Selling IT Wall of Shame: Nous Infosystems

Standard style of offshoring spam – you’d think they’d proofread it just once – with one fun twist. You’ll need to read for this one.

Dear Scott,

Greetings from Nicholas, Nous Infosystems.

I am looking to explore opportunities of providing outsourced Technology Support Services to your organization.

VServe24×7 is the BPO division of Nous Infosystems, an ISO 9001: 2000 & CMMI Level 5 certified global information technologies solutions company, with an expertise in providing IT Infrastructure solutions and Contact centre services. We have offices in US, UK, Germany & Australia with delivery centers in US, UK and India.

We offer standard packages as well as customized services based on best of breed tools and committed specialists from our offshore Global Operations Center.

I would like to know your interest for a quick call on exploring these arrays of services and discussing on Nous Infosystems operational efficiency that would benefit your organization.

Our offer includes:

Look forward to your response.

Thanks & Regards,

Nicholas <>
Business Development Executive
Nous Infosystems
Edison, NJ 08817
Tel: <>

Thanks for writing, Nicholas. The next time I need , you’ll be the first one I call.

Selling IT Wall of Shame: R Systems

Here’s another mail trying to sell me on offshored technology services, with no attempt to personalize – it’s just spam. At least Fidelity entered the company name. These folks have called a few times and left messages – always with the name of my predecessor, despite the name on the voicemail. Here’s the first email – again, formatting preserved, my comments in blue:

From: Gurpreet
To: Gurpreet (yes, I’m bcc’d on this mail – not a good start)
Subject: R Systems intro for partnership in offshore s/w development & onsite consulting
Importance: High (ummm, really? High for who?)

Dear Sir,

Thanks for your time.  

I would like to introduce R Systems for possible partnership, catering to your software needs (Onsite/offshore).
R Systems is a SEI CMMi Level 5 & ISO 9001 certified company with Intel & GE as strategic investor (sic, but this looks to be true) and has
5 State of the Art Development Centers with 400+ Software/Technical Resources in USA and 2000+ Consultants
in India and Singapore and ranked among top 20 companies to offshore with. (by who? BTW, there are actual line breaks in the mail here. And obviously there’s nothing made relevant for me.)

R Systems specializes in

1) Customized Software Development/ Application Development (Java/J2EE, C/C++, .NET technologies etc).

2) Quality Assurance/ Testing Services (Application Integration, Testing Tools, Rational/Mercury/Segue) (ok, #1 and #2 are actual things)

3) Web conferencing solutions/Portal Development. (OK, now I’m getting confused. Are you a telephony provider? And how are these related?)

4) Security software: secure content management, cryptography, Threat management, Biometrics, Smart Cards, Tokens.
Identity and access management, PKI (public key infrastructure, single sign on, TPM(Trusted platform module)

5) Mobility Solutions, IPTV etc (etc indeed)

6) Search Engine Marketing

7) Business Process Outsourcing

Financial/Banking (are they a bank, too?)

(font change here) Please feel free to call/email me if you require any information regarding pricing, methodologies, onsite/offshore models etc.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards
Gurpreet – Sr. Sales Manager
R Systems, Inc
Tel: (916) 939-XXXX(o) | (916) 600-XXXX© (i think this is supposed to be cell)
SEI CMMi Level 5 Company
www.rsystems.com

 

(Faithful readers: Life intervened for the last week, will catch up on some writing soon.)

Selling IT Wall of Shame: Isilon Systems

A few notes – and by the way, I think Isilon is doing interesting things, and am happy for any Seattle company that does well:

• I’ll let you listen to get the money quote (“clustered storage… future”), but will point out simply that for large search engines depending (or planning to depend) on commodity hardware in a distributed environment, clustered storage isn’t the most obvious choice. Also, when the first page of Google results tells me you have >50% profit margins, my pocketbook screams.
• I know telling me you’re going to educate me is typical sales-speak, but I still bristle.

(I’m posting even though I think I’m having an issue with the audio. If this doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll find some as-yet-unknown way to fix it.)

Selling IT Wall of Shame: Intro + Fidelity

My job means I get a lot of cold sales calls/emails from various shops. Most of them are for development on the cheap, others are for services/hardware/etc.

While I appreciate that salespeople have a job to do – we wouldn’t have a company without feet on the street – the asks are usually crushingly bad. The pitches appeal to fear or ignorance (“we can bring you Web 2.0″ – Chris Pirillo strung out a similar consultant), the person selling can’t state their value clearly, they don’t understand that we’re a technology company (since they’ve done no research for their phone or email spam) or they just assume I’m a technology idiot. (Perhaps that’s a successful strategy with CTOs/CIOs/VP Engs/etc. in other companies, but I have to hope it’s not.)

So here I’m calling them out on the Selling IT Wall of Shame. Your sales pitch is a recruiting pitch – make it good, know your audience, make it smart. I’m hoping this can help improve my cold calls and emails, but mostly it’s just fun. (Selling IT is a play on the Consumer Reports page “Selling It” backpage, my favorite part of the mag, weirdly unrepresented online but available from Google Books.)

Here’s some excerpts from the first Selling IT Wall of Shame entry, from folks who manage 401Ks, and now, evidently, offshore development teams. This one is just mostly badly written – why would I consider a business relationship?

The message came across as plain text, but I’ve made it readable for you. I’m that kind of guy. I’ve removed some content (noted in <>) but left all other formatting as-is, and added some commentary in blue italics, trying to keep the snark to a minimum.

The next Wall of Shame entry features audio – and the future!

Dear Scott,

I represent The “Global Services Group” of Fidelity National Information Services(NYSE:FIS). (First sentence in – we don’t know each other, your grammar isn’t right, and your “group is in quotes. Not a good sign.)

This letter is a reference to getting an introductory meeting for us to determine if there is an area we can work together and scope possible opportunities for us to service – WhitePages.com, Inc.

Our prime value proposition consists of Strategic and Operational Benefits arising out of our “Onsite/Offsite/Offshore -<Global IT/SW Outsourcing &
Support>” (This was the formatting. And the words.)

and how we can together control:
A) The “burn rate”, Lower TCO while generating a Better ROI.

B) Help save you ~ 40% on your IT/SoftWare development dollars… (Again, bad grammar, plus these two are the same thing.)

Our business unit is to be the cornerstone of FIS’ aggressive growth in business services from “Global Delivery Centers”. (Whose business unit? Our nonexistent partnership’s business unit is going to be the cornerstone of “something else in quotes”? I’ve read this a few times and still don’t know what it’s saying.)

A 30 minutes investment on your part in meeting with us (along with your
team) would allow us to mutually explore this further, I shall await your availability and confirmation.

Warm Regards, <NAME>

NOTE OUR VALUE PROPOSITION:

VALUE PROPOSITION : Complete lifecycle IT support

Software Application Development
Software Integration, Portal development and Deployment
Software Quality Assurance (SQA)
Porting, Testing and Certification
Security Aspects – Network & Apps
Software Enhancement and Maintenance
Data Integration & Business Intelligence

<Then there’s a lot of bullet points that still say nothing. You get the point.>