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I think saying that customers tend to prefer "simple done well" is an oversimplification (pun unintended, but kept anyway). I've found the real issue is that pe
by ccc3 17y ago
I think saying that customers tend to prefer "simple done well" is an oversimplification (pun unintended, but kept anyway). I've found the real issue is that people have a maximum rate of information absorption and when a salesperson starts rattling off a list of features, that rate is quickly surpassed. If you could make a potential customer in a shoe store understand that the rubber compound in a particular shoe would make it perform 30% better, it would likely have an impact on the sale. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to make someone quickly understand something outside of their frame-of-reference. Most people will just start ignoring you as soon as you say "rubber compound."
I think this post is a more valid commentary on how products should be sold than how products should be made. For example, I used to sell a fairly complex piece of engineering software. I found that the most effective way to demo the software was to find out about one of the customers problems and show the software solving that problem over and over. Often I would only end up showing 2 or 3 features of a program that had thousands. That doesn't mean that the customer wouldn't go on to find value in many other parts of our product once they started using it, it just means that in the context of a sales meeting, making one point well is often as good as you can do.
- btilly 17y agoIf you could make a potential customer in a shoe store understand that the rubber compound in a particular shoe would make it perform 30% better, it would likely have an impact on the sale. No. I say this because I'm the kind of customer the article is about. When I'm buying I'm looking for a shoe I am walking around in all day. I'm never going to race. I'm probably not going to play any sports in that shoe. (When I play sports it is usually barefoot at the beach.) I simply don't care about performance. As soon as you try to sell me on performance, I'm ignoring you because it is utterly irrelevant to my life. I care about comfort, durability, price and aesthetics. Were I single I'd move aesthetics up the list because women do seem to care about how your shoes look. Were my feet easier to fit I might move comfort down the list. I won't believe anything the sales person says about durability, and my decisions on that are the repeat buys where I walk up, name the model, try on a couple of shoes, and walk out. The sales person will have no idea that durability was a factor for me in that decision because I relied on past experience, and not anything that was visible in the store. The article is exactly right. I simply don't care about any of what the manufacturer is trying to get people to care about. And there is no way of delivering that message that will make me care. I only care about solving my problem, which is keeping my feet protected at relatively low cost per unit time without looking ridiculous.
- ccc3 17y agoI care about comfort, durability, price and aesthetics With the exception of price, these are all metrics of the shoe's performance. I chose the word "performance" deliberately because it is very general and can be measured differently by different customers.
- btilly 17y agoThey are metrics of performance, yes. But they are not the type of performance that the shoe manufacturer generally tries hard to market.