I get my fair share of vendor calls. Some are pretty good. Some stink to high heaven. Here is an actual voice mail a vendor left for me this week:

bq(quote).. Hi there, hey sorry I missed you; I just wanted to make a quick followup call per my email that I sent out on Monday announcing our release of version 2.5. A pretty big step forward and I wanted to make sure you had a change to look at it. If you are not at the point where you want to take an eval I am also setting up a bunch of Webexs. I thought I would at least extend that invitation your way.

So why don’t you give me a call back and let me know either way 1-800-870-8102 extension xxx or just reply back to my email and let me know what is going on and if you want to take a peek at it or what I can do to help out.

Thanks much and we’ll talk to you soon.

Um, no you won’t.

My initial reaction was that this had to be spam. Didn’t address me by name or mention my company, and didn’t even mention his own name or company. Curious, I called the main number and discovered the culprit company. I didn’t bother to call through to the sales rep (account executive, district manager, sales executive, whatever this one calls himself) but I do recall getting the email he mentioned. But let’s use some common sense (not to mention courtesy) and please leave better voice mails. Maybe then you can sell to me.

I mentioned a similar experience in “Get A Clue Vendors”:http://www.johnsjottings.com/archives/2003/04/18/get_a_clue_vendors.html but at least in that case she left me her name and company name. Cleary, the clue has not yet been received.

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How Not To Sell To Me

by Hugh.

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My Project List

Talk about “Things that make you go hmmm.” Last week I received an email from a developer on my team with a screenshot of an application he wanted to point out but I was more interested in what I saw behind the image, a snippet of which is shown here. Click through to see the whole desktop, but you can’t really get the effect as I saw it which was most of those icons appearing to be actually on his desktop.

As I was staring at the email I couldn’t help think that he had WAY too much time on his hands to be categorizing items like “vacation research” and “impossible goals” but something about it just didn’t seem right. Because while he does have a dry sense of humor and I would not put it past him to do something like that, it seem a bit much even for him.

So of course I had to ask about it, and thinking I’m an idiot (or worse the pointy-haired boss) he pointed out it was a Dilbert fake desktop.

Sheesh. For someone who has a Dilbert strip of his own on his desktop you’d think I would have immediatly spotted it. Did I feel dumb.

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A Dilbert Moment

I hope Mark was able to stay unplugged all weekend. I certainly can relate to his situation. On Friday he wrote a couple of articles regarding his work schedule, which as he points out is really one continuous 24-hour cycle, with no clock.

This is the fate of many technology workers, most assuredly anyone who works any portion of their schedule at home. When my children were born I worked at home full time, which really did mean 24 hours a day. Within that period I would work on average I suppose 10 hours, which would often be at all odd times of day. It actually worked out quite well for me during that period of my life.

However I got into the habit of checking email at all hours, which I still do. I just responded to a couple tonight. With Outlook Web Access it’s just too easy to check in and I do – often. I am getting better – when I’m on vacation I’ll often read my email but rarely respond, waiting until I am “back.”

But it’s hard, and when your work and your hobbies put you in front of a computer they will often mix.

I wouldn’t go back to restaurant work for anything, but looking back I do miss the days where the biggest after-work issue was remembering too late that you forgot to give someone that side of peanut butter they asked for.

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Working 9-5?

After about 4 paragraphs in to a comment on Jeremy’s Gruntle about performance reviews I realized I should just post my thoughts here. That’s what trackback is for.

We are trying something different this year with reviews. We’ve got about 75 managers in our group in a pilot of a quarterly review process where each quarter the employee’s objectives (right now just the managers) are agreed upon and documented (for everyone else to see too) and then at the end of the quarter we review progress (reviews are not viewable by all of course). The objective setting takes a top-down approach so that everyone can base their objectives on the objectives of those above them. Then the cycle starts again. We are going to try it for a quarter or two before deciding if we are going to get employees and other areas of the company involved. The CEO is watching the pilot closely and so far likes what he sees.

Of course if you were a good manager you did this anyway, but making it formal certainly helps those who ordinarily would not.

The annual review then becomes a roll-up of your quarterly reviews with some extra stuff tacked on. Should make for smoothing the workload out throughout the year.

The most interesting aspect of this approach is the visibility of objectives all the way up, down and across the organization. Everyone can (in theory anyway) see how their objectives tie into the company objectives, which is always a good thing. In theory the horizontal visibility will help peers understand how they can help each other meet their goals.

Other than some issues with the technology we are using things have been going well and we’ve gotten good comments from managers and employees who have also seen the pilot.

So far I like it and I hope the pilot is successful.

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Performance Reviews

I agree with Jeremy - Conferences Do Matter.

The key is that you have to be an active participant, either by speaking, by sitting on a panel, or in some other way interacting with other attendees on a formal basis.

Like Jeremy I have moved into a presenter role, my most recent being at Siebel User Week in October. Preparing for a presentation takes time and unless you are trying to sell something there isn’t always an immediate benefit. The benefit to me, beyond honing my speaking skills, is that by presenting I now become a magnet for people coming to me to talk about a topic, usually one I have an interest in as well. It’s such an incredible learning opportunity.

When someone from my team attends a conference I try to make sure they are involved in some way other than just an attendee. While you would like to think everyone is mingling and socializing it just doesn’t happen for many – without that forced interaction you will gain little over a web conference.

Unfortunately budgets have been tight for conferences. I’m looking forward to that improving soon…

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Conferences