Fw: [Sussex] What the opposition costs

[Mark Harrison]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Geoff Teale" <gteale at cmedltd.com>
To: "LUG email list for the Sussex Counties" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Sussex] What the opposition costs



> Only the power of a monopoly
> allows you to have contracts with your customers that say - you pay us,
> and if we get around to it you might get a new version.

Not true.

I sell at least two products with this characteristic... neither of these is
a monopoly. In one case, I didn't want to offer this deal at all, since I
don't think that we WILL release an upgrade in 2004, but a customer CIO
talked me into it! (Apparantly his budgets work this way, and it's a lot
easier to put in a recurring figure than to pay upgrade fees as/when they
occur.)

The way that _I_ manage to get such terms across is in three ways:

- Make the "upgrade for annual fee" entirely optional
- Make it proportionate (about 15% of the original licence cost)
- Make the basic product rather (at least 30%) cheaper than the competition
and (in our view) better.

Regards,

Mark