[cchurch]

You're thinking about buying "big business" enterprise software like buying a cell phone or any other off-the-shelf commodity. Don't do that.

It's more akin to buying a house. You've got to find one of many that satisfies your unique needs. You've got due diligence to do. You've got negotiations. You've got an entire purchasing process to follow that is externally imposed. You may have renovations to make before you can move in and need estimates on that.

A website can cover generalities, but the reality is that enterprise products are big, complicated, and (generally) are not purchased by technical people, although technical people may be involved in part of the review process or requirements analysis.

The only process more complicated is selling to the government.

[Zak]

I don't think I'm missing that point. To use your analogy, if I was buying a house:

1. I want to see prices when I browse listings. This is fairly normal in real estate, even though prices end up being somewhat negotiable. Why not in enterprise software?

2. I want a decent amount of information before I even pick up the phone or write an email. If you were listing houses for sale, it would be foolish not to include some photos, the location, the size and number of rooms, etc.... I don't want this information in a mixture of PDFs, MS Office files, flash animations and such. I want HTML pages that are easy to read, copy data from and email to others.

3. If I'm buying a house, I probably want to see such things as inspection reports and maintenance records. These things should be fairly easy for me to get even if they're not on the public website.

Someone explained to me that one reason companies selling enterprise software are so eager to get someone on the phone to sales rather than browsing the website is that they then feel they have something invested in the process and are less likely to back out[0]. Having always been the nerdy type, this idea was very foreign to me, but it seems to be true from what I know of the average person. I also learned from an early age how to recognize and respond appropriately to salespeople trying to use emotional and psychological tricks to manipulate me. I sometimes have an unreasonable expectation that others will do the same.

[0]This is a variation of the sunk cost fallacy.

[philwelch]

But software is a commodity, either that or you're not selling software, you're contracting out custom development work.