This is an interesting perspective coming from someone who has sat on both sides of the table.
The bulk of customers over the course of my career have had non-technical people making purchasing decisions. Sales engineers (techies who work on the sales side) are always brought into appease the buyer side technical people who are generally brought in to vet a purchase far too deep in the sales cycle.
The answer to the "necessary feature" question is always yes. "Do you work with X SSO technology?" "Yes." "Show that to us." At which point the sales rep decides whether it's worth the labor cost to build/demo (assuming they haven't already done so). The elegance or performance of a given feature are never considered, except in product x vs. product y scenarios where x and y are evenly matched and even then the technical side is an afterthought to cost, market strength, gartner's opinion, relationships, etc.
I guess what I'm saying is that my experience is that from a sales perspective and an executive perspective, technical details matter little in most cases. That's a big reason why companies with great technology fail while others with terrible technology see great success. Too many brilliant engineers have trouble understanding the importance of great marketing in opposition to great solutions. You can fail with a product that saves companies millions of dollars when none of that spend is a pain point. You can succeed with a product that makes companies spend millions of dollars fruitlessly if you are addressing one of their key initiatives.
Your experience could be a complete and utter failure of sales reps to recognize an opportunity, or it could be that they just don't appreciate that you are a decision maker.
The bulk of customers over the course of my career have had non-technical people making purchasing decisions. Sales engineers (techies who work on the sales side) are always brought into appease the buyer side technical people who are generally brought in to vet a purchase far too deep in the sales cycle.
The answer to the "necessary feature" question is always yes. "Do you work with X SSO technology?" "Yes." "Show that to us." At which point the sales rep decides whether it's worth the labor cost to build/demo (assuming they haven't already done so). The elegance or performance of a given feature are never considered, except in product x vs. product y scenarios where x and y are evenly matched and even then the technical side is an afterthought to cost, market strength, gartner's opinion, relationships, etc.
I guess what I'm saying is that my experience is that from a sales perspective and an executive perspective, technical details matter little in most cases. That's a big reason why companies with great technology fail while others with terrible technology see great success. Too many brilliant engineers have trouble understanding the importance of great marketing in opposition to great solutions. You can fail with a product that saves companies millions of dollars when none of that spend is a pain point. You can succeed with a product that makes companies spend millions of dollars fruitlessly if you are addressing one of their key initiatives.
Your experience could be a complete and utter failure of sales reps to recognize an opportunity, or it could be that they just don't appreciate that you are a decision maker.