Always check your references

Background

One of my NSCs contacted me (I was the manager at a Navision NTR at the time), that they had a prospect, but the prospect needed a reference visit to an End User that had a similar business line to what they did. We had a few End Users that had a similar business line, but had been sold by other NSCs, so it was quite a job to find a potential End User that matched with an NSC that was willing to share their client as a potential reference, and the prospect was in a hurry.

Reference Found

I finally had determined a suitable End User, the NSC had agreed, but the End User was in the middle of a Physical Inventory, and could not manage the site visit for at least a week. We informed the prospect that we had found a potential End User to act as a reference, gave them some limited information about the End Users business, and suggested a visit in two weeks time. The prospect was not too happy, but was willing to wait.

A few days later

In those days one of my roles was to train NSCs, and one of the ways I did this, was to basically work with them side by side for their first couple of implementations, so as it happened I knew the reference End User very well, so when the Sales Manager called me, it a few days later, it seemed quite normal... until he started asking me odd questions.

Do I know this guy?

The sales manager asked me if I knew such and such a person. The name meant nothing to me, but I asked where I would know him from? He gave me a company name, but it still meant nothing. But some strange uneasy tingling was starting to bother me. I opened my email, and checked back the last few days, and yes sure enough, this was the Prospect. So I ask ...."why?" ... being a little concerned. It turns out that the Prospect has turned up unannounced, and is in with one of the Sales people placing a rather larger order for goods. He turned up over two hours ago, and had been "placing orders, then cancelling them, reserving inventory, creating pick lists", etc.

What's going on here.

Well the Sales Manger had been out, and arrived an hour or so into this "Sales Process", where it looked like a rather junior sales person had clinched a good sized client. The client was in a similar business to them, and wanted to complement their product range with the goods of the Reference End user. They had first asked to get a print out a price list, then place an order. As the order was placed, our friend the prospect is asking how they know about stock levels, and how easy is it for the sales person to check if they have stock in other warehouses. He then asks to have a proforma invoice printed, so he can place a deposit. Then places an order, and has a pick list printed and an invoice, then cancels the order etc etc. Basically he was testing out a series of issues that were important to him as a Prospect. He had used up in the end 2 hours of the End Users time creating documents, reserving inventory etc. And of course in the end he purchased nothing.

How it all turned out.

Well it turns out that it was a small market, and everyone knows everyone, so it didn't take long for this prospect to narrow down a list of potential Navision End Users, and he actually tried the same trick on a number of other companies till he found the one that actually had Navision.

The End User was not at all happy, and was very reluctant to act as an reference again, though we did explain that we really had no part in this, and in the end it all smoothed out.

The point is that prospects should always check out their references, but please never go to this extent.

And Yes the client did purchase Navision version 3.55 DOS and I recently found they are now on 3.70, so they have stuck with it for a long time now!