My brother, Reggie Harsongkram, also points out to me (as noted in your comments) that different reps from the same company often give conflicting or unknowledgable advice to questions asked by the attendees. Attendees often are on pressed time schedules and are trying to gather as much info as possible and then move on to the seminar or other event scheduled for that day. It is a bonus to find a vendor with a clear explanation, the willingness to focus on the questioner's situation, and a thoroughly thought-out presentation that doesn't seem like "fluff" (as stated in your blog).

Thanks for the article, very useful.

- Holly Harnsongkram Edwards & Reggie Harnsongkram … Culver City, CA

Having been on both sides of the aisle, I am very aware of the problems that each side has in communicating. From a vendor standpoint, I was equally struck by the ignorance of other competing vendors and their abilities. There also seemed to be a lack of actual real world application to many of the responses.

From a buyer standpoint, it always makes me laugh when I hear words that do not mean anything other than creating fluffy-sounding PR spin. Can we please just say what the product does? Give real world explanations and not some lofty ethereal aspirations to greatness. Save the promotional language and the “we’re the best!” cheerleading for the brochures – I’m not buying that – I’m looking for something that will make MY life easier.

Another aspect to that is to find out whom you are talking to and what they need – Obviously, that was not part of the exchange, but many of the responses would make any decision maker's eyes glaze over . . .

I’d like to respond on behalf of Coremetrics. Firs of all, I’m sorry we missed you at eMetrics. We had great traffic at our booth and were really thrilled with the conference. And, by the way, Jane Paolucci our VP of Marketing, mentioned to me that she thoroughly enjoyed your session on “Creating a Data Driven Web Decision Making Culture.”

Unique: Coremetrics high-touch approach to working with clients ensures they derive value. We assign an account team that creates an agenda of activities (e.g. custom data pulls, ad hoc workshops) that map to the client’s business goals. The account team then works with that client over time to ensure they are understanding and acting on the data.

Unique feature: Coremetrics offers the industry's only platform built from the ground up to capture and store all online customer and visitor click stream activity in a comprehensive LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profile. Because the data warehouse is native to our solution we allow for more flexible visitor-level segmentation and analysis and our clients are able to precisely target key visitor groups with highly relevant content and offers.

As you probably are aware, your colleagues at Quicken Loans use Coremetrics. We just launched a new release and have added new functionality that you may not be familiar with. We’d love the opportunity to update you on the current Coremetrics solution.

Thanks!

Elizabeth