FactoryTalktotheHand
Member
Post here about your most annoying sales rep. The one you dread getting emails from, if they even bother to email you before showing up.
My biggest pet peeve for sales reps is definitely showing up at my office unannounced, expecting me to drop everything I'm doing to hear their sales pitch. Now, there are some exceptions to this. My Rockwell/A-B rep does drop by unannounced, but it's only ever to see how we're doing and if we need anything. If they want to pitch a new product, however, they always make an appointment.
There are two sales reps though who are notorious for cold calling. One is pretty bad, but the other really takes the cake.
This guy reps Unitronics. My first interaction with him was actually at my previous job. I'm extremely busy, at my desk and I get a phone call from the front lobby. I answer the phone and he asks if I have a few minutes to come down and talk about Unitronics PLC/HMI combo units. I ask "...who is this? How did you get this number?"
He says "I'm ______ from _______ and I'm the rep for Unitronics PLCs in your area. I was just driving by and thought I'd stop in and see what you guys do and what kind of products you use. I saw your name on the directory here and from your job title you sounded like the person to talk to."
I'm royally ****ed off at the moment. I have half a mind to hang up on him. I hate being interrupted, especially when I'm busy and especially by something that isn't a pressing need. Nevertheless, I go down and see him.
He gives me the pitch, acts like Unitronics is the only outfit to even combine a PLC and HMI, tells me how it's the bees knees and how it slices and dices and can do over 2,000 I/O points (if you have a project that big, you're NOT using a PLC/HMI combo unit, I'm sorry). He leaves me a bunch of material and I go back to work.
Fast-forward a few years and I'm at my new job. I walk around the corner and there he is with a colleague. He instantly recognizes me. He acts like I'm his long-lost best friend, pitches me and my colleague the Unitronics stuff again. We give the same lukewarm response we always give, and he leaves.
A few days ago my colleague spoke with him (we pass him along to each other like a game of hot potato). He starts with the pleasantries, asking if we're doing a lot of programming. My colleague says a fair amount. He looks up and goes, "so why aren't you using my stuff?" as if we're obligated to use Unitronics just because he wants us to. After answering that it's not our call most of the time, he then started lamenting the fact that he couldn't get into a local company, how he could save them so much money because if one of their A-B processors takes a **** he can sell them a Unitronics for $300 instead of $5000 for a new processor (which they're not, but you gotta love salesman hyperbole).
So my colleague asked him "so can you just download an Allen-Bradley program into a Unitronics PLC?" "Well...no," he says, "their engineering department would have to convert it." Keep in mind, this company he's referring to doesn't have an engineering department. They have maintenance technicians, who are extremely busy. So my colleague tells him about how there's labor to change wires, program, debug, not to mention the cost of downtime while you're changing out the entire PLC and I/O.
"Well, if you want to get into the nitty gritty details there's some extra cost, sure," he says. Clearly this guy has never touched a PLC in his life, and it's what really sours me on Unitronics as a brand.
This guy is not the only Unitronics rep I've had give me a sales pitch, and every time it seems like they hire a general sales firm to hawk these things and the reps can never answer any technical questions and has no idea that the majority of any automation project cost is not in the hardware, it's in the labor. It's almost as if they were selling used cars three weeks ago, mattresses last week, and PLCs this week. So you can save me a few hundred dollars on hardware, but it's going to cost me several thousand more dollars to actually implement and support. How can these guys not understand the concept of TCO?
Guys like him, they sell the hottest gadget of the week and then move on. It's easy for him to say "Oh just rip out the SLC and throw in the Unitronics" because he's never actually had to do it. A big reason why I buy A-B is that I have reps at my beckon call with decades of expertise available. They're not going to leave me high and dry and say "I'm just a sales rep, call this number for Tech support, but they're on Israeli time so you'll have to wait."
My biggest pet peeve for sales reps is definitely showing up at my office unannounced, expecting me to drop everything I'm doing to hear their sales pitch. Now, there are some exceptions to this. My Rockwell/A-B rep does drop by unannounced, but it's only ever to see how we're doing and if we need anything. If they want to pitch a new product, however, they always make an appointment.
There are two sales reps though who are notorious for cold calling. One is pretty bad, but the other really takes the cake.
This guy reps Unitronics. My first interaction with him was actually at my previous job. I'm extremely busy, at my desk and I get a phone call from the front lobby. I answer the phone and he asks if I have a few minutes to come down and talk about Unitronics PLC/HMI combo units. I ask "...who is this? How did you get this number?"
He says "I'm ______ from _______ and I'm the rep for Unitronics PLCs in your area. I was just driving by and thought I'd stop in and see what you guys do and what kind of products you use. I saw your name on the directory here and from your job title you sounded like the person to talk to."
I'm royally ****ed off at the moment. I have half a mind to hang up on him. I hate being interrupted, especially when I'm busy and especially by something that isn't a pressing need. Nevertheless, I go down and see him.
He gives me the pitch, acts like Unitronics is the only outfit to even combine a PLC and HMI, tells me how it's the bees knees and how it slices and dices and can do over 2,000 I/O points (if you have a project that big, you're NOT using a PLC/HMI combo unit, I'm sorry). He leaves me a bunch of material and I go back to work.
Fast-forward a few years and I'm at my new job. I walk around the corner and there he is with a colleague. He instantly recognizes me. He acts like I'm his long-lost best friend, pitches me and my colleague the Unitronics stuff again. We give the same lukewarm response we always give, and he leaves.
A few days ago my colleague spoke with him (we pass him along to each other like a game of hot potato). He starts with the pleasantries, asking if we're doing a lot of programming. My colleague says a fair amount. He looks up and goes, "so why aren't you using my stuff?" as if we're obligated to use Unitronics just because he wants us to. After answering that it's not our call most of the time, he then started lamenting the fact that he couldn't get into a local company, how he could save them so much money because if one of their A-B processors takes a **** he can sell them a Unitronics for $300 instead of $5000 for a new processor (which they're not, but you gotta love salesman hyperbole).
So my colleague asked him "so can you just download an Allen-Bradley program into a Unitronics PLC?" "Well...no," he says, "their engineering department would have to convert it." Keep in mind, this company he's referring to doesn't have an engineering department. They have maintenance technicians, who are extremely busy. So my colleague tells him about how there's labor to change wires, program, debug, not to mention the cost of downtime while you're changing out the entire PLC and I/O.
"Well, if you want to get into the nitty gritty details there's some extra cost, sure," he says. Clearly this guy has never touched a PLC in his life, and it's what really sours me on Unitronics as a brand.
This guy is not the only Unitronics rep I've had give me a sales pitch, and every time it seems like they hire a general sales firm to hawk these things and the reps can never answer any technical questions and has no idea that the majority of any automation project cost is not in the hardware, it's in the labor. It's almost as if they were selling used cars three weeks ago, mattresses last week, and PLCs this week. So you can save me a few hundred dollars on hardware, but it's going to cost me several thousand more dollars to actually implement and support. How can these guys not understand the concept of TCO?
Guys like him, they sell the hottest gadget of the week and then move on. It's easy for him to say "Oh just rip out the SLC and throw in the Unitronics" because he's never actually had to do it. A big reason why I buy A-B is that I have reps at my beckon call with decades of expertise available. They're not going to leave me high and dry and say "I'm just a sales rep, call this number for Tech support, but they're on Israeli time so you'll have to wait."