Magic Quadrant references and vendor-supplied ROI calculators get screened out by the data engineers who own the eval. They want to hear from peers running the same workload.
Buyers consult roughly seven verified peer reviews before issuing the RFP. By the time MQLs hit the CRM, the field of three is already locked in.
AWS Marketplace listings, Reddit r/dataengineering, RFP libraries, and competitive G2 comparison pages each behave like a separate channel. Demand-gen budgets aren't activated where evaluators are actually reading.
The customer who would close a Databricks fight on a single quote is stuck in legal review for six weeks. The decision moment passes, the testimonial ships too late.