Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell

HangingChad writes "ComputerWorld is running an article about Microsoft's latest type of sales force scare tactic. Apparently Microsoft is using the new title of 'engagement manager' to attempt sales via intimidation. From the article: 'Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts."'"

Comments

it's all about obfuscation

[yagu]

What's up with Microsoft? I would recommend Thomas Peters' "In Search of Excellence" for their review. While I wouldn't agree 100% with all of "Search...", there are anecdotes and good evidence around "customer service", and what makes a company excellent.

Creating adversarial relationships, especially ones where Microsoft as much as accuses a customer of piracy (are we sure Microsoft hasn't purchased RIAA yet?) cultivates resentment and long term rot.

And now, Microsoft is creating account team members whose sole function is to instill FUD in their customer, intimidating them into shelling out even more money for services to ensure Microsoft checks and balances are in Microsoft's favor? Sheesh. This is a scam, pure and simple. As the article points out, if Microsoft truly thinks something is amiss "it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers".

Maybe Microsoft is doing this to themselves inadvertently, or maybe it's a strategy. From the Fine Article:

When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless.

Microsoft's "complexities of software licensing" are the seed of irritation. Accusing customers of ripping them off because they can't figure these complex licenses out entirely is the fertilizer to grow that seed into full blown resentment.

If there were any real alternatives to technology in today's Microsoft dominated juggernaut, these "practices" would send customers screaming to the competition. Unfortunately, so far, there aren't.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Fanboy Troy]

Actually your post reminded me of a bookmark I had laying around quite a while about why Ernie Ball dumped microsoft. FTA:

...Humiliated by the experience, Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."

...What I really thought is that you ought to treat people the way you want to be treated. I couldn't treat a customer the way Microsoft dealt with me...I went from being a pro-Microsoft guy to instantly being an anti-Microsoft guy...

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[throx]

I fully believe that everyone out there really wants to break away from Microsoft...

Actually, I disagree. Most people don't actually care. There's even a hell of a lot out there that actually love Microsoft products (they're an American company, wave flag, etc.), and another very large set that just likes the idea that a single source solution tends to play pretty well with itself.

Part of the problem for the alternate systems is to actually convince people that the MS monopoly is bad for them.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[olddotter]

Don't make the mistake of thinking that Microsoft wants their customers to like them. Microsoft has several problems, some legit, and some they caused themselves.

The legit problems is that since they have a virtual monopoly their biggest compeditor is the version of Windows (or Office, etc.) they sold customers a few years ago. Hence the only way to grow is to "encourage" people to buy new software even if they don't really need it.

They have a history of upsetting their userbase. Given that they have a virtual monopoly they don't really care if their users like them. MS takes a corporate mafia approach to sales, trying to strong arm customers into paying them off. I've seen these articles in the nears every few years for most of the last decade.

I keep hoping it will drive defections to Apple's OS X or Linux.

Re:it's all about obfuscation

[Kadin2048]

I have yet to meet anyone in business who really cares that much about Microsoft one way or the other. Many (I'd venture perhaps to say 'most') people find aspects of Windows annoying or obnoxious, but in general it's "good enough."

In fact, if I had to pick a single phrase that sums up Microsoft, that's what it would be: "good enough."

It's not wonderful, and it's not cheap, but it basically does what it says it's going to do, and the pricing is such that most businesses can afford it (or that they've rolled the cost of it up into their products and passed it onto their customers).

The only people that probably 'hate' Microsoft are probably at competitor companies (insofar as they exist anymore), and that only people who really 'love' them are probably at companies that are making money off of their dominance in some direct or indirect fashion.

To the very great majority of people, Microsoft software is like 120VAC electricity: they understand that there are other ways to run their toaster, and perhaps are even dimly aware that in other places, things work differently, but it's not particularly relevant to their business, and as a result they don't care.

If people dislike Microsoft for something, it's mostly for their licensing structure. That's why you see most people trying to advocate Linux use to businesses focus on the small-F "free" aspect: very few people really care about the capital-F/libre definition of "Free," the only advantage of Linux is that it costs less.

However, I think during periods of market contraction, as companies look towards their overhead for ways to cut costs and maintain profitability, you'll see increased interest in free replacements for expensive software. Right now, most companies aren't under so much pressure that it's worth the transition problems to get rid of Windows (although it's worth transitioning from UNIX to Linux in many cases). As the market becomes more and more competitive and commoditized, I think eventually people are going to see the price of a Windows+Office license for every computer as a competitive disadvantage.

Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[winkydink]

It may have changed since I last did one, but it used to be that if you had
a Select or Enterprise Agreement with MS, they had the right to audit
spelled out in the contract. The article is mum as to whether or not such
an agreement was in force between MS & AWC, though most companies of any
size have one or both agreements.

So, if MS has a Select or Enterprise Agreement with AWC, then MS is fully
within their right to request an audit and this is a non-news article.

Also, note that Computer World doesn't call this a "sales force scare
tactic" as the headline implies. That term isn't even used in the article.

Re:Contracts in force between MS & AWC????

[ktappe]

if MS has a Select or Enterprise Agreement with AWC, then MS is fully within their right to request an audit and this is a non-news article.

Hardly.

1. They did not request a 3rd party, independent audit. On the contrary, they claimed their in-house auditing service was the "only unbiased" audit, which is exactly 180-degrees from the truth; it's the very definition of bias.

2. They completely disregarded without even a glance the customer's legitimate efforts to demonstrate his legality. This shows MS was not in any way acting in good faith.

3. Any party that believes another has wronged them is obliged to take that grievance to the proper authorities, not threaten unilateral actions. What MS did here reeks of extortion; the threat of one-on-one remedies in order to coerce behavior without any involvement of the court system.

-Kurt

Meaningless blurb

[Jason1729]

The blurb uses a lot of words to say very little.

From TFA, MS is sending their sales people after customers claiming the customer is not in license compliance and they need to send an inspection team in. They are very threatening, implying if the company doesn't comply, they'll face legal prosecution. Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.

Engagement?

[erbmjw]

One definition is

a hostile encounter between military forces

Perhaps it should be expanded to include a hostile encounter by corporate forces

It's not new, but not every has experienced it.

[khasim]

Microsoft has been doing this for years.

But not every one of their customers has experienced it. So it is "new" to them.

The reality is that many of Microsoft's customers are "pirates" but only in the sense that they do not keep the kind of records that Microsoft demands when doing an audit.

It isn't enough to have the box the software came in, along with the hologram and the license certificate and so on and on and on.

You also need to be able to PROVE that all of that isn't fake.

And since Microsoft specifically REFUSES to track the license keys and such, the only way to "prove" that the software is legit is to have the original sales receipt from an approved Microsoft vendor.

And that's even if you're not really pirating their software. In past versions, they've made it as easy as possible for companies to pirate their stuff AND as difficult as possible for companies to ensure that they are in compliance without spending lots of hours recording and checking their licenses.

So, even if you had 50 machines and you had bought 50 licenses ... you were out of compliance if:

#1. Those licenses couldn't be found.
#2. Those licenses weren't matched to receipts from MS vendors.
#3. The machines had been "imaged" with a common image without purchasing the MS license agreement that authorized that.

It's all about driving sales.

bad summary.

[twitter]

Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.

They never got to that point because AWC's lawyer told them to stick it.

It it works like a BSA raid, M$ will get a court order for an inspection based on some kind of "evidence", which could be anything from an anonymous phone call by a disgruntled employee to some program the secretary installed phoning home. AWC would then have the choice of paying for the inspection or another even more expensive "service" from a list M$ offers. The raid itself would involve massive disruption of work.

This is the appropriate response.

My advice: Ignore them and they will go away

[Proudrooster]

These has been a common tactic for years. I have trained all my higher-ups to ignore any offers to review licenses. Companies will call the higherups and tell them they can potentially save money by reviewing their licenses and getting into a new type of license program. Vendors are constantly switching license schemes e.g. network connections, to MIPS, to number of processors, to number of dual core processors, to number of instances.

Database vendors like Oracle also like to come in and do reviews/audits so they can help you save money and (sic) purchase the optimal license agreement. In reality, you already have the best license deal and the vendor wants to kill it and replace it with one that costs more.

We learned long ago that these sales weenies are just fishing for anyone who will talk to them. If you ignore them, they will go bug someone naive enough to talk with them. They have no legal authority and are, dare I say sharks, trying to rewrite your license agreement to get you to fork over more cash.

Stay legal on all your licensing and simply factor licenses into the purchase price of every machine. If you know that you purchase licenses with every machine and keep your license count current for upgrades and maintenance, the matter will take care of itself.

Note, young inexperienced managers will fall for the "cost savings" sales pitch quite often since they want to be perceived as doing something for the business. If they are foolish enough to start licensing conversations, make sure that you explain how much time and cost the audit process with take. Ask who is going to pay for the labor to install auditing software. Explain that vendors are not allowed access to servers and PCs. Ask them who is going to assume the security risk for any audit software and who will take responsibility if it causes problems in your production environment. After all, I am sure that all audit software is bulletproof and well written. Itemize all the costs and risks then make sure your manager's manager and/or customer see this risk/cost assessment.

My advice: Just ignore them and they will go away AND put your grumpiest and savviest technical manager in charge of any license renewals.

Re:You must be new here

[rolfwind]

I take it you haven't used Linux in years to be spouting off that FUD. Ubuntu is as user-friendly as it gets for completely free (or perhaps Mepis). All I would say is a requirement is a decent internet connection to download programs/updates.

And for a lot of people, all they use the computer for is email/internet. Add in openoffice (already included) and a surprising large portion of the population is taken care of. Before I hear cries of "photoshop" this and that, already granted but that is a different segment of the populace. It's also nice using an OS where I can download what I need in most cases and that it's legitimately free, not loaded down with bloat/spyware, or have a friend reminder pop up every 30 seconds of how I should register some software.

If by it's not a real alternative "right now" you mean it's not "perfect." Well, no, but neither is windows. With that attitude, nothing will get developed far enough to be "perfect" because no ones using it. But it's good enough for a lot of people, so it is an alternative.

Seriously, I don't know if you were trolling or what, but Desktop Linux today is far ahead of Desktop Linux of just 2 years ago and light years ahead of Desktop Linux 1999. On my personal linux workstation, I haven't used a commandline in months and I'm a semi-power user.

And yes, I have introduce Linux to Newbs (former Windows users) who have stuck with it. These aren't l33t hackers either.

And so ends Linux licensing FUD

[stinky wizzleteats]

So much for turning to commercially licensed closed source software as a way to reduce your exposure to IP legal threats.

Re:You must be new here

[jimicus]

This part is true; I've evaluated several.

However, at the last check (about 5 months ago), not a single one provided the pretty integrated solution that Outlook and Exchange does. At best, they require a separate plugin for Outlook. I found that adding a plugin which sucks to a PIM which sucks does not tend to reduce the overall level of sucking - indeed, with any significant number of client PCs and a requirement that everyone shares their calendars in an integrated system, Exchange rapidly starts to look attractive.

At worst, they provide nothing more than a web-based interface (yes, this will get screams from those who "must" use Outlook), with one or more of the following:

• Poor multi-language support
  
• Bits which sort-of work, mostly don't.
  
• Help files in a completely different language.
  
• Very poor community in terms of users and support. I think this guy has a point.
  
• (this is the real killer to the sales, marketing and management folks who are focused on appearance and functionality, with little concern about Microsoft), THEY DON'T LOOK ANYTHING LIKE OUTLOOK.
  

If you're lucky, you'll be able to get a usable solution and find a web-based system which doesn't completely suck and you'll get buy-in from the rest of the business.

Now watch this get modded into oblivion because it doesn't tow the party line that There is a Good Open Source Replacement for Everything....