Is Selling To The Enterprise Dead?

from the there-goes-that-plan dept

With all the buzz over consumer products coming out of this year's CES, some are wondering selling to the enterprise is a dying business model. Many companies seem to be putting a lot more emphasis on consumer based business models. The article here suggests that this is a result of "The Long Tail" phenomenon, where companies don't need to just sell big complex packages to a few thousand CIOs, but can offer very different solutions across the board to millions of consumers. While that might be going a bit too far, there is clearly an interesting shift in perspective between what a "company" buys and what an "individual" buys. How many people bought their own mobile phone, even if the company reimburses them for service? Most people who started using things like Palm Pilots when they first came out bought them, themselves, rather than through a big corporate purchase. As the barriers between work and life begin to blur, this is what happens. People who get used to using certain services or applications at the office then want to use those same applications or services in their own lives (and at their next job!). It seems that many (though, clearly not all) companies that want to sell into the enterprise these days, need to start thinking more about how to hook an individual for life -- and let that seed the process to get it into the corporate environment.