The Applicator

A product manager at an up-and-coming software company was talking about his experiences at Siebel, where he cut his teeth in that job.

“At Siebel, we would never, ever, ever let a customer take a look at the software. No way. Not ever.”

At his new company, by contrast, they give out free personal copies.

Now, which would you pay more for, software that you know works, because you tried it, or software that you can’t prise out of the company’s hands unless you fork over, big time?

Not sure what the answer is? Well, what if I told you that the success rate for the second kind of software was roughly 50%. So 50% of the time, forking over is just like sending money to that friendly Nigerian guy who seems to need some help.

Still not sure? Well, what if I told you that the software company made you sign a non-disclosure agreement about the software that you had just forked over for, which said, essentially, that no matter what you find after you forked over, you can’t tell anybody about it. Wouldn’t you think that maybe, just maybe, that was eau de rat that you were sniffing?

Well, if after all of those warning signals, you went ahead and bought, don’t think I’d call you a fool. You’d only be doing exactly what everybody who ever bought from Siebel did. And nobody would ever call those people fools.

Would they?