6 ms·
No. You spend more money when I get you on the phone. Because it’s not usually engineers I’m taking to, it’s directors and managers. If you’re a startup and I
by Mandatum 4y ago
No. You spend more money when I get you on the phone.
Because it’s not usually engineers I’m taking to, it’s directors and managers.
If you’re a startup and I have enterprise pricing, I likely don’t prioritize you.
- throwawaysalome 4y agoNo. You spend more money when I get you on the phone. I like how this response unapologetically lays bare a coarse reality of software. Programmers only see steady paychecks; they don't appreciate where the money comes from.
- sircastor 4y agoI understand what you mean here, but in the case of companies that are selling a service the money is coming in because of the product. Marketing and Sales get customers in the door. It’s the price and its reliability that keep them handing over the money. That said, obviously we’re all in this together, and the paychecks come because we’re all doing the work.
- mstipetic 4y agoI'd take a 10x sales or marketer over a 10x programmer any time.
- ulrashida 4y agoTrue, but... product managers also like to research and try things. There have been a few packages out there that I wanted my team to try, but I gave up on because I wasn't able to play with it first. I also then proceeded to share my negative view within my own org in favor of the option that did. It's absolutely valid that you can focus your attention towards the juicy targets, but there are likely more apples than expected that will hit the ground.
- willcipriano 4y agoWould you get a commission if you had a self serve platform?
- Mandatum 4y agoSlack was self-serve. They famously said they didn't need sales people. Then they sold to Enterprise, governments, and had to face compliance queries.
- willcipriano 4y agoA very sales answer.
- Mandatum 4y agoMakes sense, I'm a sales engineer whom specializes in security products.
- onphonenow 4y agoYou really cannot sell to govt without “sales”.
- justinclift 4y ago> No. You spend more money when I get you on the phone. On the phone -> $0, as they're not going to call Easy self-managed sign up -> $some, as this is what they're willing to do
- sircastor 4y agoI think this is considered an acceptable loss. This is a class of customer that they’re not interested in. They want people with lots of money they can throw their sales people at. If it’s just some lone developer or a bootstrapped startup, they feel like it’s not worth the time. Whether or not that makes sense is another matter.
- fnomnom 4y agoyeah but you are not the target audience. we dont a a self-managed sign up because none of our target customers have the capabilities to pay the prices with a credit card because their companies have purchasing departments that do this for them. there are so many layers for these companies before they can buy anthing above a certain threshold its insane. data privacy/compliance questions alone make this insanely difficult
- JohnFen 4y agoBut what about a self-managed quote? Even a ballpark estimate can be useful.
- tpoacher 4y agoThe flipside to this is, you, the seller, sees zero money from people who were tasked to "do a quick search for quotes and providers and let us know at the meeting tomorrow", and went away from your website simply thinking "ok this company doesn't even list a pricerange; move along". I've lost count of the number of times this happened to me for moderate-to-large / organization-wide purchases. Unless you somehow expect that a director never assigns a lackey at short notice, and always does this kind of research themselves, giving themselves oodles of time for a decision, because they enjoy the exhilirating experience of spending hours upon hours on the phone with salespeople. There's probably a good chance of a non-trivial amount of survivorship bias going on before you even reach the tip of the iceberg that is the "I only end up talking to directors and managers" observation.
- notahacker 4y agoIn most cases, they expect to see zero money from people who were tasked to "do a quick search for quotes" anyway, because they don't compete on price and someone who gets their junior to shortlist self service providers on the basis of the lowest cost and least effort to get a quote isn't remotely likely to be making a purchase strategic enough to consider their large up front setup fee for a custom trained model and months long integration process.
- satvikpendem 4y ago> The flipside to this is, you, the seller, sees zero money from people who were tasked to "do a quick search for quotes and providers and let us know at the meeting tomorrow", and went away from your website simply thinking "ok this company doesn't even list a pricerange; move along". The people who look for quotes in organizations that are likely to want to be targeted by the company are themselves salespeople and business development employees, not developers, who know how "contact sales" and the sales pipeline in general work. In other words, it is mutual self selection that benefits both parties. All others outside of that range need not apply.
- JohnFen 4y ago> The people who look for quotes in organizations that are likely to want to be targeted by the company are themselves salespeople and business development employees, not developers As a developer, I've been tasked with doing this probably two dozen times in my career at various companies. It's not that rare. And yes, having to talk to a salesperson to get an idea of the cost gets that offering crossed off my list immediately. Those companies have lost fairly large sales because of the practice.
- ActorNightly 4y agoIts more like sales/sales-adjacent people sell and buy from other sales/sales-adjacent people, and the added price on top of what the actual product is worth is what keeps everyone who is sales/sales-adjacent employed.