Ask HN: How do you want to buy technology?

by greenail on 3/29/2022, 5:56:49 PM with 1 comments
Wondering how folks want to buy? Who's doing a great job fitting that modern buying process and why? Who's unbearable to deal with (but you are somewhat forced to deal with them) and why?

It strikes me that legacy technology sales is pretty dead for the most part. Some big purchase decisions like big ERP are still RFI/RFP driven but most SaaS/IaaS/PaaS seems more easily consumable (less risk). Public pricing and good online documentation are much more common today which makes a big part of the process self serviceable. How much do you want the vendor to feed this info to you vs you doing your own research? How do you get good engagement from the sales team when you want to dig beyond the publicly available info? How do you keep them from bugging you?

At some point you may want a big discount, how comfortable with actual hands on use do you need to be before you want to subject yourself to a big painful sales cycle? How much discount would you give up to avoid a painful sales cycle?

Finally, any general advice you can provide as a technology buyer?

  • by PaulHoule on 3/29/2022, 6:24:57 PM

    Self-service. No salesperson.

    I am still smarting from an experience years ago when I brought in an outside salesperson to 'help' me and he wound up driving away small accounts that could have given us a chance to deliver results, get testimonials and invest in both technology and marketing.