4 ms·

Yeah, telling your customers that they should modernize is a great way to let someone else sell to them.

• cwp 6y ago
  OTOH, telling an entire industry to reorganize to accommodate your internal processes is also a fools errand. Just imagine the dilemma this puts on the growth team: "Hmm, spend 1000x effort to land this one customer or fix an obscure bug in the signup page and get an extra 1000 self-serve customers this month. Golly, I don't know..."
  • npsimons 6y ago
    Seriously, though, GP is correct. Small companies that can adapt and snag these contracts won't push for change because they have a "competitive" advantage, and the businesses they sell to won't change because it's too painful for them. The whole industry isn't being asked to change, small B2B software houses will just keep ticking along, navigating the maze of purchasing to live high on the hog.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    The industry has the choice of changing or ever racing ahead of AWS, who can take their potential customers merely by already being in the purchasing database.
• mtnGoat 6y ago
  If the means don't justify the ends, let my competition sell to them... Then it will be adding to their failure, not mine. I do agree with your sentiment though, asking the customer to change is an uphill battle. I have customers with lots of custom billing situations, I loathe then all.
• slake 6y ago
  This is true, but truly the customer's own benefits are being compromised here. They can obtain better effectiveness at lower prices and push their margins, but procurement policy is not something companies want to mess with too much. It's also how they apply the same procurement policies to equipment purchases and software subscriptions. Some of those forms I don't even have a clue how to answer since it's so irrelevant.