For the past two months we have been busy… very busy. As well as more installation work, we have nearly tripled our Dell hardware sales.
My account manager in Dell, Gordon, is an exceptionally nice bloke, but he and I have a problem. Because Dell accounts treat my business just like they do any other, they do not consider that small businesses operate differently than large businesses.
NTES owe nothing… nada… to no one. We own everything, and therefore have no debt. The problem with that is that our audited accounts to the Company Registration Office show that the company has no credit “rating” because of this.
Most small businesses that I know do not leave money in the company at the end of a year, they pay the directors, the employees, purchase assets. It is not worth it to leave money in the company. In my case, I am not trying to build an empire to sell to someone. Sure, if I sold the company, it would not be the client base that the interested party would be purchasing, it would be me.
Anyway… over the past two months with Dell, I have been hitting the credit limit that they give us, and we have been requesting a larger credit limit with them. They will not even consider the idea. I have offered them audited accounts information, asset listings and even my soul to get this situation resolved. We have been dealing with Dell for over 5 years now, and have not once in that time failed to pay our account at the end of the month. (Unless there was a difference between a PO and an Invoice). You would think that this would count for something, but apparently not…
The situation was only overcome today after 3 days. It took your site manager in Bray to make a call to your accounts department. I am sure he did not want the hassle, and I am certain that I didn’t.
Anyway, Michael Dell, if you are reading this, please feel free to contact me directly. I am a VERY good customer of yours and promote your products on every client site we have. I love the product, the service and the sales teams, but I do not appreciate the amateur way your accounts department(s) has dealt with our company, and I do not want this horrible situation to keep occurring.
Sincerely,
Nick Whittome
Nick,
It is interesting that you note that DELL treats everyone as an "equal". That machine is too big to get out of it’s own way sometimes and if they ever understand how we as small businesses selling to small businesses are a bit different but lucrative they’d benefit.
When I install a Dell at a customer I have them buy the product direct, since I would not make anything on the sale and it doesn’t make sense to expose my company cash as a middleman in a minimum profit deal.
I welcome vendors that will recognize this and give us protals (like License OnLine/SYnnex) that will allow us to connect the customer with the vendor (and maybe throw us a bone for the effort) via a shopping cart portal where we create the system and the customer just issues a P.O. and pays for it. HP has something like this, but I’ll be damed if I can figure out how to connect to it! What a hassle.
Any distributers out there want to make this idea happen and have a huge ‘virtual’ sales force connected to you and to the hot small business market space?
Good stuff Nick!
Hi Roger,
In our case, because we give Dell so much business- and I do mean a lot – we will always get a discount that makes it worth our while.
I agree, these companies need to "open up" to us small guys and as you say… use us as a virtual sales force. What a great idea!
In regard to HP / IBM and the rest… they are still to expensive… especially here in Ireland – where it is not uncommon for retail prices to be quoted from distributors…. But I’ll leave that to another post 😉
Nick, Roger,
Great points, I’m doing the same thing as Rogers, and having the Client front the expense, seems this is the only option they will provide in Canada as well. As for HP, I found the expensive as well over here. I find having the client pay for it takes that burden of paying upfront or producing the cash. Since I’m starting out, I need to avoid any large expendatures as possible. Not to mention that I ordered the Server and there is a 2-3 week delay due to the holliday rush, so having the client pay and tie up their money is a bonus, its unfortunate that there is not kick back for "selling" for Dell, you would figure they would see the potential in this!