Humour

Sales skills in IT

T A Balasubramanian on the push and shove sales strategies at IT trade shows.

“That was a genuine nabob, eh?” says Danny DeVito. “But I thought he was just warming up to us when you left him in such a hurry.”

You, Papyrus Bytewala, CIO of Baffle Corporation, are deep in the murky spaces of TOGGLE, the Techno Over-exposition of Geeks and Gizmos for Lazy Enterprises. In this crowded and noisy IT Bazaar, you are accompanied by Danny DeVito, your CTO at Baffle, who is expected to learn by immersion in the noisy exhibition and by listening to your wise remarks.

The biped walking humanoid is expressing surprise at his first encounter with your flamboyant old friend, Nawab Ghoda Ghallstone, Junior, and your hasty farewell in the face of some persistent hard sell.

“Danny, you have to know something important about slinky operators like the nawab. What do you notice when he keeps on pushing his ‘Tiger Polish’ package deals at you?” you ask, nervously.

Were robots generally built with infinite gullibility? And would DeVito be able to withstand the slings and arrows of marketing machinations and manipulations?

“I rather like the guy, Papyrus,” says DeVito brightly. “You know, the way he dresses, the green robe and the ruby in his turban and his talking style. It’s pure theatre. That’s what Hollywood is all about. It’s drama and exaggeration and emotion.”

“For God’s sake, all that is tinsel and greasepaint, Danny. Remember, you’re a CTO here on a mission to look for new and interesting technologies that makes life easier for lazy enterprises. It’s a sales pitch he is throwing, and if you don’t watch yourself, he will soon be pocketing a lot of your money and leaving you with a hollow feeling. Of being ripped off.”

“But you were the one who told me that behind every successful trade show sale, there is a trade show polishing guru at work—and boy, this guy was polished like a mirror.”

“Too polished, if you observe. To protect your own intelligence, you have to cultivate a healthy sense of doubt and scepticism, Danny. If you get swayed like a simple-minded village bumpkin by all the snake oil sales talk, you’ll end up a poor man—or a poor humanoid, in your case.”

“How do you know so much, Papyrus?”

“I live and learn, my dear biped. You see, I have had a chance to look at these slippery operations that are built around trade fairs. In a typical booth polishing camp you would be given insights into basic guerrilla tactics that a lot of technical people do not understand.”

“Oh, really? Such as what?”

“Well, for example, trade show polishing teaches IT people to usher prospective customers from one part of your booth to another, which requires your typical techie to go beyond his or her immediate area of responsibility. A lot of technical people never think about that, since they are basically like horses wearing blinkers, and only do what they have been programmed to do.”

“Oh? So it means changing my role quickly between acts?”

“Something like that,” you say, with a sigh. It is going to be a major task getting scepticism into Danny’s fixated programs of real life in the human world, drawn as they were from the method school of acting, you presume. “In the polishing that I went through, my attention was drawn to these techie follies. A lot of technical people never thought their jobs involved anything but answering questions or talking to each other at their booths.”

“I would have thought so too, looking at how some of them are doing it here.”

“That’s where the power of polishing your act kicks in, Danny.”

“It’s like doing rehearsals before a show and having a thespian correct your performance?”

“Yes. Yes. What we were asked to notice was the strategy of the trade show,” you say. “The basic strategy of going to a trade show is to get face time with those who come walking around clutching their bags full of all kinds of brochures. These are people who might be victims—sorry, customers. Being around here with a booth manned by polished techies is the way a company can achieve their marketing goals or reinforce their position in the marketplace. At a trade show you do not usually get a customer placing orders instantly—unless you have done your polishing to such perfection that the poor saps that walk in have no choice but to whip out their cheque books. So a company’s goals are usually to introduce a new gizmo or a geeky, flashy product at the show or to push and shove a victim— oops, customer—along the sales cycle.”

“Push and shove, eh?” says Danny looking amused. You can almost hear the mental processors buzzing inside his head as he updates codes and fills more memory cells with deep knowledge. Maybe he was beginning to understand the dark side of salesmanship.

“Well, Danny, people, being human, behave differently on a trade show floor and do things they would not do at work where they are not expected to talk to a steady stream of strangers or dress up like penguins and dance around. And since their usual bosses are not around they eat, drink, sit around looking bored, and talk among themselves.”

“That’s a shame,” says Danny, shaking his head.

“It’s only to be expected. They do these things because they do not know what else to do. Now if you were to join a school such as Nawab Ghallstone’s Tiger Polish, you can be sure that they would coach you by giving you a personal goal for being at the show. Maybe they would make you want to meet specific people in the industry and describe them to their boss in a report, or maybe they would set you up to do their own market research.”

“That would cramp my style,” says DeVito. “I don’t like being programmed to do specific things that somebody thinks I should be doing.”

“Oh, of course, don’t I know that?” you sigh.

A humanoid with a program so devious that he does not like the idea of being programmed.

“But since we’re on the subject, let me also tell you that techies at trade shows have great difficulty understanding the nuances of business body language. I recall my instructor at the school telling us geeks: Get a proper haircut. Be aware of what you are doing at all times. Do not eat, drink, or chew gum. Do not be seen touching body parts. Be interested and suitably enthusiastic about being a company ambassador, because that’s what you are. If you are not too keen on being one, don’t be there.”

“Business body language, eh? Now that’s something any actor can tell you more about. Stage presence. Make an impression. Express yourself. Connect with the audience. Put feeling into what you say.”

“Yes, yes. That’s the idea, Danny,” you say, relieved.

“So that’s what the nabob was putting into Tiger Polish? Drama school basics?”

“Right. But if you are at the receiving end of it, run for your life. Or to the next booth, if you happen to be in a place like this. See those suited-and-groomed sales people in the Insell booth looking hopefully in our direction? Do not let them catch your eye or we will never get away. Some of them have not spoken to another human being since the show opened last Wednesday, and they are desperate.”