I’m a profilic user of software and I LOVE LOVE LOVE trying out new products. It used to be really hard to get your hands on software back in the dark old days of the 80s, 90s and 2000s. First, you had to have your own Vax (google it). But that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was fighting through a seemingly endless phalanx of sales reps and sales engineers in order to get your hands on the software. (And I should know, I was one of those SEs that stood in the way of giving you a trial copy). Fast forward to 2013 and you can get a trial copy of almost every kind of business software that you can think of. With the exception, of course, of anything on the iOS platform. <Rant> iTunes and the Apple Mac store don’t believe in software trials, they believe in making you price your product so low that it isn’t worth offering a trial. </Rant> 

For the low, low price of a corporate email address they’ll send you a link to download the software. (Most enterprise software companies frown on @gmail.com addresses and their brethren). I love it. Oh so much easier than fighting your way through a sales qualifying process. As a result, I try out more software — which is a good thing. (The downside is that I probably don’t spend enough time with each product that I trial). Furthermore, this business process change has forced software companies to work hard on their OBE — Out of the Box Experience. (But that’s a topic for another day).

The purpose of this post is to address the — 10 seconds after I’ve downloaded the software phone call from the sales rep.

I get it, in today’s technology world you are supposed to be super-responsive. All leads from software trial requests funnel directly into Salesforce.com, whence they are forwarded along post-haste to the sales rep that is assigned to your territory. (Thank YOU, Marc Benioff) Within 10 nanoseconds that sales rep is calling to find out “how the trial is going”. Um, I’m still DOWNLOADING THE SOFTWARE. Guys and gals — and those of you that manage those nice guys and gals in the sales department. Give us a day or two to get the software installed, and a little free time to play with the software before you call us up. If we have any problems I promise that we’ll call you. Really, I promise. Nothing ruins the OBE for me faster than a rep calling before I’ve even opened up the .DMG file.