I have seen in increase in these kinds of posts on LinkedIn. I cannot help but question:
1. Did you seriously win a project without knowing what you where doing?
2. If yes, why did the customer chose you?
3. If the customer saw this on LinkedIn, would they not change their mind?
4. Or is this just a passive way to brag?
This could be a form of bragging, or could be a legitimate request to get help from manufacturers that have been thus far not paying much attention to this dealer. I have found that some of the manufacturers whose products are today's market leaders tend to be a little arrogant and aren't very helpful unless that they realize that an actual project is in play. Tell them that you already have a contract in hand and you will be treated with a different level of respect.
I have sometimes been known to post what might look like a stupid question in order to generate conversation around a subject that I want to learn more about. I'm sure that people may sometime question my competence by asking some very basic questions ("if he's a qualified consultant, he should already know that..") but I don't mind looking stupid if I can learn something beneficial.
It's like the person on craiglist..."what's your bottom dollar - cash?" That just like to kick tires and feel like they have leverage over someone.
why did the customer chose you?
I obviously cannot speculate on this specific person / client, but in general I have seen that many end users have an integrator they trust and they depend on that 'guy' to help them figure out a solution.
On the other hand, the bigger the end user gets, the more likely they have their own person in-house who is the resident expert and therefore depends less on integrator guidance.
More broadly, I have seen a number of these posts on LinkedIn. My gut feel is that most of them are genuine requests by local integrators who are tasked to do things beyond their experience.
"My gut feel is that most of them are genuine requests by local integrators who are tasked to do things beyond their experience."
I agree. This company is a DBA for the guy in that LinkedIn post - online links show that the company started 4 years ago and does less than $200K/yr in revenue.
He must have snagged a local company that has multi-state locations and - as John points out - "is tasked to do things beyond their experience".
online links show that the company started 4 years ago and does less than $200K/yr in revenue.
As a general point, those online company revenue estimates can be way off as they go off very limited information.
My father in law always said "even a blind squirrel gets a nut now and then". I guess that could apply.
sure - and I aint got no beef with this particular squirrel..... more power to him.
My primary point is that anyone who sees such a request should do some due diligence on the requester before spending any significant amount of time taking a bite of the dangled bait (i.e. 1000 cams to start; more coming, etc).
"Sure, we can do that" is the standard reply of any smaller integrator tasked with a geographically larger potential new customer - and some have the brains and resources to pull it off and make the customer happy while turning a nice profit.
However - I have also seen many smaller integrators try and handle a job outside of their historically-demonstrated capabilities (when presented with the opportunity) - only to have the job rapidly go over budget and/or go to sh!t.
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