I recently sat through a sales pitch for a piece of IBM software that has an intensely focused (and better) competitor.
IBM's sales pitch was that 1) this particular piece of software was "central to IBM's [market niche] strategy", and 2) if we didn't go with IBM's product, we would miss out on all the interoperability with IBM's Watson that the future is going to bring. The tone veered toward fire-and-brimstone. I wasn't sold, I was put off. They've demoed other things in the past that I've had my socks knocked off by, but they're nothing that's the sort of "indistinguishable from magic" that they're promising in all the marketing hype.
The thing is, IBM delivers tremendous value, and they have some fantastic products. However, stunts like that leave people like me with a very sour taste in my mouth. If they'd just focus on delivering a better product, as quantified by hard metrics, (which they could easily afford to do), they'd keep making out like bandits for a very long time. There's tremendous good-will toward them in the market: bad experience aside, I'm still favorably disposed toward them.
IBM's sales pitch was that 1) this particular piece of software was "central to IBM's [market niche] strategy", and 2) if we didn't go with IBM's product, we would miss out on all the interoperability with IBM's Watson that the future is going to bring. The tone veered toward fire-and-brimstone. I wasn't sold, I was put off. They've demoed other things in the past that I've had my socks knocked off by, but they're nothing that's the sort of "indistinguishable from magic" that they're promising in all the marketing hype.
The thing is, IBM delivers tremendous value, and they have some fantastic products. However, stunts like that leave people like me with a very sour taste in my mouth. If they'd just focus on delivering a better product, as quantified by hard metrics, (which they could easily afford to do), they'd keep making out like bandits for a very long time. There's tremendous good-will toward them in the market: bad experience aside, I'm still favorably disposed toward them.