I was absolutely expecting this site to be satire. In my experience, enterprise sales involves building a great demo, lying through your teeth and cashing the checks.
But a big chunk of enterprise sales is just learning to understand the customer's organization, how it works, how it makes decisions, and what problems the customer is experiencing. Part of the reason things are so expensive is that the sales cycle is so long and arduous, and that's because it's just really, really hard to communicate and make decisions within large enterprises - even when they really, really need the product and have strong internal champions.
> learning to understand the customer's organization
I wish this was the case all around, clearly it happens at least occasionally or you would not have your personal experience, but I have yet to see it in mine. If I have seen it, it was so well executed I didn't even notice, but even then from my experience that is the minority of cases.
The funny thing is that I'm doing much of the same things here as I was doing at Facebook: understanding the team's core problem, understanding their systems, designing benchmarks, explaining possible solutions, walking through operations scenarios, etc.
There is more PowerPoint time, as we are from a separate company and need to establish our credentials first, but the bulk is deeply technical and the standards are high. I couldn't bullshit these people even if I wanted to.
The market is providing.
EDIT: Exhibit A-Z is the current $240M lawsuit by the State of Oregon v Oracle: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/health-care-inc/201...
Grill them, a year later sign up for something we 10% need lol
I know the sales guys work for their money, but I don't think the above is alot to ask for what could potentially be a quarter of a million dollars in recurring annual revenue.