The pertinent question would be: why would you exclude sales and marketing from the gross margin, but include support costs. Ostensibly you are able to scale ba

The pertinent question would be: why would you exclude sales and marketing from the gross margin, but include support costs. Ostensibly you are able to scale back sales and marketing without alienating your existing customers, but realistically optimizing for GM then potentially leads to an organization that oversells (high sales and marketing costs) and underdelivers (low value of what's actually in the product)