- a host of other large companies (100's of them), government entities and so on.
Payment: UP FRONT, or no deal. It's my product, I set the terms.
So, no, that's not crazy.
Some of them had to make some kind of internal exception in order to be able to pay immediately without having to go through their regular procedure, but if you have what they want there is always a way.
My company was small, 5 people or so at the time, payroll to meet and a simple choice: Am I going to spend my time on small customers that pay or on large customers that do not ?
When told their payment terms were not acceptable to me invariably the reaction was something like: Oh, ok I get it, let me see what I can do here, in all cases (and the list is much longer than the one I gave above, we sold lots of licenses) the deal went through and I could then afford to treat these people just as well as my other paying customers.
If somebody is going to pay you in 60 days or 90 days and you're selling capital intensive stuff, such as software that you still need to develop or customize then you are setting yourself up for a very nasty fall.
In that case get enough money up front that your development costs are covered, money on the barrel on delivery.
Otherwise hope that your competitor will pick up this customer.
Interesting experience. I've sold big packages to big pharma and our experience was different: we could game the scheduling of payments over the life of the contract, but they refused cash up front payment.
However, given your experience and ours, it probably depends on the industry; we were in media and you were in software.
That's crazy. Ever sell to big business? Anything that costs over $50k? What are you going to do, demand up front cash payments in lieu of terms?
Big business does terms, if you want their business you give them credit.