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by RyanZAG
4012 days ago
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I think you're pretty close to the truth here, and ultimately this is what all enterprise deals are about. It's why most "software" companies doing enterprise sales will have far bigger budgets on "sales" than on "research and development". Although the current trend is to push a lot of these "leveraging knowledge" and "finding truth and value" parts of the sales process into "Research" anyway. It works very well for all parties though - the "sucker" executives on the other side come out very well from this: they can use the marketing materiel and buzzword lingo verbatim from the products they are purchasing in their next few meetings to make themselves look on-the-ball even when they've been doing very little. I'd go as far as to say they're actively looking for products they can buy that they can talk to that do as little as possible to minimize the risk of actually having an effect on their business if they don't work. Security products are a big thing here too. Ultimately though, something is worth whatever you can sell it for. If you can sell your marketing buzzword lingo and "mutually beneficial enterprise deals" for $100 million, maybe it really is worth that much if it's adding value to someone somewhere. |
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Theoretically you're right. But I think that the way big corporations are structured and run, the people who make the decisions are so far removed from reality, that the values are incredibly distorted. It costs some exec $0 out of his own wallet to spend $100 million out of his corporation's budget. But, like you said, he can then use the built-in buzzwords to further his own corporate career as he pivots to his next job. And since it doesn't promise much, and since its impact isn't really measurable anyway, the risk to his own career is minimal.
But as far as providing actual value to shareholders or customers--that seems a far cry from what it is sold for.