Lost A School Bid Where Customer Selected Based On Low Price
Recently lost a school district bid where the customer selected based on low price. The big difference was camera prices. The competitor will provide Fine IP cameras. The customer said the salesman put one of these cameras side by side with an Axis camera and it had a much better picture. Does anyone have experience with these cameras or this company? If have my thoughts, but would prefer to hear other opinions as to what the customer should expect.
Not these specific cameras but experience with this situation. It's easy for someone with a little knowledge to make their camera look better than anything else on the market. A better test would be default both the cameras and use those settings rather than tweaking it. Then do a test with various lighting conditions. I had a pretty common 3rd tier manufacturer do the same thing to me before. When I actually received the camera I could never reproduce the video he showed me and Tech support was no help.
Mike, thanks for sharing.
I have three main thoughts:
Salesman 'Shootouts'
In general, any sales person can make one camera manufacturer look better than another, regardless of what the underlying truth.
This is simply a product of what models were chosen, what settings were used, what scenes were selected, etc.
Do you know any details of how the 'side by side' test was done?
Fine
I've vaguely heard of Fine before. Their website indicates that they are a fairly run of the mill Taiwan manufacturer. From the online pricing I found, their costs seem to be average for Taiwan, similar or maybe slightly higher to Vivotek / ACTi.
Axis vs "Selected Based on Low Price"
However, if a customer is selecting strictly based on low price and it's a competitive situation, then I don't think you should propose Axis.
In 2014, Axis is far behind pretty much every Asian manufacturer and US OEM when it comes to cost.
Hope that helps. Let me know what you think.
Being in this situation burns, but the best thing you can do is let any frustration and disappointment with the current decision mount while staying close by.
Chances are, even if you are able to poke holes/discredit the shootout as invalid, the customer's 'ship has already sailed' and it's just noise from a losing bidder at this point.
Stay in the picture, though. Check-in on project execution, be the shoulder to cry on when the customer gets upset with what they bought, be generous with free knowledge, pro-tips, and good advice.
The customer doesn't need the lowest price AFTER they've awarded the contract... they NEED a working system. If you can help them achieve that goal, the account might still be yours.
A majority of K-12 School Districts are not worth bidding, unless you need work and your time is available. They will almost all go down to the lowest price and not quality. This is something you need to find out way before the bidding stage. Unless you can hard spec something into the school and get the manufacturers and distributors to give you the top discount and nobody else, then it is best to walk away from a K-12 unless you are talking about a maintenance contract.
That last post is so untrue. As long as the facility and IT managers know that you know what you are doing, at a higher level than them, these are the best prospects in the USA. You can win with proof of concept, such as working with IT to use their hardware and network infrastructure. If you are not highly educated in networks, you have an uphill battle. Most of my customers are schools and cities. This is not only because of price. The real trick is to provide quality support and knowledge to retain them over the long haul. (which adds to your resume and reference list for other area schools, who will take a reference over price every time).
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