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.
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?