A Day in the Life of a CIO: Syed Ahmed, CEO, Innowell

Innowell’s CEO Syed Ahmed doesn’t mince his words when describing how he feels about the methods vendor sales reps use to win business.

“They come across as ‘preachy’ … it’s almost offending your intelligence,” he says.

“It’s very awkward and quite off putting. Where a lot of them go wrong is they assume they understand your business better [than you], or you don’t have context or understanding of technology – what is out there in the market.”

Sadly, unsatisfactory interactions like this are the norm. Reps showing up with slide decks on topics like ‘agile’ and ‘human-centered design’ is clearly not the right approach, he says.

“They have to understand that we don’t have a lot of time so the fact that you are spending the first 20 minutes explaining what agile is, it’s not going to go well,” Ahmed observes.

Rather, sales execs and engineers should roll this back…