BSOFH: Schwag shopping.
I love to play with vendors.
I love to go to those thinly veiled marketing “seminars” where I eat the breakfast danishes, doodle on the notepads, and then stand up to ask ridiculous questions of the sales presenter. Once I actually got a networking guy to start making up stuff as he went along: I asked him if his router had built-in antivirus, and before I knew it, he had drawn up a whole new version of Unified Threat Management, complete with keylogging, database activity monitoring, and an executive dashboard. Too bad he was only selling WAPs.
But my favorite cat-and-mouse game is on the trade show floor, where I try to score all the neat schwag while leading on the booth babes. See, the really good schwag is stored under the table, behind the tablecloth, and they only pull it out if they think they’re gonna make a sale. So you have to go in dressed expensively, but without a tie. With a tie, you’re obviously another sales droid, maybe coming over to check out the competition. With the sharp suit, but without the tie, you look like the senior VP of something who is too important to care about making a good impression.
Whatever you do, DON’T wear one of those dorky Bluetooth earbuds. That’s a dead giveaway that you’re just a wannabe.
So I make a point of walking by the booth quickly, as though I’m about to meet someone equally important for lunch, and then let the display catch my eye. Reluctantly, I back up a few steps and cast my glance at the literature. I frown. By this point, the smell of the chum is almost unbearable and the sharks are circling; they can’t help themselves.
I rate the sales rep on the first line. “Can I help you?” is lame. “Are you concerned about threats to your [insert technical buzzword here]?” does a little better. “Say, didn’t I hear you speak on that panel at RSA?” is the best of all. Some cut to the chase and say, “Would you like a chance to win an iPod?” which is just shy of saying, “I’m dying for some leads here, please give me your business card.”
The trick is to keep them talking but keep your badge hidden, so they’re not really sure how important you are. “I think I bought this last year,” I say. “Oh no, wait, it wasn’t the IronBlade, it was the IronMaiden. Sorry, my mistake.” Spend a little time confusing them with their competition, and they’ll work even harder to see if they can woo you away. Talk about how you’re trying to expand your company’s security portfolio and improve your governance and compliance. Once you get the Most Important Sales Guy talking to you (he’s the one who was holding back, maybe talking on his cell phone, but still listening to the conversation), start mentioning the word “demo.” That’s usually enough to tip them over the edge, and they bring out the embroidered polo shirts or the neon-colored riding crops or whatever the really good schwag is. Score!
That’s the point where I hand them the business card of an ex-coworker from my previous company and tell them to give me a call. I go dump the loot in my briefcase (extra large for this reason) and come back to hit the next victim. If you time this right—say, while everyone else is in the sessions and the vendors are really bored—you can empty them all out before the break.
Sometimes if the schwag pickings don’t look appealing, I go around being really obnoxious and handing out the business cards of each booth’s competitor, which I collected at the previous conference. This works best at large national conferences, where they’re sure not to remember you. With a bit of finesse, I can get them all pissed off at each other and watch them tripping each other up with the power cables on the floor. Once I started a price war by telling each of four competing companies that two of the other ones were undercutting them by over 30 percent. I won’t say that this ended up in a hostile takeover bid ... you can draw your own conclusions and I’ll deny them all.
And when I really, really want to torture a particular vendor, I’ll ask them to set up a pilot for me ... every two years or so. They usually don’t have the same sales staff by that time, so they’re hopeful all over again that they’ll make a sale. I have fun playing with the new improved console, break it, and then send the system back in a fit of pique until the next time. These days I get my kicks by asking every vendor to do a pilot for me ... under VMware. The contortions they go through to convince me that they can virtualize are truly better than what you see at the Cirque du Soleil in Vegas.
Hey, man, I’m just softening them up for you. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it ... and even Mike Rowe has his limits.
Posted by shrdlu on Monday, April 28, 2008(3) Comments • Permalink •
