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It goes both ways. Some companies only care about a specific feature and will overlook almost everything else. Some companies care about the relationship and ar
by freehunter 9y ago
It goes both ways. Some companies only care about a specific feature and will overlook almost everything else. Some companies care about the relationship and are willing to sacrifice features. I know a company I was working for year ago was switching from IBM Notes email to a cloud provider. Microsoft and Google were the last two in the running. We ended up going with Google even though Microsoft had more robust DLP and auditing features because the Microsoft sales guys seemed to assume they already had the sale and would respond to emails without reading them or sometimes not respond at all, whereas Google actually sent someone out to our Midwest headquarters to walk us through it face-to-face. The decision makers didn't want to be just another sale, they wanted a company that cared about our success, and Microsoft lost the sale based on that alone.
And take established players like IBM: why do people pay more for IBM when their competitors are faster, have more features, and have flashier sales pitches? Because IBM is comfortable, reliable, and you know what you're getting. Better the devil you know than the startup that's going to get bought out and shut down a year from now, right?
But yeah, I've also seen a lot of companies turn down a great product because it was missing a feature they needed. It's always a cost/benefit analysis, is that sale going to offset the cost of developing and supporting that feature? If it's a feature built for one customer and no one else is asking for it, it's probably okay to lose that sale. But if someone else asks for it and you implement it later, go back to that first company and pitch again.