[dba-Tech] Way OT but I love you people so I'm posing thequestion.

Peter Brawley peter.brawley at earthlink.net
Wed Dec 4 13:42:06 CST 2013


On 2013-12-04 11:15 AM, Rocky Smolin wrote:
> Arthur:
>
> Here's my observations about Canada vs. the U.S. when you're trying to do
> business:
>
> All the time I was marketing my software in Canada I sold only one system
> there in spite of many leads and much conversation.  I found that Canadians
> will study the smallest decision to death and in the end decide not to make
> a decision.  They seem very bureaucratic - and very unwilling to take risks,
> even small ones.
>
> Whereas, the typical American company will tend to fit the resources needed
> to make a decision to the size of the product or service being considered,
> make a decision and get on with the job.
>
> Cultural difference I assume, mediated I think by the more Socialist
> orientation of Canada's political culture - which tends to dissociate one's
> activities from the efficiency or profitability of those activities and
> evaluate them more along the lines of whether or not they have satisfied
> some standard operating procedure.

Why the capital-S in 'socialist'?

Over the 25 years or so that Arthur & I have been selling software tools 
& books, Canadian sales have always been way less than the 9% of US 
sales you'd expect simply from the 10-1 population ratio. That's been so 
whether sales were based in Canada or in the US. Canadian sales of our 
current book have been just 3% of the US total.

Ditto for free, open source downloads.

Why would being a bit more socialist, cautious, communitarian, 
cooperative, traditional & loyalist than USAmericans discourage 
Canadians from downloading free software?

Why would being a bit more socialist, communitarian, cooperative, 
traditional & loyalist than USAmericans discourage Canadians from buying 
books? On the whole, Canadians read more than USAmericans, not less. 
Your explanation for your Canadian sales failures doesn't hold water.

Here's a plausible alternative: your sales pitch didn't persuade quite 
well enough, but rather than just shut you out, your polite Canadian 
interlocutors thought to give you another chance.

>
> My product cost in the neighborhood of $3500 and after two conversations
> with a Canadian company I usually took them off my follow-up list.  And
> never completed the RFPs they would send with 5 pages of questions obviously
> crafted by a mainframe systems analyst, 80% of which was irrelevant to my
> product.  Because I knew that the evaluators were more interested in
> satisfying their superiors that they had done a thorough job than actually
> finding a product that would solve their problem.
>
> My conclusion is that Canada has oil, coal, timber, and other natural
> resources which support its people at a level of affluence that allows them
> the luxury of this mindset.
>
> Generalizations, I know,

More like non sequiturs.

PB

-----

> but based on 30 years of trying to conclude any
> transaction with a Canadian company.  Perhaps you are running into the same
> thing.
>
> Rocky
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
> Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 8:22 AM
> To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Way OT but I love you people so I'm posing
> thequestion.
>
> Jim,
>
> I can only speak from personal experience, and that is not much evidence.
> But something strange has happened to me in the past year. A bit of
> back-story first. I am 66 years old and have previously declared myself
> semi-retired. I love in Canada. My last three contracts have all been with
> firms in the USA. Granted that the USA comprises about 90% of the
> continental economy, this is hardly a position on which to bet. But the
> point I am trying to make here is that I have way better luck with obtaining
> contracts with American firms than Canadian. I cannot explain why that is.
> One of the last three derive from a book I wrote about MySQL. The other two
> happened because of my involvement in AccessD and DbaSQL.
>
> You should understand that this is not a complaint.I just find it
> interesting that Americans are interested in hiring me but Canadians are
> not. I have no idea why this is the case.
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 10:55 PM, Hans-Christian Andersen <
> hans.andersen at phulse.com> wrote:
>
>>  From a radio show I was listening to, I think they said that Norways
>> government has a policy of selling all the natural gas and oil and
>> putting all the profits into social system and also into a nice big
>> fat bank account, so that they can use the money wisely in the future.
>> They didn't want to suffer the "Resource curse" that many countries
>> seem to suffer when they suddenly strike rich.
>>
>> Wikipedia has a good article about it:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
>>
>> - Hans
>>
>>
>> On Dec 3, 2013, at 7:00 PM, Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> It is interesting to note that Norway, a country who actually
>>> products
>> and subsequently sells oil has the highest car fuel prices while Saudi
>> Arabia has the lowest?
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Hans-Christian Andersen" <hans.andersen at phulse.com>
>>> To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <
>> dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 2:32:36 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Way OT but I love you people so I'm   posing
>>   the     question.
>>> I'm only surprised Denmark wasn't among the top 3 most expensive
>> countries.
>>> We're number 5! We're number 5! (or 6, if you buy Diesel)
>>>
>>> - Hans
>>>
>>>
>>> On Dec 3, 2013, at 1:59 PM, Jon Tydda <jon at tydda.plus.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Well I'm stunned. You've managed to find somewhere that petrol is
>>>> more expensive than the UK!
>>>>
>>>> I found this site: http://www.fuel-prices-europe.info/ which has
>>>> some
>> nice
>>>> comparisons in Euros and the local currency... so I'm paying about
>> double
>>>> what people in the US are paying.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jon
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>>>> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of
>> Salakhetdinov
>>>> Shamil
>>>> Sent: 02 December 2013 22:21
>>>> To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
>>>> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Way OT but I love you people so I'm posing
>>>> the question.
>>>>
>>>> Hi Jim --
>>>>
>>>> I have been in the the East-South Italy Salento region this summer
>>>> - I
>> can't
>>>> say prices somehow differ (/are lower than) from Paris or Amsterdam
>>>> or
>> Ghent
>>>> or Brussels, where I have been last year November. And gasoline is
>>>> very expensive - 1.7x EURO in Italy ( http://www.energy.eu/ ) ),
>>>> even here
>> in
>>>> Russia it's now "just" ~1USD+/liter. Well, ordinary everyday good
>>>> wine
>> costs
>>>> in Italy are low (up to 3EURO per 0.7l bottle) as well as prices
>>>> for
>> some
>>>> Italian local fruits and vegetables but that's it AFAIHF.
>>>>
>>>> Thank you.
>>>>
>>>> -- Shamil
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Monday, December  2, 2013 12:25 PM -07:00 from Jim Lawrence
>>>> <accessd at shaw.ca>:
>>>>> Italy would definitely be a good place to go...considering
>>>>> Italians
>> have
>>>> been running things for around 3000 years, first the Roman Empire
>>>> and
>> then
>>>> the Roman Catholic church...so they have hordes of culture from
>> everywhere.
>>>> Then there is a bit of a recession going on in the country so the
>>>> prices might also be excellent.
>>>>> ...And anyone that can build the Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini
>>>>> to
>> name
>>>> a few...
>>>>> Jim
>>>> <<< skipped >>>
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>
>
> --
> Arthur
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