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> Enterprise customers just want to buy. Jason says > that price doesn’t matter for enterprises. More than > 80 percent of the time, they just want to g

> Enterprise customers just want to buy. Jason says > that price doesn’t matter for enterprises. More than > 80 percent of the time, they just want to get set up > with a solution as efficiently as possible. Price > comes after features. That's ... misleading. Software is often not just purchased by an enterprise all at once. More frequently, some team with a small budget decides it would be useful to use tool X. Someone with a company card is put upon to purchase a license for the 5 people in the team. Other teams get interested, and start using it. Costs get to the point where it needs to be sent to procurement, at which point, it becomes an enterprise software deal. But it didn't start that way - it started with some small team who are price sensitive trialing it...

pc86 11y ago
I think that's the minority of most Enterprise software deals, though. Typically it's sold to someone completely removed from the process (e.g., ServiceNow being sold to the CTO).
- peteretep 11y ago
  I think that depends on if it's CIO-domain (email, calendering, desktop control) or CTO-domain (dev tools etc). The latter I've rarely (but not never) seen foist upon uninterested developers.
dkersten 11y ago
And by the time its reached procurement, price doesn't matter - they just want to buy.
- peteretep 11y ago
  Sure. But as per the article, this is used as a strategy to discourage pricing upfront. Which will stop it from ever getting as far as procurement.
  - dkersten 11y ago
    I was merely stating that the OPs observation is true with what GP said. I agree that it often won't get that far - I've often passed over tools that my employers would have bought because I couldn't access pricing without contacting sales and didn't want to ask for something without knowing what it will cost.
Malic 11y ago
I'm not sure where that thinking ("...Enterprise customers just want to buy...") comes from. It happens a lot where I am asked to "come up with a plan, in broad strokes and ballpark figures, by Thursday" and if I can't come up with a cost for a service, I won't even consider it. I just don't have the time to spend to wait for a rep' to get back to me.
ferentchak 11y ago
This internal viral growth strategy is actually a disruptive methodology to traditional sales methods. Most companies did not buy this way traditionally. Startups and hackers often think this is how software is sold to the Fortune 500 but for the most part the CTO or someone in her office has already been woo'd and large enterprise agreements are in place. When a product like this begins to gain traction inside a large company it usually sparks a response from an internal immune system of champions for the entrenched software companies. These people are trained to explain why the new product cannot "scale" to enterprise needs and spread FUD about the new product. From my experience if the new product can keep it's prices very low the price pressure can usually win out in the long run. Paying an army of salespeople to take everyone out for steaks can be expensive and in the end that cost is put back on the customer. You can see the incumbents (IBM, CA etc) trying to figure out how to deal with disruption caused by companies spreading with this more viral model. (Amazon AWS, Atlassian etc). Fun times out there it's interesting to see how the world is changing.
- spinlock 11y ago
  It's funny that you mention Atlassian. We tried to get Jira for a team I was working on a few years back and were told no by the IT department. They said we should use an internal system that someone had hacked together in a satellite office. Then they tried to charge us $100k for that. Deals at big companies always have more moving parts than just plopping down a credit card. There's some manager who wants to put people under him to manage the system. Someone else who wants to boost their status by pumping up their budget, etc...
douche 11y ago
Surprisingly often, it also comes down to departments that have budget surpluses at the end of their fiscal year. A lot of companies still seem to be locked into that use-it-or-lose-it approach to budgeting, so I've repeatedly seen software purchased, and then never even downloaded, much less installed.
- briandear 11y ago
  Zero based budgeting is good for so many reasons... And this is one of them.

pc86 11y ago

I think that's the minority of most Enterprise software deals, though. Typically it's sold to someone completely removed from the process (e.g., ServiceNow being sold to the CTO).

peteretep 11y ago
I think that depends on if it's CIO-domain (email, calendering, desktop control) or CTO-domain (dev tools etc). The latter I've rarely (but not never) seen foist upon uninterested developers.

dkersten 11y ago

And by the time its reached procurement, price doesn't matter - they just want to buy.

peteretep 11y ago
Sure. But as per the article, this is used as a strategy to discourage pricing upfront. Which will stop it from ever getting as far as procurement.
- dkersten 11y ago
  I was merely stating that the OPs observation is true with what GP said. I agree that it often won't get that far - I've often passed over tools that my employers would have bought because I couldn't access pricing without contacting sales and didn't want to ask for something without knowing what it will cost.

Malic 11y ago

I'm not sure where that thinking ("...Enterprise customers just want to buy...") comes from. It happens a lot where I am asked to "come up with a plan, in broad strokes and ballpark figures, by Thursday" and if I can't come up with a cost for a service, I won't even consider it. I just don't have the time to spend to wait for a rep' to get back to me.

ferentchak 11y ago

This internal viral growth strategy is actually a disruptive methodology to traditional sales methods. Most companies did not buy this way traditionally. Startups and hackers often think this is how software is sold to the Fortune 500 but for the most part the CTO or someone in her office has already been woo'd and large enterprise agreements are in place. When a product like this begins to gain traction inside a large company it usually sparks a response from an internal immune system of champions for the entrenched software companies. These people are trained to explain why the new product cannot "scale" to enterprise needs and spread FUD about the new product. From my experience if the new product can keep it's prices very low the price pressure can usually win out in the long run. Paying an army of salespeople to take everyone out for steaks can be expensive and in the end that cost is put back on the customer. You can see the incumbents (IBM, CA etc) trying to figure out how to deal with disruption caused by companies spreading with this more viral model. (Amazon AWS, Atlassian etc). Fun times out there it's interesting to see how the world is changing.

spinlock 11y ago
It's funny that you mention Atlassian. We tried to get Jira for a team I was working on a few years back and were told no by the IT department. They said we should use an internal system that someone had hacked together in a satellite office. Then they tried to charge us $100k for that. Deals at big companies always have more moving parts than just plopping down a credit card. There's some manager who wants to put people under him to manage the system. Someone else who wants to boost their status by pumping up their budget, etc...

douche 11y ago

Surprisingly often, it also comes down to departments that have budget surpluses at the end of their fiscal year. A lot of companies still seem to be locked into that use-it-or-lose-it approach to budgeting, so I've repeatedly seen software purchased, and then never even downloaded, much less installed.

briandear 11y ago
Zero based budgeting is good for so many reasons... And this is one of them.