I have a slightly different view of this and have lived in both camps, (a vendor and a client site), so I can offer a slightly odd perspective. A few years back, 12 of us systems programmers got together and decided that we would write the "ultimate" software tools, and they were (and are) VERY good, but almost no one was buying them. We didn't have any marketing experience, after all we were just a dozen systems programmers, not marketing people, and it showed.
One day, I had a conversation with Bruce Black (R.I.P.) from Innovation and he told me how impressed he was with three of our (at the time 4) products, and he had some suggestions for making them even better. He also has one piece of marketing wisdom to offer. He said that what was holding us back is the fact that no matter how good our software, we were reluctant to "compete" with the established players, and it came off looking like we were selling the software from the back of a turnip truck. He suggested we go out and take an aggressive look at the competition (IBM, CA, BMC, etc.) and compare our products to theirs, and anywhere they had an advantage, we needed to find a way to have our software do it better. We did that, and it still didn't help sales because (as he told me a little later), we still looked like we were selling off the back of that same turnip truck. He told me to create a chart of our product compared to all of the competitors in a head-to-head feature comparison, and I did it, and we were far better than any of them (IBM/CA/ et. al.), but the only row that he said mattered in the end was the one I had last (which he suggested I move to first), it showed the cost of the products and ours was less than 5% of ANY of the other 5 columns. We then bought one ad in one industry magazine and ran it for 1 issue, and we went from 22 sites to over 500 sites in under 60 days. I will always be thankful of Bruce's help, and I remember before he died, he sent me a note to tell me that I need to remember always that it didn't really matter how much BETTER our software was than any of the other products, because we only had to be competitive with features, but the thing that really set us apart was that we could do it better, keep the cost low and keep the customers happy. At the end of his email he wanted to tell me that the low cost thing was a two edged deal, you will get customers and they will be happy to save money, but they will never treat you like they do "the big guys" because they will always be reminded that they chose us on price, not quality, even though our quality was much higher. So, that was my lesson from Bruce on the image that a software company has to deal with. You can roll the dice and price your product competitively with the existing high priced ones, and sell a few copies, or you can price it fairly, and try to help more sites save money, and you have to decide whether you can live with the lesser image (and less money). After all, We have to sell 20+ copies of our software for each one of IBM's, just to get the same revenue. Bruce had pointed out to me that the biggest difference we can provide for our clients is not something tangible that we can market, but our clients will know of it from dealing with us because we do it (create and support the software) because we want to help, and IBM/CA/BMC can't ever compete with us on that level. Unfortunately, as many of you have pointed out in this thread, IBM/CA/BMC software is seen as the "premium" choice for Systems Automation software, even though feature-for-feature, and cost-wise we have them well and truly beaten. In some ways, the bad economy has helped us grow to have so many sites, but we still have not raised our prices since we first introduced any of the products. We have never once lost a client to ANY other vendor and more than 99% of our clients have purchased our software AFTER they ran one of the "premium" products. So, I have to agree that it is difficult to get a site to even try a "cheaper" or even a free product, because of the potential for disaster, but in most cases, the results are well worth taking the chance. Brian Westerman Syzygy Inc. (www.SyzygyInc.com) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
