[dvdhsu]

I think the non-obvious difference here is bottoms-up vs top-down adoption.

If you're going bottoms-up, your deal size is smaller, and you want people to start using you by themselves. Think consumer startups like Uber, Airbnb, and enterprise startups like Github. The decision-makers here are ordinary people, and they want to know exactly what they're buying so they can make an informed decision.

If you're going top-down, your deal size is larger, and your goal is to get a few high-paying customers. You want to maximize the # of people who you can talk to (and convince) over the phone, as well as extract the highest $ value out of. So you filter for the people who are a) serious about the problem, and b) can make the decision. As a developer or engineer, your discretionary budget probably isn't high enough for these companies to care about you. In fact, they probably don't even want to talk to you!

So companies that mostly rely on top-down sales have very vague landing pages. Their goal is to find specifically the people who have so much pain that they're willing to take a 25-minute sales call. And if you're willing to spend 25 minutes, it probably means that you have the budget that they care about.

[edit: removed stuff about my own startup]

[jasonrhaas]

If I have to get on a "sales call" just to see what the product is or demo it, I am not interested. Let me try it for free, and tell me what it does... I really don't have time or patience for sales calls.

[dvdhsu]

Then you're probably not the right customer for us! Do you have problems with internal tooling that you'd pay thousands of $ / month to have solved?

For now, that's who we're looking for. And a "request a demo" is a pretty good way of finding exactly those people.

[maxxxxx]

At least in my company the people who have the actual budgets love sales calls. Even if the engineers tell them that the product is not good they will still buy it from a good sales rep.

[bluetwo]

I see what you are saying, and I think you are right in that you have to target decision makers who can sign a check, not engineers who might be the people who use the product.

But I would at least expect a landing page that showed the benefits to an executive, even if it came off as too vague to an engineer type.

The examples here simply don't communicate anything at all.

[forg0t_username]

You forget the people in a) who don't have the time to deal with bulshit calls. That's where you're losing leads.

[dvdhsu]

We cost thousands of $ / month. If you had a problem that you'd pay thousands to have solved, it's probably worth you talking on the phone for 20 minutes.

So it's a good filter for us, for now. Once we bring the price point down, you're absolutely right -- we want to have a descriptive landing page that makes people think "wow, that's exactly my problem!".

[flukus]

Are you the only company offering solutions? If so you can probably get away with it, but if not then it's not just 20 minutes it's 20m * n companies. 20 minutes is generous too, if your website is vague and your sales guys are clueless then it's much more than 20 minutes.

If even one of the competitors has a sticker price and publicly available documentation then I'd be evaluating them closely before even considering you.

[mrhappyunhappy]

If you can't spend 25 minutes looking for a good fit solution then you are not likely the type of customer anyone wants to deal with in the first place.