Renewforce?

Interesting, it seems Netsuite, another On Demand vendor, is offering 50% off the price of your salesforce.com subscription if you transfer from salesforce.com to them.

I have my doubts about this form of promotion. To compare this to our business, I guess people like Accenture are the people we look up to, and see them as one of the leaders in CRM Consulting, but I would never offer 50% off our services costs if people switched from Accenture to us. In fact, I never discount our services, I believe the value we offer is clear and the price we charge is valid.

By discounting your product or service, what impression do you give to the market? Does Net Suite have a profit margin so large that they can afford to discount to 50% of salesforce.com's price? If so, why dont they invest that margin back into R&D and making their product better, rather than giving 50% off to customers who switch from salesforce.com?

Isn't now offering 50% off a huge slap in the face to existing customers who paid full price to Net Suite for their offering?

To me this looks like an act of desperation rather than a promotion.

I guess I am not a fan of huge discounting in order to get new customers, I prefer to new customers through referrals from my existing and happy customers.

If I owned a Ferrari, and say, Skoda were offering 50% off to people who swapped their Ferrari for a Skoda, I wonder how many takers they would get?

Also, isnt offering 50% off to people switching from Salesforce.com an advertisement for salesforce.com themselves? Isnt this Netsuite admitting that salesforce.com is a better product, and the only way they can compete is to be cheaper?

I'm not sold. Sorry Netsuite.