When making a technology decision, your vendor sales rep can be a mixed relationship. On one hand, you rely on them to provide you with detailed information on pricing, service options and technical expertise. And on the other hand, let's face it, they've got quotas and commissions to worry about. So while it's important to have a good relationship with your sales rep, you really have to be careful to make any decisions as objectively as possible, outside of the framework of that relationship.
Looking back to my days as a network manager, I had a relationship with a Lucent rep that was pretty comfortable. We had purchased some remote access boxes that had performed well and Lucent was a high-flyer in the networking side of the world in the late 90's. My company needed to expand their network capacity and bandwidth so I led an initiative to put in a new core switch. Research and familiarity brought me to the Lucent Cajun P550 switch, a workhorse that had performed well in head to head comparisons with competitors. Our rep brought in a sample switch that we tested on in the IT lab. My sales rep assured me it was a simple and basic operation to drop in a new switch. Everything looked good during testing and yes, I trusted my Lucent rep! So we schedule a long weekend outage and ask 350 workers not to plan on being in the office over the weekend (oh the horrors!). And yes, I promised the entire office improved file transfer and application performance once the work was complete.
On Friday night, I'm breaking down the networking rack and cabling of our old switch. Re-labeling mystery cables, pulling out power cables and FINALLY installing the Lucent switch. It's tedious, physical labor but important since no switch means no desktop connectivity. Late Saturday, cables are plugged back in and the switch is turned on, voila! It's time to do some desktop testing and hopefully call it a night. Or so I hoped. Out on the floor I turn on some PC's and do some file transfers. Gosh, boot-up times seem to be sluggish and the file transfers shows that we're now running slower than the old switch. Checking several additional desktops show the same problem, uh-oh. I go home late Saturday scratching my head and hoping that what I saw was just late-night fatigue.
The next morning there's still the same problem: slow network performance. Reviewing the documentations for the switches, I'm trying all sorts of configuration settings in vain to improve the performance. I try upgrading the firmware on the PC's to see if that helps, no go. By late Sunday afternoon, I'm re-installing the old network hubs in an attempt to jury-rig a hybrid network of new and old devices in an attempt to just get performance to where I had started. Two and a half long days of work over the weekend, just to end up, maybe where you started. On Sunday night, a notice was sent out that the work was complete but yes, you might not notice an increase in performance. In ten years of working as an IT administrator, I had rarely needed to eat crow and I can tell you for sure, it didn't taste good on Monday morning.
What's the lesson here? That even after doing my due diligence and research, even after having a good and trusted relationship with my sales rep, I had made a professional misstep that cost me the entire weekend and set my technology environment back $75K. Now I don't know if my Lucent rep really knew how good or bad the Cajun P550 switch really was and if it was problematic but I do know she wasn't there suffering with me over that long weekend. Definitely a hard lesson to learn.
Vendor reps are there to support you the best way they can, within their product lines. They have a vested interest in solving your problems but only within their solution offerings. Knowing what I know now and how the world has changed, the use of online forums, social media and the internet may have revealed this potential issue earlier as a technology buyer. And I would never make the mistake of trusting my sales rep and the relationship, more than I should. An empowered buyer can be a challenge from the Marketing and Sales side of the world but in the end, if you've got the right solution, content and messaging, it can only strengthen your business relationship. Your prospect not only becomes your customer, but also your ally and supporter over the long-run.
