I hate these marketing ideas. I actually tell vendors to strip the first 20% of their presentation because I am not interested in their history and learning th

I hate these marketing ideas. I actually tell vendors to strip the first 20% of their presentation because I am not interested in their history and learning that security is important (my pro topic). I also tell them I will have extremely technical questions so they better have a technical guy. Lastly, I tell them I will need their pricing. About 50% of companies actually follow what I am asking them. About 10% is genuinely glad to go that way and we often contract. I had one company once coming with a demo disk array (ca. late 90's). They told me that nothing can break their RAID technology so I just pulled a disk out and everything crashed. They told me that this is not the way I am supposed to behave and they will not do business with inconsiderate people. They were so disappointed in me that it was borderline touching. These were the pre-powerpoint times and companies would send knowledgeable people. We ended not buying their product but stayed in touch.