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Comment by george_morgan | Hacker News Reader

Considering demand for product is outstripping their ability to produce product, their sales & marketing teams are setting a high standard of work the rest of the company has yet to meet.

Feels a little unfair if they were the ones getting axed.

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Or maybe they aren't needed at all? Most people I know that want a Tesla have wanted one forever and weren't really coerced into it by sales and marketing.

Ah, but marketing isn’t simply coercion or persuasion. For instance, if you’re gathering requirements from customers before, during and after the development of a product you’re doing marketing whether you realise it or not.

All other things being equal, the more compelling the product, the less you need to market it to achieve a given level of interest. Tesla cars are SUPER compelling on a lot of levels. I would be surprised to hear that they need the same level of marketing effort as weaker entrants from other car companies.

The best marketing is the one you don’t realise.

They may not have had a sales guy come knocking on their front door, but if you think they weren’t marketed to, then Tesla did an excellent job of marketing.

Sounds like the same problem you find everywher regarding engineering, programming, IT, and sales competence: if your products seem simple and bulletproof, your servers seem to never go down, your program just works intuitively, and people want your product even before they walk into the store, that does not mean you can downsize those departments. It means you should give them a raise because they're doing a great job!

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