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28 The PCB Design Magazine • December 2016 becoming less and less involved with one an- other as human beings. Each person becomes bytes of data to be chased down until they are forced to make some kind of contact. But even this contact point is in the form of more clicks, signups to receive demos or white papers, reg- istrations to download free software trials. We have all grown accustomed to avoiding sales people until we feel prepared for the pitch, as opposed to going in blind and listening from start to finish. By the time we decide to reach out to a live voice, that live voice most likely already knows the questions we're going to ask, and is prepared with the answers. The fallout of this ultra-digital experience is that some people are actually returning to the old-school methods and simply picking up the phone to chat. Email is becoming tired and cumbersome, whereas online chat or a simple phone call has become quicker and easier than dealing with the world of digital noise. The time it takes to write an email and receive a response is a noticeable drain, and only serves to fracture our already bombarded attention spans. Sales and marketing exist to reach custom- ers and bring in sales revenue. But they are now trying to reach each customer on a tailored, customized, and very personal level. While this approach is labor-intensive for sales and mar- keting teams, it serves the customers nicely, and there is proven success with these data-driven methods. One aspect that bears further study is figuring out how much a company spends on database management systems, content deliv- ery, and salaries of the people who know how to do this effectively, and how much that eats into the overall profits when leads do turn into sales. Are profits being exhausted just to get that new sale, or is it paying off in the long run? Product Pricing & Bundling In the past (and occasionally now), the "single vendor software solution" was the main paradigm in EDA software tools. Companies demanded that all design teams run the same software, often causing huge internal fights that would end with people resigning their positions over loyalty to a software vendor. Big companies would shop around when a contract was up, sending each software vendor But with the rise of Google, Internet 2.0, and later, HTML5, marketing and advertising have become a much more complicated affair. The rise of digital advertising creates a new, more complicated matter: how to be heard above all the noise. The Internet has seen such prolifera- tion of advertising that we are all numb to it, annoyed by it, and actively trying to block it from our view. Print and digital advertising are an obligation for generating brand awareness in an industry, but they are no longer viewed as a method by which to gain an interested pros- pect. They are carefully measured for page im- pressions and clicks, and the price of each lead is separated into "cold" and "warm" leads, mak- ing simple print and digital advertising more ex- pensive as the real leads dwindle into the ether. The reality is that these coveted leads are human beings who are now able to educate themselves about their options long before a software vendor might know they are inter- ested. The Internet is full of information that can be researched without making any human contact. In response, advertising and marketing have entered the big data phase, whereby every click and every web page visited is tracked. Your email address can be sent specifically tailored messages about whatever you've been click- ing on, in an effort to shorten the lead-to-sales cycle. Keywords entered into Google searches are regularly culled and content on websites amended to include those search words. More often than not, Google tops the list of how leads ultimately visit a company's website for information—not those carefully placed digital ads, blog posts, tweets, and Facebook updates. As salesmen and marketers are honing their skills and tracking these bits of data, we are all HOW SELLING EDA SOFTWARE HAS CHANGED…OR NOT " The Internet is full of informa- tion that can be researched without making any human contact. "