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That vendor demo in Tulsa had our sales guy laughing mid-handshake | B2b Services - Free To Speak

That vendor demo in Tulsa had our sales guy laughing mid-handshake

We were doing a routine vendor pitch for our client's procurement portal, 9am on a Tuesday, and the guy across the table pulls out this massive binday of printed emails, like 200 pages, and drops it on the table saying this is his CRM. Our sales rep tried to stay professional but let out this snort laugh that turned into a full wheeze, and then the vendor started laughing too because he knew it was ridiculous. He admitted he'd been doing it that way since 2011 because his old boss hated computers, and now he's stuck in the habit. The demo itself was actually solid, cloud based, good reporting, but nobody could focus because we kept glancing at the paper mountain. We ended up signing a smaller pilot deal with them for 3 months just to test the API integration, and honestly the fact that he showed his flaws upfront made us trust him more. Has anyone else seen a vendor do something so backwards that it somehow made them more believable?

2 comments

2 Comments

viola_lopez301mo ago

Cringed reading this because I once showed up to a client meeting with my notes printed out on paper because my laptop died the night before and I never backed anything up. The client asked if I wanted to use their Wi-Fi and I said no, I'm good, and then proceeded to shuffle through 40 pages of random sticky notes for 20 minutes. That vendor owning his paper mountain actually makes him sound more real than half the slick demos I've sat through where they clearly rehearsed every single click. Sometimes the messy stuff is what makes you trust the person more, you know?

gibson.morgan1mo ago

Did the vendor ever explain how he handled the reporting part of that CRM thing, or did he just admit the whole system was sticky notes and prayers? @viola_lopez30 sounds like she'd have a pretty good guess on that one.