Guy Smith's recent posting about HP Sales Reps reawakened memories of
days long gone where people within HP DID know something about the
software and hardware they were selling, where you COULD get a pricing
guide and if you were called into a budget meeting with 75 minutes
notice, you COULD come up with a guestimate and hold your own with the
UNIX and PC people who came to the meeting with their guestimates,
instead of responding "I've called my HP sales rep and he assures me he
will have a guestimate quote for me within the next two to three weeks".
I guess the cost of printing and distributing the "HP 30000 Pricing
Guide" got to be so great that HP was willing to forgo millions of
dollars in sales to avoid its free distribution.
 
What the HP Marketing people seem to forget is that you need the pricing
guide to come up with a "ballpark" number now!  In 60 minutes!  And
within 25% of actual cost is good enough!  A quote next week is
worthless.  Instead of an HP solution, there is a PC or UNIX (non-HP)
solution because the PC and non-HP UNIX people can pick up COMPUTER
SHOPPER or the pricing guide from their favorite vendor, enter some
prices into a spreadsheet, and get a "ballpark" number in one tenth the
time that it takes to get a callback from an HP 3000 sales rep.  If the
PC and non-HP UNIX people have the numbers, they get the "go ahead" and
get the work and the equipment, while the HP 3000 supporters get to sit
in the meeting and look dumb.
 
What happened?  Back in the days of the HP 2000 (yes, I used many of
those over the years) and the first decade of the HP 3000, price guides
and sales reps were resources the HP 3000 System Manager, Administrator,
DP Director, etc. could depend upon for SPEEDY information.
 
Suggestion:
Ok, so HP doesn't want to print a pricing guide (maybe because it costs
too much or changes too frequently, who knows).  What about putting the
pricing information out on the web?  One way the folks get clobbered here
is that a local PC vendor has his pricing information available via the
web.  You fill in the form, it looks at what you want, displays
additional forms (if needed) for configuration dependencies, and then
gives you a "ballpark" price (good to within 5% if ordered by that Friday
night).
 
Just a thought.
 
John