Ask Slashdot: What's Your Company's Marketing-to-Engineering Ratio?

An anonymous reader writes "I just learned that the company I work for annually budgets ~$17,000 for non-labor engineering expenses, but budgets ~$250,000 for non-labor marketing and sales expenses. Am I just being cynical when I say that my company spends almost 15 times as much trying to convince the outside world that we make a good product, than it spends on actually making a good product? What's the marketing-to-engineering ratio at your company?"

Comments

non labour?

[Anonymous Coward]

you would expect a huge difference what are the overall budgets like.

Re:non labour?

[icebike]

you would expect a huge difference what are the overall budgets like.

Yeah, that caught my eye as well. Seem like cherry picking the numbers if you ask me.

Simply because the engineers already have all the tools, desks, materials, computers that they need to develop the the products means they don't need a big non-labor budget.

But you don't sell stuff without advertising, travel, swag, etc. And that is an ongoing expense.

You buy one advertising spot, you need to go out and buy another one tomorrow.
Solve one engineering problem on your computer and you don't need a new computer to solve the next one.

I would expect almost any company to have bigger sales costs than development costs. Especially for any product that
has to compete in the marketplace.

Show us the whole budget, or stop cherry picking numbers.

Not directly comparable

[Anonymous Coward]

By excluding labour costs, you've skewed the facts. Engineers themselves are the focus of the engineering department, whereas adverts (a non-labour cost) are the focus of the marketing department.

Sales is hard

[sjbe]

Am I just being cynical when I say that my company spends almost 15 times as much trying to convince the outside world that we make a good product, than it spends on actually making a good product?

Short answer, yes you are being needlessly cynical.

Longer answer, don't underestimate how hard it is to sell any product, even a very good one. Further, it isn't a moral issue. Activities cost what they cost. Pick any software company you care to mention and you'll find that their engineering costs are somewhere between 10-20% of total expenses. Most of the rest is the cost of sales and administration with sales and marketing accounting for the lions share of the expense. The reason for that isn't because the sales team is wasting money but because it requires a lot of resources to convince people to buy something. The activities used to sell products frequently don't benefit from economies of scale and like basic research have uncertain paybacks on the investment.

Frankly I think it is a worthwhile exercise for every engineer to spend some time trying to sell their product. Engineers too often are dismissive of sales and marketing and they shouldn't be. A good sales man is an incredibly valuable asset and frequently harder to find than a good engineer. I run a company where we are pretty good on the engineering but until recently were pretty bad at sales. (we're still not great but improving) And the result showed. We make a good product but that isn't enough by itself.