Maybe you have me confused with 911

I've been working to get a license agreement renewed with one of the world's largest tech companies--you would all know them. Their license agreement has expired, but we've been supporting them in good faith, particularly since we do a lot with them not just as our customer but also as a partner.

They've been promising for weeks to get a proposed amendment to me for review. Understand that this is all being driven by them, because all I really need is one paragraph that says that the agreement is renewed for xx years. Finally, yesterday afternoon they sent me something. Our sales guy, who has also been calling me every single day to see if they had sent me something he hadn't seen yet, was on the phone within minutes. I ignored his call but got multiple IMs immediately thereafter, despite my status showing I was busy.

I explained to this individual that yes, I had seen the email, but no I hadn't read it yet so I didn't know what it contained (lots of ugly stuff, as it turned out). He of course then wanted to know when I would have a response back. I told him again that I hadn't read it, that I couldn't make an estimate of when I would respond until I read it, and that I wasn't going to read it that day because I had lots of other stuff going on. He seemed dumbfounded that I wasn't just waiting by my inbox and phone like a 911 dispatcher waiting for something from him. Never mind that he is just one of many people I work with, most of whom have quarter-end demands and regular business going on.

Naturally, I got a call from his director early this morning asking the same thing (sales guys are so predictable). I informed the director that I had seen it, that it was ugly, that Big Customer had taken weeks to get a response to me, and that I hoped to have a response out by sometime Monday. It was indeed an ugly document, but I made it a priority and just got a response out, so I exceeded the expectations I set.

I've learned the hard way how important expectations are in this job. Sometimes, I've told people that I expected to have a deliverable ready by a certain date. Then, a four-alarm fire from somewhere else unexpectedly kept me from being done. At that point, these sales guys, who seem unable to close favorable deals with our customers without massive concessions, become the master of pressure tactics and escalating you up the chain of their management and your management. It's not a fun situation, so I often avoid giving response times at all and lead them to believe I'm always incredibly busy so that any quick response would be a miracle. It doesn't stop their jerky behavior, but it limits the escalation a bit.

Working with my own company's sales guys is definitely the worst three things about this job, which is otherwise pretty good.