[codingdave]

> Enterprises buy what other enterprises have already approved.

I understand why vendors believe this. But I had my share of purchasing discussions when I worked in Enterprise IT, and this was a factor in our decision-making literally zero times.

But we never told the sale guys that when they put a bunch of logos into a presentation. We smiled and nodded at all the crap they threw at us, and then promptly ignored 80% of it and discussed the 20% that really mattered behind closed doors once the sales guys had gone home. And most of the time, it was an analysis of many factors, including how well their capabilities matches our needs, whether their pricing was cheaper than the "build" option with internal talent, and how low-maintenance it would be. We loved buying solutions that affordably provided direct solutions to business needs that did not impact the work of IT department at all. That is why SaaS has taken over, BTW... not because the solutions are better that what could be built internally, but because it lets the internal IT shop just get rid of one problem, so they can spend their time on other problems.

That is truly how to hit product/market fit for an Enterprise product. Just make a problem disappear for the IT folks, and they'll buy.

[davidivadavid]

With all due respect, this is more often than not what IT people think is happening, meanwhile the person signing the check is talking behind their backs to see if anyone else in the industry is using the product and how they're using it.

It's more prevalent in certain industries than others, and some IT people may have more sway than others, but inferring that logos aren't valuable is a terrible take.

[peterwoerner]

It also affects us subconsciously even when we make a conspicuous effort to ignore it and are cognizant of the underlying bias.

[cheschire]

Anyone who doubts this should try shopping for medicine in a foreign drug store.

[soneca]

Not necessarily the logos in the presentation, but I saw a lot of purchases where knowing someone who used the product in other similar companies was a decisive factor in the purchase. These meetings that you mention would almost always involve something in the lines of ”I will ping a friend on company X using this and check what they think of it”. Or the product was being considered in the first place because someone had worked on a company that used it or a friend working on another company have recommended it.

[kpowerinfinity]

OP here. Agree with this. Lack of logos means that you need to do a lot more due diligence so the buyer has to really sneak their head out and put a stake on the ground to buy the product. References & logos make it far easier to justify that the product is well respected and make the process easier. It helps avoid the question: "am I the sucker?"

[akamia]

When I worked in Enterprise IT evaluating new products for a Fortune 50 company it was pretty much the same way. The three biggest things that we looked at were functionality, support and the stability of the company.

We needed to know that it could do what we needed it to do and that there were enough support resources that we could get someone on the phone if we had an emergency. It is not cheap to integrate new software into the systems and processes of a large company so we also needed to know that we weren't going to put in that effort and then have the company go under a year later.

Support and stability were the two biggest issues that limited adoption for early stage startups. We didn't care if you had any big name customers. We just needed to know that your product did what we needed and you'd be able to support us for the long term.

[rpedela]

Yeah those logos help with the stability part. Obviously logos alone does not prove stability, but it is one signal.

[akamia]

Not really. Longevity and financials were how we identified stability. If the company had been around for a while and/or could demonstrate that they had enough runway to last for a couple years, then we considered them stable.

We had enough experience with startups who would sell one license to a big company and then throw their logo on the slide that knew the logos didn't mean anything.

[soneca]

Good traction is a useful proxy for stability no? Not necessarily “big names”, but being the first customer of startup would probably be an automatic no according to your criteria, no?

[robertlagrant]

Agree with all of that, except that for some companies logos are used as a substitute for internal expertise.

Most people who know what they're about will also know that companies sometimes pay to have other companies use their product, just for the logo on the presentation. Or that it could just be used in one little local office of a multinational. Or that it's just shelfware, bundled with whatever it is they bought that they actually wanted.

Everyone else thinks, "Oh wow, X are using it? Must be good!" And it grabs those people as customers. And that's why it's done.

[ig1]

I speak to a lot of enterprise buyers ands startups and it's definitely a major issue when it comes to buying products, especially from a startup.

There's a big difference between what a product does in theory vs in practice - and social proof is a big guiding factor for what it can do in practice.

[tcgv]

> when I worked in Enterprise IT, and this was a factor in our decision-making literally zero times.

I believe this (i.e. credibility) is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement in B2B sales. If a company/product doesn't establish enough credibility it won't even be considered for further discussions/approval in many cases. It seems that in your purchasing experience the credibility criteria was already met, so your team didn't even bothered to review the "many logos" slide from the sales pitch.

Many B2B startups (including my own mobile market research startup) struggle to reach this credibility threshold. It's a critical factor for scaling sales. Most big companies aren't willing to buy from a startup they've never heard of, no matter how great their product is.

[andrewjl]

> cheaper than the "build" option with internal talent

I'm curious how that gets evaluated, is it more of a ballpark estimate or is there a more formal process involving engineering teams providing time and effort estimates?

[th3iedkid]

It’s got to do with buy-in-risk. How much of a risk are we willing to buy into? If they have other enterprise customers, there are things they should already set their org for , like uptime-support for SLAs etc

[qznc]

Sounds like The Chasm [0] to me. Conservative early majority people are by definition the majority and in enterprises probably even more so.

[0] http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/crossing_the_chasm.html

[edoceo]

Hm. I think of my time in IT at big finance. Where the software solution was bought and paid for before IT even knew what was happening. For many enterprise IT is not the King you make them out to be.