[kwlug disc.] "people don't respect what they don't pay for"

[Raul Suarez]

> "what's the business case?  give me some
> numbers."
> 
> could you do that?  off the top of your head?  i
> don't think *i* could.
Well, if such "business man" can tell you how much is
being spent in licenses, support contracts, training,
downtime, TOC in general, I think I would be able to
flip those numbers around with a FLOSS spin.

> "what's my dollar bottom line?"  and if you don't
> have a ready answer, the conversation's pretty much
> over.

As it should.

> wrong?  where's this "linux" company?"
> you:  "well, there's not really a 'company' ..."
> me:  "no company!?  who do i complain to, then?"

Hehe, you are letting your (intelectual) adversary
lead the conversation. That's why you must be prepared
and trained to lead it.

> let's say you have one chance to make an
> impression...
> 
> what's that one sentence going to be?

Here is mine:

"You should really make an objective comparison based
on your business needs and Total Cost of Ownership
(TOC), not only vendor hype. 
I'm convinced that you can save some hard dollars and
reduce headaches integrating FLOSS. I have been mixing
closed and FLOSS solutions for quite some time and
I've found that frequently FLOSS provides similar if
not better TOC, functionality and quality as many
equivalent closed solutions. This without even
considering the very low entry cost and many other
benefits. Give me 10 minutes and I can show you some
real world examples on how you may benefit from
including FLOSS on your next SW evaluation. What do
you think?"

Then you finally take a breath and wait for the person
to respond.

Yes, I know that it seems like a very long "sentence"
but I bet that if you use the right intonation on the
first sentence the "business man" will listen to the
rest.

The key here is that you are going around their
natural defenses:
- You are not saying that they should use it, just
that they should consider it.
- You are not saying that all FLOSS is better, just
that it may be.
- You are not suggesting going FLOSS crazy, just that
it can be integrated.


_________________

http://rarsa.blogspot.com/ 
An eclectic collection of random thoughts


      Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca