It’s getting quite serious this blog isn't it. So let’s lighten the tone with a bit of comedy. And in a surprise twist, I’m going to be drawing not from the archives of Frankie Boyle or Dara O’Briain but from one of Nebulas’ competitors! Of course, naming them would give them some fame I’m sure they don’t want. Besides, I don’t think they were trying to be funny so that means they don’t deserve it either...
I always think that those who slag off other organisations are doing so because they don’t actually have much to talk about themselves. They don’t feel their own argument is strong enough, so they try to do a bit of classic misdirection. “If we tell them a few fairy-tales we might just bore them enough that they won’t think to ask what our story is.”
We had the following email show up in the inbox of one of our customers a few months ago. Luckily they saw right through the sludge and forwarded it to us. I now present it to you as a classic example of how Partner Programmes can be twisted into a shallow venom that is scattered over a wide area, hoping to get a hit or two so they can paralyse their prey long enough to pounce and really dig their claws in. Did I mention that I come from a thespian background? The email was written as follows (with my comments in red):
Subject: F5 Gold Partners
Hi name / name,
Hope you are fine and well,
(well that's a nice enough start. Nothing wrong so far. How quaint in fact.)
Juts bringing to your attention that Nebulas have lost their F5 gold partner status,
(Unfortunately we did get bumped down to Silver Partner for now, mainly down to not hitting our revenue target. This harks back to the point I made at the start of this blog. Like all top level partners we carry a number. That number increased and we did not do that number.)
which impacts on their commercial rates offered and technical ability.
(Hmmmm, not sure about that. Ask any of our F5 customers if they saw a price increase the last 6 months. But the second bit is the real kicker. Let me get it straight - we didn't sell as much product as we were targeted on over 6 months and suddenly the moment we went to Silver Partner all of our Consultants and Support guys suddenly forgot everything they knew about F5?...
...well we just don't know how that happened. Sorry about that. We'll do our best to figure it out!)
We ourselves are Gold Partners and are considered F5's highest skilled technical.
(Good point. Except this sentence doesn't make sense.)
See enclosed F5 link below:
http://www.f5.com/partners/partnerlists/goldpart.php
We work with similar organisations to you such as company, company etc.
(Fair enough. Good validation I suppose. Except one of the organisations they named uses Nebulas for F5 support!)
My sales director some person, would like to call in for 30 mins to talk (over a coffee)
(If he's anything like the writer of this email, perhaps he should let the coffee talk over him.)
about how we work in this space and what we could potentially do to add value to yourselves - commercially and technically.
Please let me know if there is a space moment ahead we can look to call in for 30 mins of your time?
(A 'space moment'! You know I hadn't realised this one until I sat here writing this. Pure gold. The lesson here? Don't write about others supposed incompetence, if you can't even write an email!)
Best Regards,
Tool
So I think I've said enough. Entertaining wasn't it! But no way to go about doing business. And quite offensive to my eyes when I read it. As I've said, our customer sent it to us so hopefully they (and you) will know better than to put any stock in such things. And in no way is this relevant to our relationship with F5 which has remained strong throughout this period – it seems they are really clamping down on their partner programme which I’m certain in the long run will see us show our commitment and regain our Gold Partner status and conversely will surely see some of these pretenders get found out.
And all the while, regardless we’ll be doing what we always do – providing the highest levels of service possible to you, our customers.
Thank you, as always, for reading. Next time I’ll be discussing the evolution of compliance programmes so stay tuned for that. And if you have any questions or feedback, of course please do email me at grant.paling@nebulas.co.uk
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