Why this Outsourcing Deal won’t Fail

Outsource this!

Wow,  I watched a show for the first time last night called 30 Days on FX Network.  This show was created by that guy who ate nothing bu McDonald’s food for 30 days to see how his health would hold up.  He not has a show dedicated to other people doing things for 30 days etc.  you get the point.

So last night they had a Computer Programmer who lost his job when his company decided to outsource application development to TATA in India.  This episode focused on him going to India for 30 days to find and recapture his job at an outsourcing company.  What a plot, it caught me right from the ad and I was hooked until the end of the show. 

This guy ends up staying with a middle-class Indian family in Bangalore, one of the major outsourcing centers in India.  The area had brand new skyscrapers with shiny glass and American company names at the top all over the place, positioned right next to the worst slums you could imagine (tent cities to some degree).  The contrast was amazing, and the guy on the show was really taken back by it.  The worst poverty we would ever imagine next to a huge Computer Company building. 

the other thing that was very interesting is that all of these recent college grads there were aspiring to become “Call Center” employees.  This was a great job to them, not the typical looked-downed on telemarketer her in the states.  India people attend language schools, not to lern English but to learn the accent of Americans.  They take tests and when they pass they get a great job as a call center employee on the night shift 12:00 PM – 3:00 AM.  They love it!  They take on American names to make it easy for us Americans when we call. 

This all struck me as odd.  Obviously I have been in IT for years and I am very familiar with IT Outsourcing.  I even worked for a consulting company that built their own development center in India.  What struck me was the fact that all of these recent grads are lining up to pretend to be Americans.  They change their names, they learn the accent, they work in the middle of the night, etc. all for us!  What the hell is going on here?  Why would they want to do this?  Well, I think the answer is they have little choice.  India is a country gripped by poverty and to some degree unstable and corrupt government.  People there are suffering, they want to work, they want to earn, and they want to do a good job.  The outsourcing industry has been a huge relief to people there, providing good paying jobs to many, many people.  They do what we no longer want to do.  Has America become so spoiled that we no longer want to do telemarketing?  I am not sure, I think there are plenty of people here that would.  Companies how ever seek competitive edge and are forced by the market to adapt or die.  Outsourcing is not inherently bad, it is just bad when it is your job that is outsourced.  Economics are looked at globally but your job is still your livelihood, I understand that

Another interesting point is that the India programmers he encounters are convinced that India’s outsourcing is being driven by the fact that they are the best technicians in the world, not by the cost factor.  The guy responds by saying that Americans are on the same level but cost is driving the move, not skills.  Your thoughts?  It will be interesting to see when Vietnam, Russia, China, and the other developing countries give India a run for their money by providing even lower cost.  Will it be that all of these countries have superior skills or just a cost factor – I don’t know…

One of the interesting side bars in the story was the young couple living with their parents.  The wife and husband moved in with the family after their arranged marriage.  Her “duty” is to take care of the whole family, doing endless chores and serving the family.  She however aspires to be a “call center employee” and ends up getting a job at the call center.  Her husband, after punishing her for not bringing his tea, allows her to get the job but he worries that she will not be able to handle her duties at home as well as at work.

Welcome to the American lifestyle my friends, could there be a beginning to a woman’s movement in India – lets hope so!!

I welcome your replies…

ITSalesPro-.-

What is the deal with selling IT in the summer time?

I read an article recently about selling in the summer time.  It indicated that most people do not think this is the best time to sell because of vacations, people’s minds being elsewhere, etc…The article, and I disagree whole-heartily with this. 

The summer is great, I love the summer, I mean I love selling in the summer.  Why?  Because most people are thinking about vacation or are on vacation…hmmm.  I mean most of my competition is on vacation or thinking about vacation!  Companies that I and many of us sell to also have people on vacation, but that does not change the fact that they have project schedules, commitments to their end user community, etc.  I have found that a lot (maybee not most) companies plan for large deployment during the summer.  Why? Well because people are on vacation and are more tolerant of things like outages, disruptions, etc.  So while all of these other sales people are day dreaming and travelling…I am making calls, prospecting, and moving things up the scale.  I find the summer to be great for selling, particularly IT selling and I find that most sales people just use the summer thing as an excuse to not do what they should be doing. 

 So far this summer (since June) I have moved 3 prospects to qualified targets to opportunities.  So I find it hard to believe that the summer time is slow.  I think our prospects are using this time to plan for the fall.  So get out there and get some business closed, let your competitors slug along in the summer time.  Summer is wonderful….

I welcome your comments…

ITSalesPro-.-

Welcome!

Hello and Welcome to my blog. As you saw in the description this blog is focused on the daily activities of an IT Sales Pro. If chasing quotas, client meetings, competition, and daily pursuit of endless revenue are of interest to you then please sign up. I welcome feedback and postings by other people involved in the same line of business.

This blog is more Comic Relief than anything else but I think you will see the occasional tip, link, or resource posted as well. So stay tuned, enjoy, and contribute! Because at the end of the day you are only as good as you last deal closed!!

- IT Sales Pro-.-