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Why Vendor Software Has Holes
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Why Vendor Software Has Holes

        Michael DeHaan  
[https] Apr 12          

There's the cliche "the customer is always right" but we tend to
think that is more about customer service. The truth really, though,
is that your customer is always right. They know more about their
business, problems, organization, time, capabilities, and
circumstances than vendors will ever know.

However, it seems to me, most ISVs takes the other view - the vendor
is always right, the customer is someone that needs the vendor's
products. You build features so you can sell more, rather than to
solve problems. You do the bare minimum to retain customers and focus
on expansion, and well, marketing.

As I used to make IT management software, my users with IT operations
engineers. They not only knew how to use my software, but they had to
use 20+ other things in conjunction. They knew what they were using
it for, and areas where it was good, and it wasn't as effective. I
could afford to specialize in some little narrow corner of some code,
they absolutely needed to know how everything worked - and get
results with it, not just deploy demos.

There's the product management saying "there are no facts inside the
office", which is *mostly* true, I mean, you do have the domain
experience everyone at the company brought to the table when they
started working. Often you will be able to imagine things that
customers are too busy to imagine, or maybe others will be too
thinking about short term things and only minor evolutions from the
status quo, where you might have a big idea for something very
different. Yet as you work at building and selling something, even in
an industry vertical where you were once a member, you are
continually growing more and more out of touch every day. This is
just by the virtue that you are removed from the working environment.

The source of everything that you should be doing is in the minds of
who you are trying to sell to. Thus sales shouldn't just be trying to
say "try/buy my stuff" but really should be merged with product
management and about having conversations that are useful for both
parties. What information can you learn from even a failed sales
discussion or demo? Can you have a conversation where you get a
better understanding of what the customer does every day?

This is why a lot of tools vendors try to push on customers feel
weird - the vendor wants to make money, but they don't know what to
build. In many cases, they may even look down on the customer, like
they are needing what the company produces. They attempt to sell but
not learn. Because not enough of the company is built around customer
experience, the tools suffer as everyone keeps their head down and
builds what they are asked to build.

The customer doesn't need the vendor, the opposite is true - the
company needs the customer. Not just for money, but for knowledge.

Instead of looking down at a customer or seeing them as a way to make
money, look at them as both someone as a partner you are trying to
help, but also someone that can tell you what things you need to
build and improve on. Someone you can learn a lot from - because they
are still out in that world, and you are not.

Don't launch a new solution because you think it can make money,
launch it because you think it solves a problem for a lot of
different people in a repeatable way.

Given, you never want to listen to too few people (especially the
very loud ones!), as they can easily lead you astray by asking you to
build features you can't resell to anyone else, and with that comes
with great opportunity cost -- but in general, the crowd has a lot of
useful data that you don't have.

Having a culture of humility, curiosity, and service can produce
better things almost automatically, just by being receptive and
changing your outlook.

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