

Bonfire of the Vanities - cwan
http://steveblank.com/2011/08/05/bonfire-of-the-vanities/

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zdw
Ah, finally an explanation of why marketing material is total crap and I have
to talk to a clueless idiot who doesn't know any technical details, or will
make incorrect technical promises.

Thanks "funnel". I hate you.

Sincerely, Every Sysadmin who ever had to buy anything.

~~~
true_religion
As someone with both technical knowledge and purchasing power, I've run into
this frustration as well.

It's always pretty easy though to say "we like your product, but we want more
information as to integration possibilities. Can you put us in touch with
someone on your technical staff so we can ask these questions?"

Everyone company I've run into will at least give you an email contact, and
all of the smaller ones (less than 20 persons employed) will just transfer you
to the tech department directly.

I've done this with everything from hardware purchases to $7000/per cpu
database software.

~~~
JustinSeriously
As someone with technical knowledge and _no_ purchasing power, I dislike
talking to salespeople and technical people. I just want the name of a product
that I can recommend to my boss. I want that datasheet.

I recently tried to recommend a great product to my boss. I had used it in a
past job, and I knew what company made it, but I had no idea what the actual
product was called. I didn't want to waste my boss's time, so I tried to do
the research on my own and figure out what specific product I was looking for.

Their website wasn't very helpful, it was filled with generic product names
and an amalgamation of SEO-friendly keywords and the word "solution". I
emailed them to find out which product I was looking for, and next thing I
knew I was on a sales call. Then I was on a sales conference call. Then they
popped in for a sales meeting, even though I never told them my company's
address.

I came away with a vague idea that their products were both nameless and
probably very good. I explained it all to my boss; he took a pass.

I could've saved everyone a lot of time if I just had that comprehensive
datasheet.

------
sbierwagen
Summary: A marketing guy accidentally made an advertisement too informative,
which made the useless, overpaid sales staff unhappy. A couple years later,
the _entire market segment_ died, because their crappy products couldn't
compete with personal computers.

~~~
alain94040
Wrong. If you read carefully, it said (and I believe it's true) that the
datasheet will not sell the product. Also true, it will actually be more
likely to lose customers because some detail doesn't match the customer's
goals.

For products above $100K, having a sales person who can actually listen to
what the customer wants, and tailor their pitch appropriately, is worth
millions. No "useless, overpaid sales staff".

Of course, your mileage varies greatly in sales :-)

~~~
westicle
I would have thought a customer not purchasing the product because it doesn't
meet their requirements (or some part of their requirements) is a net win. If
the OP was correct that his technical specifications were exhaustive and
accurate, a prospective purchaser would be in a good position to make the
purchasing decision.

Are we now encouraging sales through obfuscation and sales-person trickery?

------
swalberg
I have also heard sales vs marketing explained in the context of a company
that sells retail items, such as batteries:

"The job of Sales is to get the product on the shelves. The job of Marketing
is to make sure they don't stay there."

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astrofinch
I don't see any evidence in this article that the VP of Sales' intuition about
the datasheet was actually _correct_. So this anecdote isn't all that useful--
we're just learning what some suit's best guess is.

------
hristov
This article really made me question the way we are doing things in our
startup. Our product is relatively complex and I have written a lot of looong
technical explanations for it.

In any event, this article made me wonder whether I am saying too much. I
wonder whether all the long explanations I am writing are somehow turning
people off, and if we would be better off having a short explanation and
asking people to contact us.

In any event, just in case you are wondering, here is our cite:

extremetcp.com

Note this site is only a mockup we made. We have not officially launched yet
and are still having a proper web designer and graphic artist design a proper
website for us.

~~~
ChuckFrank
1\. Your site looks great. It's a technical site, nothing more is really
needed. I'd encourage you not to waste your resources on making it look nice.
Launch instead. Your audience isn't buying eye candy. 2\. Don't just describe
your service and technical solutions, show it. Show it graphically, show it
with video. Make the data clearer. 3\. Don't listen to this marketing mess. It
will be technical people who are evaluating your service, provide them with
the information that they need to make an informed decision. 4\. Talk to your
potential clients. Ask them what they need to determine your value, and
provide that. Then charge appropriately. If your cost to them exceed your
value to them, then you are in the wrong business. If not, be clear and
straight forward and you'll do fine.

~~~
hristov
Thanks, I appreciate the detailed response. Actually I have been thinking how
to show an internet TCP connection that goes through several routers with
video.

~~~
ChuckFrank
This works well for a material solution.

[http://wn.com/Polartec%C2%AE_NeoShell%C2%AE_Technical_Animat...](http://wn.com/Polartec%C2%AE_NeoShell%C2%AE_Technical_Animation)

Clear and simple technical explanation.

Good luck with it. Let me/us know when you are launched.

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diolpah
As someone who makes technology purchasing decisions, this article infuriates
me. Datasheets and a pricing structure are fundamentally more efficient than
sales snowjobs. The fact that this approach is apparently effective makes me
weep for the intelligence of other technical decision makers.

To this day, I refuse to do business with companies like rackspace who spam
website visitors with marketing materials and chat windows instead of giving
me rapid access to network, datacenter, hardware, and pricing data.

~~~
rickmb
The dirty secret is: it isn't effective. It's just that the funnel is the only
channel incumbent sales and marketing people allow to exists (hence the
bonfire), so for lack of alternatives it just seems effective.

Basically the author is describing how to construct and maintain a self-
fulfilling prophecy.

The fact that this whole funnel is completely superfluous for almost anything
but bespoke services has been proven by the internet for while now. Anything
from online shopping, booking vacations to self-service advertising works just
fine without hordes of salespeople.

