In 20 years of experience with purchasing software, I’ve met one software salesman that I’ve actually liked and respected. Guess what? He’s no longer a salesman. And I’m glad. He seemed like too nice of a guy to be dealing in such a slimy business. I’m sure there are a few nice people involved in software sales, but they are, in my experience, in the minority.
If you do not have a great deal of experience with purchasing commercial software, I encourage you to do substantial research before you make a purchase. If you have done a great deal of purchasing, I would love to hear your horror stories. I did some searching online for some illustrations to put in this blog, but most people are not willing to talk about how they’ve been screwed or nearly screwed by unscrupulous software sales teams.
So what I’m going to share here are a couple of my experiences with slimy sales techniques that would make a used car salesman drool. Now I’m a rather calm person. In 14 years at my current location, I’ve yelled twice. The second time I even used bad language, which is very uncharacteristic for me. And, as you can guess, both times I was yelling at software vendors.
The first salesman that was the focus of my ire was trying to sell us something that we’d already bought. The company sold an ETL (Extraction, Transformation, and Loading) engine that we still use today after 10 years. We purchased unlimited “sources and targets,” meaning we could use it against as many databases as we wanted.
They tried to sell us some add-on scripts, which is not a problem. However, they said to use the scripts, we also had to buy another license of the engine! What did they think “unlimited” meant?!? The dense salesman, who was probably 24 years old and could probably see the commission check funding his new sports car, refused to back down and started to argue with me. That’s when I yelled. I’m sure I included something about this being a very poor way of endeavoring to develop a working relationship with a new customer.
Note to those of you buying software: When the software salesman says he wants to be a partner with you and help to make you successful, he’s lying. He may have some good intentions, but always in the back of his mind, he’s thinking of the commission check. (Correction, it’s not in the back of his mind; it’s square in the front!) So are his managers. And they are constantly thinking of how they can make more and more money off of you, because that’s how they keep their jobs and keep the mortgage paid on their million dollar homes.
More recently, a large company attempted to charge us to upgrade their software from one version to the next. If you’re not familiar with how commercial software maintenance works, typically you have a purchase price, say $100,000. In addition, you pay a yearly maintenance fee that traditionally covers customer support and upgrades to the software. The current going rate for maintenance is 20% of the purchase price, in this case $20,000. (This percentage seems to keep going up. I remember when it was under 10%.) This is a yearly amount, and vendors bump it up on a yearly basis. Upgrades to new versions of a vendor’s software have always been included in this maintenance fee.
Note to those of you buying software: ALWAYS write into the contract limits on how much the maintenance fee is allowed to go up each year.
This sales crew of this particular vendor is one that had already made our wall of shame dating back to when we first purchased the software. The salesman, during negotiations, made changes to the contract we were haggling over without pointing the changes out to us. A detailed oriented contracts manager, who has taught me a great deal about IT contract negotiation, spotted the change. Alas, while that salesman is gone, the culture of “screw the customer” is alive and well in that company.
Note to those of you buying software: When you get a new contract from a vendor during negotiations, you can use software like Word to do a side-by-side compare to identify changes. You must look at EVERY change. That nice salesman who gave you a nice polo shirt and a new pen will stab you in the back and laugh about it while he’s on that 6 month cruise he paid for with the commission check.
Here’s the newest twist. When moving from version to version, the company adds new features. This is smart and understandable. That’s one of the reasons why we believe we pay maintenance fees to them. It’s also how they capture market share and stay in business. With their last upgrade, this company also took their suite of tools and broke them into different pieces, adding new functionality to some pieces.
Here comes the slime! In order to upgrade to the next version of the software, the vendor tried to charge us a hefty 6-figure cost to get the new functionality. In order to move to the new version and use the functionality we had already purchased, we were going to have to pay a large amount of money. To keep the blog from getting too long, we resisted, fought, and found an obscure email from the original purchase indicating we were entitled to upgrades, and got the fees waved. And we thought it was settled…
(It should be noted that we typically have to upgrade to new versions. This software is used in conjunction with at least 3 other software packages. To ensure it works correctly with those critical applications, we must keep this software package up-to-date. Running on an old version for an extended period of time is not an option.)
Recently we purchased additional licensing from the company that was well into 6 figures. The aforementioned contracts director and I inquired about language in the contract that would entitle us to upgrades. This has become a standard question, and given our earlier riff with the company, we felt this was really a rhetorical question. It was not!
Upon being told we would have to pay for upgrades, the contracts director very nearly back-fisted the salesman sitting to his right. I erupted and told the gathered sales crew on the conference call exactly what I thought of this practice, as well as their stupidity in trying to put this on us again. (I get angry again just writing about this!)
After ending the conversation, assuring them that our commitment to their software was in severe jeopardy, and sincerely threatening to stop the deal, we received the wording necessary to protect us in the future from these costs.
Notes to those of you buying software: You must be willing to walk away from the table! Salesmen are desperate for sales and commissions. When push comes to shove, they almost always give in. You must be patient and firm. Also, because the company I refer to above is not the only one utilizing this practice, make sure you get wording in your contract that clearly states you have access to all future versions of their software if you continue to pay the maintenance fees.
