I'm not questioning your intelligence! I'm sure you could do it. The more common scenario is that there are a ton of people involved, and it's not easy / worth

I'm not questioning your intelligence! I'm sure you could do it. The more common scenario is that there are a ton of people involved, and it's not easy / worthwhile for the person who kicked this off to convince them all. Where the sales rep provides value there is they can help the you sell. You make an intro, they'll pull together a bunch of materials and demos and other crap to convince your coworkers that it's important. We do have a self-serve path which is about as easy as anybody else's, and our prices are stated up front. Most people can navigate that technically, but the larger organizations almost never take that route because of organizational / political concerns.