Stop It! Its Sickening!! Even More!!!

Its heartburning (no, NOT heartwarming - this isn't a typo) to see that what I say carries the weight befitting a man of my influence - none whatever. After my last posting on the On Demand industry's incredibly immature way of dealing with each other - which is to say an ADD - Attack, Demean, Degrade - disorder, I received an extensive amount of support in the form of emails, phone calls, a comment or two and some other communications supporting the position that I'm taking.

Did the On Demand world heed it at all? Nope. They just keep doing it.

The latest transgressor is Salesnet - a company that I think the WORLD of - and they are being offensive as I've ever seen them. They are devoting a large part of their home page in directing you to another page which is a set of links articles that say bad, bad things about the big bad bully salesforce.com that all the little boys and girls in the schoolyard are afraid of - especially at recess - which seems to be what they are saying.

What ticks me off about this in particular is that I really think that Salesnet has a lot to offer to the OnDemand world with the deepest functionality I've seen when it comes to sales process and a business model and strategy for its clients that supports those processes exceptionally effectively. I've done some consulting work for them, they have sponsored BPT events and I really think highly of them. So this is particularly irksome to me.

Home, But Not Alone

I'm going to reiterate something I've said before. The On Demand world needs to stop this ADD offensive. It is deeply offensive because it is just so damned childish.

What makes this dangerous is that On Demand will be the dominant force in CRM without a doubt very soon and will be the dominant platform for the customer experience over the next few years. Do you want your customer's experience run by an industry that loves to spit bile?

I sure don't.

One, No Two, Final Things On The Outage

Oh yeah. Two last things on the outage.

First, kudos to NetSuite, (one of my current clients, in the interests of disclosure) for not concentrating on the outage and not publicizing it to me and others. Good for them. BTW, I'd go after ANYONE who did this, client or not. Salesnet has been a friend forever and have been my client or sponsor of something at various times. So consider this tough love for the On Demand industry.

Second, if all you On Demand companies are so damned perfect with your network let me ask you two things. Why haven't you ever gone after companies like Comcast who have far more serious outages far more frequently? Second, are you willing to guarantee your clients 100% uptime or you will give them significant refunds? If you are, tell me that and I'll publish it here and praise you to the skies for that guarantee. So put up or shut up.

Comments

[Louis Columbus]

Denigrating competitors is a sign that companies doing the slamming don't really and truly have enough faith in their own applications to sell on the value they deliver. Taking the low road of celebrating a competitor's misfortune makes you wonder how a company feels about valuable, yet sometimes difficult customers pushing the limits of applications and services to accomplish their selling strategies. Salesnet rejoicing in a competitor's misfortune shows no class and ignorance of the brutish sort. How short-sighted to dance when a competitor who has built the market they profit from stumbles.

[Tom Foydel]

Paul I couldn't agree more. ADD for software vendors is the same caliber of sales strategy as FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is for the VARs.

[Nachi]

Well said Paul. ADD-disorder is perhaps an affliction in the entire industry and not limited to the on demand world - but Kudos to you for asking companies in the on demand business to raise their standards of competition.

Hope the cruise was a blast! :)