Selling to the Fortune 500, Government, and Other Lovecraftian Horrors
Government is totally different than enterprise. Government is extremely price conscious, and may even have regulatory requirements that dictate a purchasing process. There may be formal request processes, approvals, public hearings and comment processes, etc. There can be formalized criteria that dictate who wins an RFP. If you try to lump enterprise sales and government sales in the same boat, you will be in for failure.<p>And the whole limit that this article is talking about exploiting, of sticking under a specific amount... That is called frequently called "DOA" - Delegation of Authority. And the trick stated, to keep your price under a specific DOA level, is questionable. People who aren't trusted to spend more than $500 also likely do not have a large budget, so your $500 a month would kill their yearly budget, and you would lose the sale anyway, or at best become a target for cost reductions in the future.<p>Sure, using tricks like that might quicken a sales cycle and avoid annoying bureaucracy. But in the long run, you will still lose. You are a pain point in the budget of a 1st line manager, instead of a prized vendor in the large budget of a higher manager. When the day comes that the corporation challenges all its managers to shave 15% of their yearly budget, guess what list you end up on? Trust me, you do NOT want your monthly bill to be falling in the budget of a low-level manager.<p>Instead, Deal with the pain. Put up with the bureaucracy. Do the PO process. Get in as a line item on a budget higher in the hierarchy. You then are really considered a cost-effective solution, and higher-level leaders don't like admitting mistakes, so they will put their political clout behind keeping you in that organization.