Believe it or not, we ARE the disruption in our market, and we're taking tons of sales from the old guard.

That said, there's only so much you can disrupt enterprise sales. There's an art to it that, while I hate to stereotype, isn't commonly known to most of the valley types I've met.

It's arcane, it's awkward, and it takes lots and lots of practice and failure. In short, selling multi-million dollar software simply isn't something you can accomplish with a Paypal button and a download link. The average sales cycle is measured in months, and a sub-30-day sale is considered monumental.

> It's arcane, it's awkward, and it takes lots and lots of practice and failure.

I'm confused. You seem to be making conflicting suggestions. Is this "arcane" and "awkward" sales process truly a sine qua non for your industry? Or is it the product of social inefficiencies that just can't be corrected by technical measures?

It's largely driven by the people who buy the software having a complex business need that they want to fulfil, but who don't know the best solution, if it even exists.

So they surround themselves with advisors (consultants, project managers, architects, etc), some of them good, some of them bad, and between the 3 groups (the buyers, vendors, and advisors), they try to come to an agreement where all 3 are happy.

The sales process is basically nudging all 3 groups into positions where everyone is happy, and can be a long and painful process.