it so often that they believe that they can't get along
    without you.  And herein lies the solution....get a group of
    salespersons who believe in that philosophy and who aren't in sales to 
    rival Donald Trump.  Yes, many sales people out there are seething
    right now but wait a minute.  For those of you who must support a large
    house or a small one, a large family or a small one...}-)...and
    especially those who must do it alone, it just may not be possible for 
    you to concertrate on very small accounts.  I don't know how the new 
    incentive package effects salepersons so I apologize for my ignorance.
    If this information is available, I'm certainly willing to read it.
    So why not start a special unit within Sales for those people who aren't 
    after the brass ring, or those who have had a hectic sales career and 
    now want to wind down or perhaps those who are lucky enough to have two 
    incomes coming in and would like to deal with small start-up companies.  
    What a novel idea....reward people who are willing to work with those 
    upon whom they might have a hugh impact but probably will never be
    jackpot salesperson of the year!  
    
    Just MHO....
    
     
     
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

re Note 2584.3 by BSS::GROVER:

>     After all, look at Digital.. Digital started of in a barn/garage.. 

        !!!!!!!!!!

    
    Didn't he read our adverts?  You have to sit in front of your desk and
    *imagine* a PC.
    
    %-)
    
    
    

re: .0

My most recent experience with Desktop Direct was the opposite.  I
didn't have to wait very long.  I was treated courteously and
efficiently by a sales rep (Marc) who took the time to look up
part numbers and investigate a confusing listing in the price book.  
Finally, he looked up the expected delivery time.  He knew full well that 
I was just collecting the EPP price info and would place the order at a 
later date, if at all.

Of course, I knew enough not to call an order line 15 minutes before
closing time.  I also know enough to distinguish between EPP purchases
and third party business purchases.  For better or worse, the EPP program 
has consciously decided to give less service to EPP purchases than
to external purchases.  Besides, even if there had been a discount, it is
against policy for you to use your discount on behalf of an unrelated third 
party.  If I were calling Desktop Direct for a friend, I wouldn't even 
mention that I worked for Digital -- it's irrelevant.

I believe we're still in a situation where demand exceeds our supply.
I'm sure the PC folks are working hard at increasing our capacity, but in 
the meantime, we're going to have delivery delays.  This isn't the sort of 
thing that can be changed overnight.

   Gary

    
    Four months ago I called Desktop Direct for a friend.  I used the
    friends name and number.
    
    I said that I was interested in Desktop Publishing Software and NEEDED 
    TO MAKE A DECISION ASAP.  I asked the person on the phone what Digital
    had available and he said that they'd send me a catalog.
    
    I told him that I needed to make a decision soon....so he said that
    he'd send out the catalog "NEXT DAY".
    
    NINE weeks later I received the catalog.
    
    Unfortunately, 7 weeks earlier my friend bought software from IBM.
    
    I've been given the impression for YEARS now that we are only
    interested in the "big" sales.
    
    "jackin' the house", Bob

    Walmart did $63 BILLION in onesy twosey sales last year. I guess we at
    digital could learn a thing or two from that!

    .0
    
    A friend of mine who is an ex-Deccie had a similar experience.  He was
    given a budget of $15K to buy some equipment they needed. Still feeling 
    some of the old loyalty he figured he would give Digital a call.  This 
    happened in the last month of FY93.  One of the first things the salesman 
    asked him was whether he could buy any of the stuff he was ordering before 
    the end of the month.  My friend told him, he doubted that he would.  The 
    salesman took the info, said he would get back to him with a quote within 
    a week.  He hasn't heard from the salesman since.
    
    This friend works for a prestigious company which deals in aerospace
    technology.  They went to a competitor and got what they needed.  He
    says he will have a budget of $100K in the upcoming year for just such
    purchases.  He will not call Digital this time.
    
    Life goes on.
    
    Suz

    
    RE -9
    
    >>Of course, I knew enough not to call an order line 15 minutes before
    >>closing time.
    
    This is irrelevant. If we're serious about what we're doing, you should
    work those 15 minutes without any clock-watching.
    
    >>I believe we're still in a situation where demand exceeds our supply.
    >>I'm sure the PC folks are working hard at increasing our capacity, but
    >>in
    >>the meantime, we're going to have delivery delays.
    
    I didn't get the impression from the basenote that this was being
    questioned. What was being deplored was the attitude that was presented 
    on the telephone.
    
    We should be selling to small companies like there is no tomorrow and
    the people in the front line should be bending over backwards to do it,
    as I'm sure some people are. Sadly, not all seem to have the same
    philosophy.
    
    Cheers,
    
    Mark.

    
    How difficult and time consuming would it be(very little) for
    the individual managers of these groups to "Test" the order system of
    which they are responsible? A simple task would be for these
    individuals(managers/supervisors) to randomly call and inquire about
    purchasing a DEC/DIGITAL PC/system. This call would be placed to thier
    own direct reports, the individual calling could use a fictitous name
    and find out exactly how thier direct reports deal with the potential
    customers. Just a simple phone call will reveal the way a customer is
    dealt with. Based on this periodical practice, management can get a
    understanding as to what it is like dealing with DEC, and can make
    improvements in the ordering process.
    
    Or is this scenerio to easy? Or am I a tad out of touch?
    
    randy 
    

    This was done once before as I recall and the memo I saw thru the
    grapevine wasn't very pleased with the results.  It was in the early
    days of 1-800-PC-BY-DEC and addressed that ordering an Intel PC product
    got extremely confusing as 1-800-DIGITAL didn't always know to connect
    you with the aforementioned PCBYDEC number.  Comments included some
    ``dunno'' type responses and some re-directs to local sales offices,
    some of which gave further ``dunno'' answers.  This is sketchy but as I
    recall only a low (25%?) number of calls had the desired, simple
    transfer to the PC order line from the DIGITAL order line.
    
    George
    
    [If this is completely wrong, I'm sorry ... it was quite a while ago
    and just an FYI message I remember seeing.]
    

Saw an ad on the tube the other day by General Electric. Starts off with
a guy looking at a large jet engine with some kind of problem, switches
to someone in a kitchen with another problem and was followed by similar
scenes with other GE products. Goes on to say something to the effect
that if you have troubles/questions/etc about ANY GE product, call
1-800-....  Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Left me with the impression that GE is not going to tolerate ANY confusion
on the part of it's customers. One number, all problems handled, no
questions asked.

Why can't we do that?

     
    re:. back some...
    
    When these problems are discovered is anything done to bring it to the
    attention of the appropriate senior managers rather than just posting 
    it in a notesfile? I would expect that in times like these, that this
    would be standard procedure. If appropriate senior manager doesn't re-
    spond or does but not to your satisfaction then push it  to the next 
    level until there is some indication of success. It's critically
    important that issues that negatively effect our ability to return to
    profitability are brought to senior managements attention.

    Re: .17
    
    	100% in agreement.   There's also a couple of excellent ideas
    expressed here.   I like the one of calling the 800 number and place
    an order, to see how it goes.    We should do it, after all our jobs
    are the ones at risk.   So, who is going to write the letter to BP ?

|When these problems are discovered is anything done to bring it to the
|attention of the appropriate senior managers rather than just posting 
|it in a notesfile?

Oh, come on....

When you're talking about 800 numbers, your primary concern is what the
customer thinks of it. It's the manager's job to KNOW how well it works.

    There is no point in elevating things to senior management because they
    never reply. I'll give you a specific example.
    
    Recently I was extremely displeased with the ineptness of the Computer
    Operations Group in LKG (amongst other things they lost an incremental
    backup). In the process of handling this I wrote a memo containing
    questions to Gabe Carbone the manager of Computer Operations in LKG. It
    contained questions. To date I have not received a reply.
    
    A manager that actually cared whether their group was functioning
    effectively would have replied.
    
    Dave

    
re: .9

My most recent experience with Desktop Direct was the opposite.  I
didn't have to wait very long.  I was treated courteously and
efficiently .....
****I am glad that you have had positive experiences; I wish ALL experiences
were positive....after all *my* salary is also dependent on positive exper-
iences becoming product purchases.  Your tone seems to be that I take some 
kind of satisfaction in my negative experiences; rest assured, I do not.  

Of course, I knew enough not to call an order line 15 minutes before
closing time.  
****I must agree that a previous noter wrote that time to closing should make 
absolutely no difference in the way that any customer is treated.  For all the 
person on the other end of the phone line knew, I could have been a purchase
agent for Norton, Wyman Gordon, or any of many other large local businesses.  
Since when is respect for a customer time related?  However, to be fair, another
situation was a call to the DECdirect technical line to follow up on a software
question I had on a system that I purchased myself.  I called at 5:30 and was
told call back later, you are an employee.  I then called at 7:00 and was told
we are busy, call again, you are an employee.  Finally at 7;30 after being told
to call tomorrow, I refused to hang up and was transferred to someone in Col-
orado Springs who could not help me solve my problem (improperly installed 
mouse driver, not rocket science but I'm new to PC's) and I bought a DOS book 
and did it myself...are you going to tell I should have done it myself in the 
beginning??

I also know enough to distinguish between EPP purchases
and third party business purchases. For better or worse, the EPP program 
has consciously decided to give less service to EPP purchases than
to external purchases.  Besides, even if there had been a discount, it is
against policy for you to use your discount on behalf of an unrelated third 
party.  
****Revenue is revenue regardless of its source save criminal.  My dollar as an
employee is the same dollar as any customer would spend.  And the attitude of 
the sales force should be that every dollar is precious!  The accumulation of 
a fortune starts with a single buck!!  As far as violating policy the person
I was calling for, by the time I might have gotten the DEC system, will be my
husband.  I called a spade a spade at the time it was a spade!  And you have 
missed the point....the attitude is what I am addressing and as far as the 
person on the other end of the phone was concerned, she could have cared less
who was going to purchase the system or their relation to the company.

If I were calling Desktop Direct for a friend, I wouldn't even 
mention that I worked for Digital -- it's irrelevant.
****The situation surrounding a potential purchase should be the business of 
any DEC salesperson and one of the stated goals of DECdirect is to become a 
secondary sales force...that was part of the written mission statement when the
group was first formed.  Gathering information about a customer's inquiry 
should be an entree to a sale and from a sale to a bigger sale.  

I believe we're still in a situation where demand exceeds our supply.
****Once again, this had nothing to do with attitude.  Whether or not, DEC
can meet demand does not/should not determine the civility of those persons
that the customer must deal with over the telephone.

I'm sure the PC folks are working hard at increasing our capacity, but in 
the meantime, we're going to have delivery delays.  This isn't the sort of 
thing that can be changed overnight.
****Of course it can't be changed overnight....it should have never happened
in the beginning.  Where was the forecast?  Where was the manufacturing and
logistic planning?  Post facto doesn't cut it when there are half a dozen
outlets that can sell the same product that you do and you can just pull them
off the shelf and put them in your shopping basket.  DEC's advantage is its
reputation as the producer of the finest hardware available.  That is what 
prompted my acquaintance who owns the art gallery to call DEC's customer line.
He had prior computer knowledge and figured DEC hardware is so good than 
their network knowledge was probably very good as well.  He pick up the phone
with a positive attitude toward DEC and was already convinced DEC was the way
to go.  He didn't have any EPP issues to work out...he was not laboring under 
the secondary service that EPP receives....this was a real live customer and he 
was treated with disrespect.  That is what I am talking about.  And while I'm 
on the topic of respect, maybe the sales force would universally treat our 
customers with respect if they themselves were universally treated with 
respect by the company.
   
That, Gary, is what I am talking about.

In the end, how I am treated, as an individual, may well be of little conseq-
uence to anyone but me, but where do I end and the rest of the customers begin?

My remarks are not potshots at Sales.  I would certainly be more than willing 
to face the very situations that I outlined in my basenote if DEC would would
hire me as a salesperson. In my opinion, salespeople are the life's blood of 
any company and whenever there is a slump, they are the first to ask to bleed 
in this company.  In addition, I have been told that the attitude of the "old 
days" is that DEC products sell themselves so we don't need salespeople.  Re-
cently, Bob Palmer made a comment to a national audience that DEC had the worst 
sales force in the industry.  I am sorry I do not remember the event, I think 
it was the DECUS meeting and if I have not portrayed this accurately I apolo-
gize to Mr. Palmer and to the readers of this note.  *Yes* he did go on to 
qualify himself by saying that the problem stemmed from management but why make 
that statement in the beginning?  Could he not have made his point with just 
as much candor but with dignity and respect for those he was condemning?  

My points are these:  1) respect the customers, 2) respect and support the 
people who must convenience customers that DEC can serve them well.  This does
not mean that I can't try to bring to light situations in which 1) or 2) are
ignored.  It just so happens this particular time I got caught up in 1). 
     It has not been my intent to criticize but to offer constructive
    criticism hence my second note and I will be more than happy to discuss 
    it with anyone on that basis. 
Janis

    I just want to add a note of agreement with .21 WRT EPP support...
    
    Digital's EPP program offers a 20% discount.  This is a fine discount
    but still leaves enough profit where I would view myself as a customer
    deserving customer respect and support.  If Digital wants to offer
    equipment to employees at internal cost, then I will understand that I
    have not signed up for true ``support'' but the current EPP program is
    not offering discounts of that magnitude.
    
    George
    

Re: Knowing when to call:

I, as a customer, shouldn't have to know or care.  I recently upgraded several
hundreds of dollars of Borland software.  I did it at 2 in the afternoon on a
Sunday.  I recently decided (at the last moment) to order something from
PC connection and called them at five-before-midnight on a Tuesday.  The
product arrived at 9:18 the next morning.  I had a bunch of software I wanted
to register with Microsoft.  I didn't want to send four reply cards, so I
called Microsoft Sales and they registered me over the phone.  For that matter,
WinFAX pro registered itself.

The point?  Digital's attitude is that if you want to do business with Digital,
you do it Digital's way.  The attitude is totally unacceptable in today's
competitive environment.  A 50% or worse rate of good experiences smacks of
arrogance or ignorance.

BobW

    Last year my wife had $86,000 to spend on computer equipment for her
    company. It was her decision on what she purchased. Needless to say
    she insisted on giving Digital the business $$$. This had the potential
    of bringing lots more business to DEC for the industry she was in
    was just getting into computers in a big way and they would look at
    the most sucessful platform as a standard. Anyway we gave her the
    business ^&*#@!. Nothing was purchased from Digital nor will be in
    the future. 
    
     Sad. Anybody home?

    With Digital's new partnership with MicroAge (see the LiveWire article
    of a couple days ago), do you think some of these problems will be
    alleviated?  Won't this type of retail business cater to small
    businesses?
    
    As for a direct sales force, there are now only 60 PC-dedicated sales
    reps in the U.S. to sell our PCs.  Anything else goes through one of
    the other channels.  A profit margin of 2-3% does not allow us to spend
    much time selling these boxes, especially to smaller businesses who are
    going to buy fewer than 1,000 PCs.  It will be interesting to see how
    well our systems sell through MicroAge.
    
    KB
    

    
    Everybody is siting cases of the "small business" not getting any
    attention.
    
    Has anybody seen or heard of Digital's ***OFFICIAL*** policy on
    "small businesses?"  Maybe it is company policy NOT to deal with 
    smaller companies.  In the "past" a Digital sales person was not
    ALLOWED to sale below xxx dollars, they HAD to turn the lead over
    to one of our OEMs, VARs etc.  Is this still the case?
    
    Could the sales person have turned the lead over to one of these
    OEMs, etc. and it is really the OEM that is dropping the ball?
    
    

    re:.20
    
    > Recently I was extremely displeased with the ineptness of the Computer
    >Operations Group in LKG (amongst other things they lost an incremental
    >backup). In the process of handling this I wrote a memo containing
    >questions to Gabe Carbone the manager of Computer Operations in LKG. It
    >contained questions. To date I have not received a reply.
    
    >A manager that actually cared whether their group was functioning
    >effectively would have replied.
    
    
    
    Obviously this is up to you. But if it was something that you regarded
    as very important then you would take the next step, which would be to
    attempt to contact this person one more time, then off to the next
    manager higher up in the food chain than this person and so on. The
    point is we've got to (or maybe we don't have to, depends on ones
    outlook) insist that people be accountable and not settle for anything
    less. 
    
    
    
    

The horror stories entered here on behalf of small business trying to buy
from Digital are symptomatic of a larger problem. I agree that Digital may
not be able to service smaller business given lower profit margins. However, that
being the case, anyone who answers a Digital publicly published phone should be
able to direct a small business customer to an "appropriate" sales channel.
Ignoring or being rude to a potential customer because we can't supply them
cost effectively or don't want their business directly is UNACCEPTABLE and
creates the kind of customer reaction and perception as described.

-Terry

    If these "small business" sales are to small for sale-folks, why then
    doesn't DECdirect or some other orders taker take these orders. 
    
    If it is a question of trying to find out what the small business
    needs/wants, why not have the small business speak with a technical
    person, on the phone, to get the order straight/correct, then maybe
    conference in an order taker, to assist the customer in the order
    process.
    
    This type of process should not take that much time.
    
    Just my opinion!
    
    Bob G.
    

    Clang,
    
    Watch it Bob, you're making too much sense.
    
    Jim C.
    
    

    I'm sorry.. 8^(
    
    Bob G.
    

    
    I used to work in channels.  Signed up a number of small VARs who sell
    to small business.  Given what I saw, we don't even take the that
    channel seriously.
    
    Makes me sick.
    
    -Ed
    

    re.last few
    
    I , as well used to work for Channels.  Canada DECdirect handled
    everything from the DeskTop to the Data Centre.  Until recently, there
    was no PC focus there.  Our VAR's and Distributors were the channel
    for our customers to call.  Guess what, they weren't up to speed
    either, the customers would come back to DECdirect to get the " right
    Technical answers" and then place the order with the VAR's and
    Distributors.  
    
    You get what you measure!!   We were measured on CERTS, not our
    ability to sell solutions.  In fact, it was a real hurdle (read
    management issue) to direct the customer to a VAR/Distributor, and then
    get credit for the sale. I had a $10M budget, and I tell you it was
    difficult to sell large volumes of PC's to my assigned accounts!  
    
    Our PC's (1-2 yrs ago) were not perceived as being " first in Class" 
    but just expensive.  Our customers expected clone prices, but with DEC
    like Sales/Support.  
    
    Times have changed in Canada, a year has gone by since I left, they put
    a real focus on the DeskTop, with a dedicated PC rep, training,
    VAR/Distributor PC focus, CDN fed Gov't account, $$$$$, shortened
    product lead times, etc.,   
    
    In all, it made it easier for the customer to purchase DECpc solutions. 
    Also giving the customers many channels to get Technical Sales
    solutions, and quick order placement.
    
    
    Still, I hear the same stories, customers getting bounced around, wrong
    departments, receptionists, CRR's, Service reps, mangers, all sending
    customers every where but DECdirect, or our Channels partners.
    
    What internal message system do we univesally use that no one reads? 
    All-In-One !!  I suggest Subliminal messages to let every one be aware
    of the sales channels that our customers can call or better yet, "
    Mr/MS. customer would you like to speak to our Sales channel of
    choice,I can connect you right now if you wish? "
    
    The message has not become part of the DEC culture, the right sales
    resources are not always in the local sales office!!  Call
    1-800-PC-BY-DEC or whatever it is called, 1 stop shopping, without
    wasting valuable customer time, and possibly loosing business, every
    customer interaction should be viewed as a Potential Sales Call.  we
    are in a commodity buying market, driven by low $$, high product
    expectations, ease of use, 1-800-call for advise, .
    
    
    DEC's strategy is to be the PC vendor of choice.  Just like FORD/GM, we
    are the factory, there are sales channels, that may or may not be part
    of DEC, that our customers should call for these products.  Its, should
    be up to each and every one of us to help qualify any customer inquiry
    to a: what is the customer looking for? (qualify the call)
    B: what is the best resource to service the customer's needs,
    C: and send them there.  
    
    
    my 2 cents worth.
    
    
    Gary Pinkerton
                  

    .33 spelled it out best.
    
    We've had this discussion many times before.  Pioneer, Avnet and 
    other authorized distributors are in place for a reason.  Lobbing
    mortars at sales isn't going to help.  We have done a sorry job in
    explaining that orders of XXX amount are expected to be placed thru
    one of our channels.  I think a lot of us could have done a better job
    in getting some of these leads to our channels.
    
    Unless and until *someone* with authority within Digital starts en-
    suring that these leads are presented to the proper channel, there
    will be many small businesses that think we just aren't interested.
    
    Considering how sales has been gutted, do many of you *really* expect
    a Digital sales rep to handle ALL leads internally?
    
    If handled properly, a lead for a small to mid-range business could
    be passed to an ATD (or whatever) without offending the prospective
    customer....and hopefully the business would get booked.
    
    Karen
    
    
    

    
    Most departments have been gutted, Karen.
    
    
    Mike

    I'm new to this note, but was recently involved in a similar situation.
    
>    Unless and until *someone* with authority within Digital starts en-
>    suring that these leads are presented to the proper channel, there
>    will be many small businesses that think we just aren't interested.
    
    No disagreement.  But all I know is I was told "have them go thru Avnet".
    
    Neither I nor the potential buyer know who Avnet is nor how to 
    contact them.  (I'm an engineer, not a channels marketer).
    
    Another customer lost to a competitor.
    
      John

    >    Neither I nor the potential buyer know who Avnet is nor how to 
>    contact them.  (I'm an engineer, not a channels marketer).

    Sometimes it seems that we don't provide solutions, we provide clues.
    Sometimes the clues aren't enough. We work this way with customers all
    the time. We say RTFM when the customer has already tried the fine
    manual. We say "go to Avnet" as if the whole world knows how to do
    that. We do this internally as well. Ask someone for the answer to the
    question and get a pointer to a pointer to a pointer. Answers? We don't
    do that.

    			Alfred

             Avnet                           1-800-426-7999

    
    ref all replies:
    
         My wife tried the same as all of you; she finally bought two
    Sparc 5000's from Sun; delivered in 48 hours and was installed the third
    day, 4th day sales was there for training.
    
    bc          

It certainly seems like we try very hard to invent boundaries, even when
there is no need to.  Every group has their own short-hand, and even they
often misuse the language in expression.  (The oft repeated AC current
example).  When an engineer is told to have somebody do something such as
"have them go through Avnet" without help in how to do that BOTH parties
are at fault.  The communicator did not know the audience, and the receiver
did not understand the words.  The communicator should have worked harder, 
and the receiver should have asked a question, "How?"

Either party could have gotten the job done in the earlier example, but 
neither did it.  When I was at a start-up we were constantly told "Only 
half the people in the company are doing engineering, but ALL of us are 
doing sales work."

The field has been cut by approximatley 35% and had their individual yields 
raised by 41%.  Translated, this is a lot fewer people doing a lot more 
work.  Naturally they were also told that we will modify your pay and you 
have the opportunity to earn more or less.  To earn more you will need to 
work with distrubutors.

The lack of training of Digital employees in basic business skills never 
ceases to amaze me.  We have people who can't read a balance sheet, reach a 
sales channel, determine their overhead, or make simple financial 
calculations.  We don't publish our expected IRR, we don't train people in 
basic financial analysis, we simply set up stove pipes of information and 
hope the sub-optimized systems somehow work.

If you can't understand our channel strategy, find a way to learn it.  If 
you can't understand our financial report, take the time to read and ask 
questions.  We as a company are perfect proof that sub-optimization is a 
shortcut to failure.

Matt

    Thanks Matt, you articulated my thoughts of "how" it's supposed to
    work very well.  I attempted a response earlier, but lost the reply.
    
    We are all sales reps.  Over the years I've been contacted a number
    of times by friends who worked for small-to-mid size companies wanting
    to purchase our equipment.  OK, so I knew because of my exposure that
    they would not be assigned to an internal rep.  I knew who could pass
    the lead to the appropriate channel and I always followed up; all were
    satisfied whether it was Avnet, Pioneer or whatever re-seller handling
    the lead.
    
    Customers DO shop around; they call us directly and a lot of them 
    call each ATD in their area....shopping around so to speak.  A friend
    who was in direct sales and now works for a distributor said she was
    always frustrated when she found she was *competing* with one of own
    re-sellers because unless the potential customer needed some sort of
    custom solution that the re-seller couldn't deliver <--- doesn't happen all
    that often; she would usually lose the sale to the re-seller when
    price was the determining factor.
    
    Digital doesn't lose in this scenario folks because the re-sellers
    pay cash on the barrel for the HW/SW up front; they get discounts that
    can be passed along to the buyer that internals couldn't begin to give.
    I wonder how happy some of these "potential" customers would be if 
    the had someone internal rep hold their hand all the way, make them
    feel good and then found out later they could have gotten a better
    price from a re-seller <---- wonder who would hear these screams?
    
    Oh, and in the meantime, I wonder how a large, installed-base account
    would feel if they couldn't get a sales rep to respond in a timely
    fashion when that same rep's time was being consumed on a sale that
    wouldn't return much to Digital based on that rep's time, etc?
    
    I've been with the company long enough to know it isn't easy doing
    busy with us; but if enough of us take the time to do more than just
    say "call _pick_your_re-seller_" everyone would come out ahead.
    
    Trust me, the re-sellers would LOVE to get some of these leads; and if
    we finesse it properly, the buyer isn't offended because he has to 
    deal with one of our re-sellers.  If we couldn't handle leads for
    small-to-mid range companies when we had quite a few more sales reps;
    how in the world can we expect the remaining reps to handle it now?
    
    There has been a solution/process in place for quite some time; it's
    too bad different groups outside the sales organization couldn't be
    made aware of how to handle these potential sales.
    
    Karen
    
                                                                    

    Re "the last several"
    
    Several of the last notes tell us to "refer small business to
    resellers". I kind of knew this but I like I'm sure many others have no
    idea which reseller to specify. The names I've heard are AVNET and
    PIONEER.
    
    Please could somebody point me at a VTX database that details all our
    resellers and points out the differences between them. It should answer
    questions such as:
    
    	What's the difference between the resellers (PIONEER AVNET etc)?
    	Are the resellers geography based or industry based Who covers
        what?
        What are their phone numbers?
    	What's the best way to make sure a lead has been followed up by
    	a reseller?
    
    It's all very well for you to lecture is on how great our channel's
    strategy is but if it is secret and the average employee doesn't know
    about it then it is useless to those of us that come across a friend
    that would like to consider DEC gear.
    
    Hey me, I still can't work out why we have
    
    	DECdirect
    	PCBYDEC
    	Desktop Direct
    	and
    	1-800-Software
    
    Yes I've read the VTX stuf under VTX PCSOFTWARE (I believe) that
    attempts to distinguisg them but I'm still confused. There still seems
    to be an enormous overlap.
    
    Dave

RE:   <<< Note 2584.41 by TOHOPE::REESE_K "Three Fries Short of a Happy Meal" >>>
    
  >>  Digital doesn't lose in this scenario folks because the re-sellers
  
Yeah, we do lose something.  Our cost of sales goes up because we're spinning
wheels unnecessarily.  I predict we're going to a model where distributors will
be the first line product sales and Digital will be the "value-added" providor 
where apropriate.  If there's price competition, let it be among the 
distributors, who are better prepared to react to that type of sale.

Bob

    Bob,
    
    I think we're in violent agreement here.  Our cost of sale wouldn't
    go up if the lead got to the re-seller *before* too many people 
    within Digital spent too much time spinning their wheels, I thought
    that was the point I was trying to make.....
    
    Dave,
    
    Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a VTX database etc. containing
    the info you mentioned.  Since this discussion started, I decided to
    contact my buddy in southern area who usually handled these referrals
    for me to see if there was a fairly simple process I could post in
    here for folks.  Her job fell under the sales organization's umbrella;
    I was unable to reach her....she was TFSO'd last week in June :-(
    
    Now I'm really starting to feel grim.  From what I can remember from
    past discussions with her, I knew she contacted someone at the potential
    customer's company to qualify the lead (to help in determining which
    re-seller) to pass the lead to.  If I recall correctly, because we
    have more than one re-seller in most geographies, it was not proper to
    just pick your re-seller of preference (assuming we had one) and pass
    all the leads to that re-seller - the leads were to be spread equit-
    ably along lines already determined by the channels organization.
    
    I spoke to several people within the sales organization to see if I
    could determine who is now handling this type of responsibility; so
    far I haven't been able to come up with anything.
    
    I *know* several of our largest re-sellers hired quite a few of the
    sales reps who were TFSO'd since the summer of 1991....they did this in
    anticipation of business that they were led to believe would be coming
    directly to them <--- because this is not happening, a lot of friends
    are now being let go by the re-sellers.
    
    I've been trying to stay optimistic about things, positive thinking,
    ya know, right!!!  What is making me crazy about this right now is
    that one thing that stands out from the first BP DVN I watched was
    that Mr. Palmer specifically mentioned he would be concentrating on
    re-newing relationships with our re-sellers and also trying to bring
    more VARs and OEMs aboard.
    
    I refuse to give up at this point; but I'm having a difficult time
    suppressing a memory of an old movie I watched - some of you may have
    seen it.  People were getting into lifeboats while others stood by
    singing Nearer My God To Thee (as the Titanic went down) :-(
    
    Karen
    

    Re .-1
    
    I think my point is proved. If even you don't know how to refer calls
    to resellers how do you expect any of the rest of us to know? From what
    I understand you are in the 1-800-DECSALE organization which I would
    have thought would be the first place that may be expected to know
    this information or at least where it is.
    
    Please don't get me wrong I'm not criticising you personally. I think
    this is yet another example of how the communication structure of DEC
    is severely broken. About the only thing it seems to work for is
    sending out adverts for "touchy feely courses" for the full time course
    and meeting goers and for the dissemmination of fluff filled messages
    from personnel that try to prove the sky isn't blue.
    
    Dave

    Dave,
    
    I tried to help; I'm now as frustrated as everyone else in here.
    No, 1-800-DEC-SALE can't take care of lead referrals; we stay ex-
    tremely busy providing sales support to the internal reps who remain,
    ATDs, we've added OEMs and VARs to our base.  I had some knowledge of
    the process because of some personal friends involved in that process;
    they are now gone from the company!
    
    The point I was trying to make is that there used to be a specific
    structure and people in place in each sales geography to process the
    leads and make sure they were handled properly.  If (and it seems
    true) that the folks handling this function were all TFSO'd, I honestly
    don't know what to suggest.
    
    As reading other topics suggest, we aren't doing a bang-up job of
    marketing/advertising our new products to the public; IF a group still
    exists to process such leads (as it seems many of us have been able
    to do in the past) this organization has managed to become one of our
    best kept secrets :-(