This statement by spolsky, from my many years experience, is correct and needs to be emphasized:
"Summary: while it's fine to turn away truly toxic customers, and you are welcome to decide that you'd rather sell to the starving startup founders on Y-combinator who would rather spend 2 hours scouring your website than deal with a salesperson, the corporate customers turn out to be remarkably price-insensitive, once they make a purchase they will keep paying you maintenance for years long after the product is not even in use, and they're just as likely to leave you alone as the small guys, but they do have "multiple stakeholders" and if you want to sell to them you need a process that matches their reality."
The problem with some of the advice given on HN is that it is right and wrong depending on the circumstances. Many of the people reading that advice don't have years and years of real world experience and may take that advice out of context to their detriment. (Note I say "many" which doesn't mean "most" or "all").
the corporate customers turn out to be remarkably price-insensitive,
I haven't read all of Spolsky's response yet, but I find this comment interesting in light of the fact that the original article specifically calls out customers who ask for a discount with no justification. Okay, I can see that some places need to check all 80 boxes on their IT purchase approval sheet (I work for one of them), but if they are asking for that, AND being impatient, AND being rude, AND asking for a discount? You don't have be an accountant to see that you will be losing money on that sale. Circumstances indeed will inform choices better than rote rules, but that cuts both ways; if you suddenly jack your prices, many customers will assume you're trying to bilk them and go somewhere else.
In a lot of cases the person making the purchase won't actually care about the price, but will want to appear to care; they'd rather get 25% off $10k than 0% off $5k.
Spolsky's argument is that the sale will typically go through without a discount and thus it is not a real problem.
"Big companies often have purchasing departments actually do the purchase. They are trained to expect discounts and the people in the purchasing department know a lot more about asking for discounts than they know about software, because that is their specialized role in the organization. If you politely tell them that you have one price for everyone, they'll still purchase, because the purchasing department ususally doesn't have the power to stop the purchase."
This statement by spolsky, from my many years experience, is correct and needs to be emphasized:
"Summary: while it's fine to turn away truly toxic customers, and you are welcome to decide that you'd rather sell to the starving startup founders on Y-combinator who would rather spend 2 hours scouring your website than deal with a salesperson, the corporate customers turn out to be remarkably price-insensitive, once they make a purchase they will keep paying you maintenance for years long after the product is not even in use, and they're just as likely to leave you alone as the small guys, but they do have "multiple stakeholders" and if you want to sell to them you need a process that matches their reality."
The problem with some of the advice given on HN is that it is right and wrong depending on the circumstances. Many of the people reading that advice don't have years and years of real world experience and may take that advice out of context to their detriment. (Note I say "many" which doesn't mean "most" or "all").