3 ms·
This is hugely valuable advice. Ignore the parent post at your peril! You need to be constantly vigilant about who your users are versus who your customers are.
by robterrell 13y ago
This is hugely valuable advice. Ignore the parent post at your peril! You need to be constantly vigilant about who your users are versus who your customers are. If there's a divergence, you need to make sure it's accounted for & benefiting you.
Many companies think "let's build the best thing we can, and the users will love it and win over the IT department, who will write the checks." Microsoft's ongoing record revenues, in a time when the PC market has shrunk and WIndows 8 sales are tanking, proves that theory wrong.
Having lived through this myself, my advice to to come up with price points that middle managers can expense without institutional review. But if you don't plan for this from the start, it can be a frightening to go from a sales forecast of 20-odd $100,000 sales to one that forecasts 100,000 $20-ish sales...with the same sales team.
- shimms 13y agoThanks - but right back at you with the price point threshold. We called it the "credit card approval limit". If a divisional/departmental manager can approve a purchase on their credit card without seeking director or board level approval you'll have a much easier time getting past the penny gap with customers.
- sbierwagen 13y agohttp://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... The reason I bring this up is because software is priced three ways: free, cheap, and dear. 1) Free. Open source, etc. Not relevant to the current discussion. Nothing to see here. Move along. 2) Cheap. $10 - $1000, sold to a very large number of people at a low price without a salesforce. Most shrinkwrapped consumer and small business software falls into this category. 3) Dear. $75,000 - $1,000,000, sold to a handful of rich big companies using a team of slick salespeople that do six months of intense PowerPoint just to get one goddamn sale. The Oracle model.
- devilshaircut 13y agoI found your comments to be hugely insightful. I am working on a project in the same general area (education) with a business partner and I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to let me pick your mind on the topic and learn from your experience. I have my email available in my profile although I am happy to reach out to you if you're open to it. In any case, like I said before, I found your insights very valuable. Thank you for sharing.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]