Dealing with mudslinging in the sales cycle

I'm a pretty black and white type of guy. Very little gray. It is what it is, and there is no use trying to paint it differently. That trait came in very handy when I was on the marketing side and my job was to paint the competition in the worst possible light. My job was to give the field as much information as I could about why customers shouldn't do business with the other guys.

You see, if you could villify the competition and convince the customers they were of questionable integrity, the deal would be ours to lose. Of course, you never want to go into a deal mud-slinging, but inevitably it happens. Market spaces in the technology industry are so crowded and differentiation so elusive that you look for anything that gives you an advantage.

Even if it's something the competitor has no control over. Given the real outrage about the NSA snooping Internet traffic, you figure someone had to be caught in the crossfire. That someone is Narus' Networks, the folks that provided the hardware to monitor the traffic on big network pipes. In this post, Darknet adds some pithy comments about some work that Wired (link here) did to uncover Narus' involvement in the situation. I don't know for sure that these guys have taken a black eye about being publicly mixed up in the mess, but I presume they have.

How do I know? Because if I was competing against them, that's the first thing I would do. To be clear, I can't see anything that Narus did as being wrong. They sold their product to carriers. The quote from the Wired article says it all:

"Narus has little control over how its products are used after they're sold. For example, although its lawful-intercept application has a sophisticated system for making sure the surveillance complies with the terms of a warrant, it's up to the operator whether to type those terms into the system, says Bannerman."

Most companies have little control over how their product is actually used. This guy from Narus closes the article with this quote: "Many of our customers have built their own applications. We have no idea what they do." Sorry, I don't believe that. Even hush hush military installations need support from time to time. And then you figure out what is going on. Sure, if you are selling software development tools you have no idea what the customer is doing or building. But to say you don't know how a customer is using your box to sniff 10 Gbps networks rings fallow.

But that's not the point. The point is that the customer is caught in the middle. When competitors start slinging the mud, then the customer has to figure out what's right and wrong in a whirlwind of speculation. So I thought I'd give some guidelines based on my experience. Hopefully it will make it easier to wade through the crap.

1. No mudslinging - Early on in the procurement process, make it very clear to all participants that you will be very intolerant of mud-slinging. This doesn't mean it won't happen, but the reality is that the great sales folks know how to de-position the competition in a positive way. The crappy ones rely on the old "well they just suck."
   
   
2. Figure out if it matters - As you go through the technical evaluation, the vendor in question may fall out of the race. Then it's a non-issue, no?
   
   
3. Do your homework - Ultimately if you are pulling the trigger on a purchase, then your ass is on the line. Believe me, the competition will get their points across, so you'll know about these allegations. If they concern you, check them out. I'm not saying to go on a witch hunt. But if you hate surprises as much as I do, you better do your diligence before buying.
   
   
4. Go with your gut - I'm a big fan of following my instincts. If the idea of doing business with someone turns your stomach, then don't. Make sure you've done your homework to substantiate your concerns, but then pick the other guy and don't look back.
   

But I do feel for some of these vendors that take headshots for stupid things their customers do. You spend a bunch of time spinning something that you had no hand in creating. I have no issue cleaning up my own mess (and I made plenty of those), but to have to spend days cleaning up someone else's made my ears steam.

My rule of thumb is the vendors should not be held responsible, AS LONG AS THEY AREN'T HELPING. That's where you need to draw the line. Period. If they provide a technical resource helping to configure equipment to do something that anyone could see is ethically questionable, then I wouldn't do business with them. It's as simple as that. See, black and white.

For example, lets say you were in the email security space and one of your competitors also sells an outbound email gateway. Right, a spam cannon. Is there anything wrong with that? In concept no. But if that vendor sent a technical resource to go configure 3 high-end ($50k) boxes in some guy's garage to send outbound mail, I'd have a problem with that. What do you think the guy is doing with the boxes?

So as a customer, you need to wade through all the crap to figure out what the best solution is for your company. Sometimes these intangibles don't matter. Other times they do. But if you do your homework and stay true to your gut, you'll be just fine.