I can't explain my tendency to rail about small, irksome things that are just part of the landscape, but since it's a tendency without obvious downside, I also can't muster the will to stop doing so, either.
Among my pet peeves is the marketing practice of sending email messages highlighting white papers supposed to be of truly crucial importance to me, the reader. I've ceased trying to determine why it is that many of the marketers think so highly of the motivational power of their email missives. In trying to answer that question in the past, I used to quickly have a look at their web pages, PDFs, or webcasts, not because the topic lit a fire under me, but solely because I was trying to figure out why they thought it would.
And, of course, by simply taking the time to look at the sometimes-maundering presentations, I made their "lists" of hot prospects, targeted for incessant future follow-up and cultivation. Take one of the other evening's four such entries from my inbox:
A thorough understanding of what’s going on in your IT environment is no longer optional.
Without it, you’re leaving your enterprise vulnerable to security, litigation and vendor-compliance risks. And, because the cost of maintaining IT assets represents such a significant portion of the budget, you could be throwing money away.
So it clearly behooves us all to achieve best practices in software and hardware asset management. This paper offers practical guidance that will put you in the know through best practices in asset management – steps that can help you better manage enterprise risks, save money and more. You simply can’t afford to pass this paper by.
Lucky for me, these days I'm much better at finding enough reason in the email itself to disqualify the whitepaper from ever passing before my eyes. For instance:
A thorough understanding of what’s going on in your IT environment is no longer optional.
Wow. I had no idea that it was ever optional, so that would be a fun fact to suddenly know, if the implied predicate for the assertion were actually true.
And, because the cost of maintaining IT assets represents such a significant portion of the budget, you could be throwing money away.
Irrelevant - without regard to the proportion of budget dedicated to maintaining IT assets, there's no guarantee I'm not throwing money way. Such as by wasting time reviewing the ten or more whitepaper notifications in my daily inbox contents.
So it clearly behooves us all to achieve best practices in software and hardware asset management.
Almost like standard practice in university calculus classes (and elsewhere), the "hand wave", a/k/a "and therefore, it follows". "It clearly" does nothing, let alone behoove me, not least because I am not a member of Genus Equine.
You simply can’t afford to pass this paper by.
Just watch me, Sparky. Just watch me.
The whitepaper referenced above may contain the secrets of the universe, for all I know. Regardless, I didn't read it, and won't be doing so in the future. The email solicitation was lame, it moved me only to the point of ridiculing it in a blog post, and I have enough respect for the sales people at ManageSoft not to send them on a goose chase of calling me or pestering me with further email messages I'd just ignore, as I'm not at all interested in their offerings.
Not that I know the sales people at ManageSoft - I don't. And it's possible that the sales people at ManageSoft are those directly responsible for the email message I've just finished making fun of, rather than some separate, largely incompetent, marketing department. No matter - enterprise software and services sales is a hard slog, filled with wasted salesperson time, and I think, regardless of their solicitation skills or the quality of their offering, that sales people are human, too; people whose time is as valuable as my own, even when I have no intention of doing business with them.
Perhaps I was just well brought up, but more likely, my recently-found reticence to even respond to solicitations that interest me for no reason other than to find out why they were supposed to is that I've tagged along on such sales calls with colleagues before, and I respect the craft, when done right.
I just wish that the sales craftsmen spent a bit more time trying to envision how their solicitations are actually processed by their intended, though sometimes poorly targeted, recipients.
(also posted at a issuesblog.com)
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