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"If they already use it, why should I buy it?"

It sounds like a trivial question to answer, but it just exposes the level of detachment that exists between who makes the purchase decisions and its users in SME context.



Because you want to control who uses it (offboard separated employees, onboard new employees automatically), integrate into your auth systems to make it easier for employees to access, get an SLA if something goes wrong, connect to your data auditing systems, etc, etc. Companies have a lot of needs outside of just the core functionality of a product.


You might want to understand the politics and business dynamics before you go too far down that route. You could just end up getting your product blocked and/or replaced with a competitor instead.


Exactly, you're selling inconvenience. Management usually has to work hard all day long to annoy the employees under them.


"Don't you want them to use it more securely, and with enterprise AI features?"


Wait - it’s not secure now? We’ll be banning it immediately!


"No, it's more secure! We have encryption, which means intermediaries can't snoop, but don't you want to be able to monitor what data goes out?"

etc. There's a laundry list of features enterprises care about, better spelled out in the sibling post.


"Well we have Bob from purchasing on the phone and he says we have to put this out for a bid first. And Alice from compliance wants to know, do you have [insert esoteric certification]?"

You really have to know who you are talking to and their motivations before you know what the right sales angle is.


I knew at one point some engineers who added RFC2549 to see if the salespeople were just being yesmen. A few years later I had similar problems with HSM salesman lying about Java support in their products so I can sympathize. Buying a product you cannot use without extreme effort is the pits.

One of them put in a bid to Cisco and got a reply back saying something like they were working on it but having some issues with the birds.


Somehow I knew what RFC2549 was without knowing what it was.


I used to be able to recite it from memory, but it’s starting to get mixed in my head with others, like 1918 which is the NAT RFC, and thus serious.




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