Know your audience

(From one of my recent linkedin posts - feel free to follow me on linkedin as well)

I try to bite my tongue and not rant, but sometimes material just presents itself and it's too good to pass up.

I just got a call from a local ISP. It went to voice mail , of course, but I digress.They had recently installed new fiber for another company in our building and wanted to talk about diverse paths and redundancy.

Perfect. It's always good to know about options and even though we already have a separate fiber from two different companies, it's good to have a third option, especially when our 2 year contract is almost up.

In fact, it seemed great. A sales call for a product I can use and timing that is almost right.

So why, the post?

Well after she talked about the diverse fiber she went on to explain that they also offer Cisco hosted voice and we should look at replacing our phone system and upgrading to Cisco.

Now, I'm sure they do a lot of business selling Cisco phones and I think that's great. But, Extreme, where I work, is a competitor to Cisco and I will never buy Cisco products here. I mean that would be like showing up to the Microsoft Redmond campus and trying to sell an ipad, or going to Ford's corporate offices in a Subaru.

Nothing wrong with Subaru, Iphone or Cisco, but know your audience. If she had stopped at diverse fiber paths, I'd be on the phone now.

I'm actually torn between ignoring the call, and calling back and going "Really? Cisco? Really?" like Seth and Amy from Saturday Night Live. Or Seth and Kermit