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> Just my opinion. I'm not a businessman. It shows :) No offense, but this is an engineer's mindset. Great for building products; terrible for selling them. A
by exelius 12y ago
> Just my opinion. I'm not a businessman.
It shows :) No offense, but this is an engineer's mindset. Great for building products; terrible for selling them.
A businessperson's mindset is "if they don't understand their value proposition well enough to explain it to me, their product likely isn't any better than the competition and they know it." Better still, by explaining your value proposition in terms of a prospective client's problems, you are showing them that 1) you understand their problems 2) your product addresses their problems and 3) that you are committed to a long-term, mutually beneficial business relationship, not just a sale.
OP's link is a great example of good business communication. It's obvious that many of the flaws are due to the anonymization; I've written these e-mails before and the main goal is building a business relationship based on trust. If you have built a relationship with your customer, you get a little bit of leeway to badmouth the competition if it's relevant.
- derefr 12y ago> A businessperson's mindset is "if they don't understand their value proposition well enough to explain it to me, their product likely isn't any better than the competition and they know it." You'd think a consequentialist businessman would be more interested in buying good things that go unrecognized/undervalued/un-understood by those who have them for sale. He can use the information asymmetry to make a profit, after all.
- exelius 12y agoMaybe if you're buying widgets, but not services. Just like you may be ok with buying a car from a person who doesn't understand the value of his product, but would be more leery of hiring an accountant who didn't understand the value of his services. SaaS solutions are truly a service in this regard.
- derefr 12y agoI guess I'm thinking of things like "Internet companies who don't realize that they're providing SLA-ed synchronous links with their IP video-conferencing service." They're selling you one thing, but you're getting most of the benefit from a part of it they don't even realize is worth anything.
- notahacker 12y agoOne can only hope the flaws are due to anonymisation. The bigger flaw in the email (as is) is that it includes only one short paragraph about HelloSign's explicit benefit sandwiched right in the middle of some very generic comparison between the brands. And when if does come to referencing the competition and they're not universally-derided, you get a lot more props for commending the competition's relative strengths in areas you know the customer doesn't care about before highlighting the relevance of your strengths than you do from badmouthing them and treating the customer like an idiot for raising them. Unless it's a really transparent negotiation gambit in which case you may as well call them on it.