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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shege Dambanza who wrote (1006)	12/19/1997 12:15:00 PM
From: Trader Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

I deal with sales people at different brokerage houses on the sell side. I've also wattched the management of the those sales people. Stepping back from all of my techie perspective -- attempts to overmanage or structure the sales process (at least in the investment world) often backfire. I know certain firms want their sales people to carry the same message with the same weighting to each of their accounts everyday. That's garbage. I count on the sales folks I deal with to tailor their message to my needs and my view of the credibility of the analyst. I listen and care about what eric upin at Robbie stephens has to say. If Merrill lynch calls me with a Chris Shilakes coment about oracle, i'd fire them. The point is, selling is about relationships. The sales process will probably vary with the personality of the rep and the nature of the decisionmaking process. It would take too much time here, but i'd bet after the sexiness of tom Siebel wears off, the ROI from SFA often turns out to be a major disappointment especially given the complexity of the dsitributed processes. In some cases, where product configuration software or other encyclopaedia stuff is useful there might be a good pay off, but I'd bet Shege you're infering that the sales process can't be systemitized the way the materials handling process can be. What about customer support/field dispatch etc? I'd bet that can be automated more effectively, but I'd bet the processes are still more variable on a company to company basis than erp. I wish we had this conversation 12 points ago in sebl, but I'd bet there's still room on the downside if the roi is an issue. TD