Re: question about product license and support

sPh wrote:

>
> During the runup to the last quarter prior to Y2K, Oracle accidently
> faxed some documents to the Wall Street Journal which indicated that
> large customers were receiving discounts of 93% off list in order to get
> the sales in under that particular wire.
 

I'd think the logic goes something ike this: list price = M$250, huge discount -> M$50! Using the "a bird in the hand is better than 2 in the bush" mentality ...

Don't see how that is in any way relevant to budgetting, to telling management the facts of 'MSRP and standard discount', or to doing a proper feature-value analysis.

> The cost of selling software, at least for contracts above the 50,000
> USD mark or so, is essentially zero. The supplier can set any price

This is just the sort of muddle-headed BS that propogates through our industry.

The 'cost of selling software' is, of course, not the cost of creating software which includes the cost of research, development, salaries, and most importantly - investors' ROI expectations.

Your statement looks only at the sales organizations 'cost of sales', not the corporate expense line.

Aside from that, a typical applications sale can involve 5-15 people (direct sales, pre-sales, IT, clerical, administration, plane tickets, etc.) for 1-2 months. How does that fit in your US$50K number? It ain't just the CDs!

Never the less, still irrelevant.

> they wish to get the sale. Most customers don't have the leverage to
> get that sort of discount, but you need a plan in place to at least try.
>

This I agree with. Never had an issue with the idea of planning or trying for a discount.

I just think anyone who _budgets_ for non-standard discounts (without justification such as corp. master agreememt) is setting himself/herself up for a public flogging when management expectations are not met. Perhaps not the first year, but surely on renewal or incremental purchase. Received on Sun Aug 08 2004 - 13:24:21 CDT