sale

I've been hearing more and more that proprietary companies are fighting back against open-source companies by giving away their software. "We can compete with free!" they chortle as they discount their license fees to zero, occasionally winning deals (with customers who don't yet fully understand that open source is far more than price tag).

But with every deal they win on these terms, they lose. Their cost structure can't support giving away million-dollar deals that cost (literally, at times) a million dollars to close. Talking with a friend at Oracle, he tells me they expend upwards of 18 months and 100 or so people working on their million-dollar deals.

In other words, they spend money like crazy so that they can win the deal and hold onto that maintenance revenue.… Read more

Updated Oct. 23, 11:50 a.m.; details at bottom.

What if you threw a World Series and no one came because they couldn't buy tickets?

That is the dilemma facing the Colorado Rockies on Monday after the baseball team suspended online ticket sales because servers were overwhelmed by traffic.

"We are as frustrated and disappointed as (fans) are," Jay Alves told The Denver Post, adding that team officials had no idea so many people would try to use the Web site.

The team said it would honor the several hundred tickets already sold but it's … Read more

People often complain about the high cost of organic foods, hybrid cars and pesticide-free bamboo T-shirts. GreenDealsDaily, which launched this month, attempts to bust the myth that living a more eco-friendly lifestyle is only for the well-heeled.

The site lists the latest price drops, coupons and freebies for green products, as well as lifestyle tips from IdealBite, Treehugger and other blogs. Hurry and call ConEd now, for example, if you want free compact fluorescent bulbs for your Manhattan apartment. Or get thee to Gaiam for its 75 percent discount while the organic cotton bedding lasts.

You can register with GreenDealsDaily … Read more

I have tried to keep an open mind about services where users buy and sell personal contact information. My default position is that personal relationships are priceless, and if you try to sell them you're asking for big trouble. That's why I find services like Jigsaw and Yuwie (review), both of which pay you for selling your friends and contacts to strangers, ethical disaster zones.

There's a new product that I was considering putting in this bucket: Salesconx. It's a site for buying and selling introductions to sales leads. If you're looking for the account … Read more

Peace and happiness are all well and good, but apparently not as enticing as a new Vaio.

In a just -released survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, computers topped respondents' holiday wish lists of top-five gifts--followed by peace and happiness, big-screen televisions, clothes and money.

Notably, the big-screen TV moved up in the 2007 survey to No. 3 from 11th in 2006. The teen wish list remained unchanged: clothes, MP3 players, video games, computers and cell phones (with international human rights way down the lineup, just under skateboards).

In its "14th Annual CE Holiday Purchase Patterns" study, the … Read more

Update--Vizio stunned the consumer electronics world when it became the No. 1 seller of flat-panel TVs in North America.

But it may be only a temporary victory.

During the second quarter, Costco and Sam's Club, the two primary retailers of Vizio TVs, asked the company for more TVs than normal to increase their own inventories, according to a Vizio spokesman. The store chains typically had been carrying one to two weeks of inventory. They requested that the inventory be increased to three to four weeks. (Costco, by the way, declined to comment.)

As a result, Vizio experienced a sudden … Read more

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word salesman? A pushy insurance or car salesman with no self respect? Those nice people who accost you the second you walk into a clothing store? Or maybe the folks you can never find at Home Depot.

Wait, I bet you think salespeople were put on this planet to babble endlessly and waste your time until you're ready to hang yourself just to make it stop. But you can't do that, so instead you give in and buy whatever it is they're selling.

Did I get that right?

Well, guess what? I don't care if you're an IT professional, a musician, a consultant, a CEO, a recruiter, an engineer, a doctor, an accountant, or a professional athlete. You're also a salesperson. That's right, we're all in sales. You, me, your boss, your lawyer, your spouse, your kids; everyone's in sales.

You see, from time to time, each of us is called upon to sell something. It could be a product, a service, a plan, an idea, a creation, a story to a judge or jury, or even oneself (presumably for a job, not into slavery). And more often than not, it's actually very important that we succeed. I don't know why; that's just the way it is.

It's hard for me to imagine anyone being successful in life without having the ability to sell when necessary. And yet, we think of it as something unsavory or even unethical. Not only does the idea fill some people with disgust, fear or self-loathing, but to make matters worse, most people aren't even good at it.… Read more

If you read the headline and thought, "Well, it must be because enterprise software companies spend so much on R&D, and so charge a lot of money to recoup their heavy investments!" you would be wrong. Very wrong. If you thought, "It must be because they have consigned themselves to an inane sales model that requires high-priced sales and marketing to fool customers into buying their software," you'd be closer to the truth.

These were my thoughts as I read Jason Maynard's analysis of why Tibco's growth has stalled:

We are maintaining our Neutral rating on shares of Tibco given the sluggish revenue growth and the need to add extra sales capacity in order to grow the business. With the stock trading at 12x EV/CFO it isn't expensive but it is hard to make a case for multiple expansion when it will take at least 2-3 quarters to see any signs of contribution from the sales expansion....… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Though he was in town to discuss Dell's new storage products for small and medium-size business customers, company founder and CEO Michael Dell also took time to answer questions about the company's main business, PC sales, which is also an area in which it's recently struggled.

Dell reiterated his company's assertion that there will be more to come of its recent dabblings in selling desktops and notebooks through retail channels.

"We're going to expand to a number of places," he said. "I would expect over the next quarters you'll see … Read more