RE: Dimmy vs Dumby: who's right? Or, who is more right? :o)

One clarification. I'm not talking about the BP being brought in to sell a solution. I'm talking about bringing a BP in to sell the core product (IDS). An example would be bringing in a BP to sell a "Bank in a Box". The BP is an IBM reseller who sells the AS/400 and the app. (DB2 is part of the OS on AS/400 aka I-Series). This is a solution sale where the IBM S&D team covers the bank, and the solution fits a need for the bank so that they can easily expand their number of branch locations. [Sorry its a DB2 thing. It was the first solution I could think of.] Funny, I can't think of a "solution" being offered on IDS. I don't count Cisco or Siemens Medical since you're not engaging IBM in the sale, but Cisco and Siemens on their own. From: im_gumby@hotmail.comTo: thebp@usenet-news.net; informix-list@iiug.orgSubject: RE: Dimmy vs Dumby: who's right? Or, who is more right? :o)Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 16:17:50 +0000 > From: theBP@Usenet-News.Net> Subject: Re: Dimmy vs Dumby: who's right? Or, who is more right? :o)> Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 16:02:14 +0100> To: informix-list@iiug.org> > Ian Michael Gumby wrote:> > On Sep 3, 9:28 am, splint...@ymail.com wrote:> >> On Sep 2, 12:12 pm, InDeep <ind...@indeep.com> wrote:> > <snip>> > > But lets get back to basics. Who is going to buy an IBM product that> > not even IBM themselves are capable of supporting.> > > > When you say "capable of supporting", in what context? Marketing, technical, Developer community?> Ah, thats actually a good question. >From a "community" you have the IIUG, so clearly that's not what I meant.>From a "technical support", you have your maintenance agreement as well as premiere services, so that's not what I meant either. What I did mean was from a sales, pre/post sales support from the IBM S&D team. IBM's greatest strength (and weakness) is the army of S&D folks who latch on to your account when you become an aligned and integrated account. But what happens when no one on the team assigned to your account is capable of supporting IDS? Sure you can call in the swat team, or maybe an IT specialist from another city to help you. But what happens when you want a live body from IBM on site to talk about IDS or to help your DBAs out of a little mess? Thats the rub. Clients and S&D realize that unless there's a local person, there is some risk as to the customer service that you can get from IBM. People choose IBM not because they're the cheapest in terms of $$$, but that they give you good service and for the most part, they'll make you whole when they can. (Or at least they used to.) Customers don't get a good warm fuzzy feeling when IBM has to bring in a BP to help support a product that IBM makes. How do you think customers feel when they learn that IBM is subcontracting work to Xtivia and that the customer is paying a certain margin of uplift to IBM?(Oh I do know the numbers *very* *very* *well*, also the arguments both *pro* and *con* since I used to sell this... ;-) So thats a major problem. You're not going to get a lot of net new customers where IBM can't sell the product themselves, or support them locally. IT Specialists have in the past, lived on customer sites. This was good since they found new opportunities for IBM to cross sell/ upsell, along with offering "free" support and mentorship. With license maintanence fees dropping, these guys no longer lived at one account, but had other accounts to support. (The exception to this is Wally Mart and used to be K-Sears because the did enough business to warrant this sort of relationship.) >From personal experience, I've seen client reps not even talk about a solution unless they knew their local team could support it... Does that make sense? I'm not talking about the customer who's in BFE and knows that his "local" team is a 4 hour drive from the big city. I'm talking about a customer in the "big city" and knows that the nearest support guy is in another "big city". Think Chicago and Detroit. Or Detroit and Cleveland. See how Windows Mobile brings your life together—at home, work, or on the go. See Now _________________________________________________________________ Stay up to date on your PC, the Web, and your mobile phone with Windows Live. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/msnnkwxp1020093185mrt/direct/01/