May 12 2006

Its just technology – comments

Andy had a good comment to my “its just technology” post, which I’ve been meaning to pull up to the front page.  Here it is:

I think this is a wider issue. I believe that most, if not all, early stage high tech companies suffer from the “what it is” versus “what it does” disease when selling their products.  Only the early adopter prospect who “gets it” will respond to this sales approach.  Many prospects that should be great targets may get excited about the hot technology but won’t understand how it benefits them or solves any problem they care about.  They will relegate the offering to “nice to have” and won’t buy – often after pulling the salesperson through a several months-long sales cycle.  I think this failure to move from product-centric to customer-business-problem-centric underlies the problem getting sales traction that a lot of new companies have – even though they are selling great technology.  So, it’s a survival issue not only for new technologies but for the companies that develop them.