Teaching Vendors To Learn Who You Are

Stop me if you've heard this one: A traveling salesperson walks into an IT director's office, and says, "so -- what is it that you folks do?" The sad part is, this isn't a joke. Instead, it's an all-too-often occurrence that typically leaves potential customers frustrated, mainly at the lack of respect and preparation from the salesperson. In the first of a regular series on IT best practices, longtime IT managing director Steve Nitenson tells you how to handlesuch a situation, to ensure your vendors learn who you are before they try to sell you.

This real-life story (vendor names have been changed to protect us all from lawyers) is just the first in a planned series by "Doc Net" Nitenson, a longtime IT managing director who is currently completing his doctoral degree in Technology Management. With networking chops built at places like Kaiser Permanente, National Semiconductor and Visa International, The Doc has been involved in more than a few vendor-customer relationships, and has good advice on how to make them work best in your favor.

We're pleased to present The Doc's stories as part of our "Works For Me" feature, which was designed into the site to give IT professionals quick takes on best practices, product or service deployments, or any other procedure that worked for someone else, and may work for you. If you've got a success story that you'd like to share, let me know, at [email protected].