ATCP, LLC

It used to be, years back, that a certification meant that you were knowledgeable. Problem was, it really only meant that you were able to pass the kind of test given, and that you had enough short term memory to cram for the test’s material. Certifications do not now, nor have they ever, indicated wisdom or knowledge in the application of one technology into the infinite variety of prospect environments.

If anything, these days too many certifications mean that the person has no time for a real job in the real world, and is virtually useless in a Sales Engineering situation. With thousands of certifications for thousands of applications, which ones do you pick? Oh yeah, and there are more every day! Would you bring a perpetual student on the most important sales call of your career? Of course not. More »

I’ve written so many emails about this that I think I should put the info down in a blog article and simply refer models to it! The following is first person:

Clothing
I will tell you not to plan on anything ‘busy’ to wear. You need solids, and preferably nothing the same color as any desired background. Black and white are winners, as is a variety of jewelry. This holds true for both kinds of shoots.
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I’m in enterprise software sales, and I often have people who have never sold anything, much less high priced software, tell me what I’m doing wrong. One of the most common things I get is an inexperienced executive trying to make changes to the way I demonstrate software.

In this article, I discussed how poorly the Naneu Pro K3L was constructed, and the problems inherent in the design.

I sent it back to Naneu Pro, and they contacted me right away, apologizing for the problem, and asked that I either wait for the new K4L or K3L (due out in a few months), or choose from something in their current catalog under $199.95.

I was very impressed with this offer, as I had forked out $149 for the bad bag. I chose the Tango shoulder bag in green, and it came almost immediately.

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Things just don’t work. But what is worse is that they don’t work for the wrong reason. So rather than bitch about why things are all screwed up now, I’ll productively focus on what we really need.

• We need a system of systems that has a common interface, or standard, for each.
• We need to be able to unplug an email client and replace it with a better one without changing any other system
• We need to completely de-couple all data from the applications themselves
• We need a single interface with which to access all applications
• We need this interface to be viable in all current edge technologies, like PDAs, CarPCs, cell phones, PCs (all OSes, of course), etc.
• We need to be able to access our systems from anywhere-even someone else’s edge technology-securely
• We need to be able to break, have stolen, or lose our edge technology implementation and not lose any data; This includes access from airplanes, PDAs, airport touchscreens, etc.

We’re not seeing convergence. We’re seeing a rise in proprietariness of applications. Google is consolidating to dig into the desktop market where Microsoft rules, not to make our lives easier. So when you see a company saying it is making your life easier by combining applications, like the idiotic cell phone companies lately, ask it whether you can plug into it the best of breed out there that they compete with.

Take a wild guess what the answer will be.