Re: Informix Directions
Mark D. Stock (mdstock@informix.com) wrote: : > Tim Schaeffer Pointed out: : > : > 3. Market to developers FIRST, then management. Advertise clear, : > simple messages to developers, not managers. Forget about : > management, they only look at the pictures anyway. : : True and not true. Managers may only look at the pictures, but if they : like the picture they buy the product. Developers usually only get a : vote if they use their feet. The only area that developers can impact : on the sale of products is by not knowing them. Products will not sell : if there are no developers in the market. Other than that, you HAVE to : sell to management. Tim - how big a check can you sign? You're a smart guy. Your manager signs your check. (And probably the checks of all your peers.) The sad, grinding reality is that developers do not sign checks. INFORMIX has always been able to sell technology to developers. As I pointed out, INFORMIX routinely wins the technical battle. Technically smart people get it. Then IFMX gets creamed. Anywhere O is, they can simply under-sell. Manager looks at product A and product B and says, "Both databases. One 10% the price of the other. Easy." Hence the "high end". IFMX can get the check signed where it can be explained to management that there is only one reasonable technical solution. And that's places with extreme performance, complexity or scalabilty. As a techie I've been through this once before; as an Ingres customer and then an Ingres employee. You look at a product from the outside and you just can't believe it isn't doing great. Then you work for a vendor for a while, and you learn why. Monday morning quarterbacking is an interesting exercise. I really suggest interested readers go through _Crossing_the_Chasm_ by Moore. One of the points he makes is that an 'early market' strategy should focus on techies, but that a mature market strategy should focus on leveraging the early market success by selling to (*gasp*) managers with circumstances that the early market has shown your technology excells at. IFMX excells at hard problems. Again - my opinions only. No one listens to me anyway . . . KR Pb