Some systems are inherently complex, it's stupid to pretend otherwise.

It's like someone saying "Why do I have to learn to program, all I want to do is make an app for my phone".

I disagree. With software that works on top of client data the more hands on you are the better. Each client had "irregularities" in their data that have to be ironed out. With good access (and good communication) you can hopefully take care of "irregularities" before the client even knows they are there.

This is completely true, something that I'd like to note is that the more hands on your are, the better trust you build with the customer.

This means they are more likely to keep buying your product (they know you and like you).

They are more likely to come to you when they have an awesome idea for a feature that they want that would make their lives easier. (And you never say no to an ambitious request, you either explain that you lack the budget, or you try to redirect it into something that would fulfill the same need, but is easier for you to do, or you can explain how to do it with the currently offered software).

This is not just enterprise stuff either. Having a bunch of enthusiastic and engaged customers pointing out the holes in your software is extremely useful.

This all assumes that you have technical people who 'get it' and are looking to help satisfy the customer. I would never let an aggressive sales staff near them, however. It would be awesome to have something like 'contact a technical person to discuss solutions.'

General customer requirements for enterprise software: - Must integrate with their existing authentication. Their authentication may be LDAP, Active Directory, or any number of other things you may or may not have heard of.

- Must store to their existing storage hardware. Hardware may be SANs from EMC, 3Par, HP, etc. Storage arrays may or may not be writable over the network. Storage arrays may require fiber channel. Storage arrays (I'm looking at you EMC Celera) may require interaction against custom APIs.

- Must work against their existing load balancers -- load balancers may be hardware or software, may or may not utilize sticky sessions, and may or may not preserve the integrity of data packets passed along.

- Must allow for SSL encrypted traffic to be intercepted by their proxies, decrypted and logged, then forwarded along and still run as quickly as you would expect any application to run.

- Must support Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database.

Take the '10/30 minute blog' programming videos you see for all the common frameworks, make them work with the above feature set, and tell me how long it takes. Then sell that to a company with more than $10,000 users, and then do so without requiring any support from you or your company.

After that, if you still think it's as easy as you do, I will more than happily issue a public apology for having disagreed with you. Until then, honestly, I think you're looking at the problem space a little naively.

It sounds like you're misinterpreting your own advice here.

We do in fact have a product that's ready to go. We have all of the features I listed, plus a hundred others. However, once you get to having all those features, the product is no longer something that you can expect people to download and just install. Sure, there are people that can do it, but it isn't the majority, and it isn't the sort of pain we want our customers to have to experience.

In short, our product requires both the software and the consulting. Not for lack of features, or lack of documentation, but for ease of integration. If the software already costs millions, then the user shouldn't be objectionable to another couple hundred thousand for a team of integration consultants to make their experience a smooth one.

All that said, it honestly sounds like you don't have a lot of experience in this arena, so I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop looking down your nose at me for meeting the needs of our customers in exactly the way they expect them to be met. We're doing a fantastic job, and have stellar relationships with all of our customers, partners and vendors. Just because it isn't the way you'd prefer it isn't reason to be snide, especially as it doesn't sound like you're anywhere close to the size of our target customer.

In which arena, exactly? Systems that cost millions of dollars? Help build 'em, seen the disaster from the inside, I know all about the massive bullshit involved with selling to Fortune 100s, and I know that you and most other companies involved are doing it exactly wrong. I also know that the Fortune 100s know it, and it absolutely destroys any relationship of trust with their vendors.

And yet, we're so far off topic it's not funny. Millions of dollars? This started with a small business owner trying to find pricing for a payroll system. Maybe you'd like to back up and tell me why your ego got hurt when apparently you're such a big man in what you apparently consider a completely separate universe?

I don't disagree that most people are doing it wrong, but the issue that we're onto here is that either our product is crap, or we're treating our customers like idiots.

The point is that neither has to be the case to require a phone call. The point is that our target audience doesn't have people with both the technical skills to install our product and the authority to make the purchase.

There is absolutely no point in a 'download now' option for this type of software. There is no point in making it easy for the medium-sized customer because they will almost never buy our product. They'll buy something with half the features and much less than half the cost. They'll end up with a vendor who will charge them for every modification they require and they'll end up with a product that does most of what they want, and solves 80 or more percent of their pain. That's what things like Basecamp and Highrise do. They aren't made to fit anyone's needs 100%, except maybe 37Signals.

Our software is expensive because, while it isn't perfect, it does solve 100% of the need for more than one customer. It's a complete, entire package.

And for the record, my ego isn't even remotely hurt, nor did I mean to imply in any way that I'm some sort of big shot; I'm not. I just think that you're wrong, or more specifically, I think that you're painting us with the same brush that you'd paint EMC or Cisco, based solely on the evidence that we're selling expensive software to customers and we don't let people download it. Our competitive advantage is that we aren't them, and that we aren't approaching enterprise sales in the same traditional way that everybody else does.

But that doesn't change the fact that giving our customers access to a download link doesn't help them. Giving them access to our pricing tables doesn't either.

Actually, if you'd be so kind as to indulge, let's back up a step and tell me what you think it is that we're doing so horribly wrong.

How would you sell enterprise software differently?

OR, documentation is a 'feature' you need to pay (double) for (true story)