Two Weeks After the Day After

Ever driven past the house of an ex?

Yesterday, I actually drove up and talked to some of the people inside.

Yes, they tried to give me beer and break down by inhibitions and I kept bringing up what it was going to cost for what I wanted them to do and they kept bringing up quality and range of services but I kept thinking I was half-buzzed and quality of service wouldn't really matter cause I was getting sleepy anyway and they kept talking about better interoperability and I kept talking about why should I pay more than their competition was willing to charge me and how this was better for the market cause eventually they'd have to lower their price to align with their competition and this would be better for everyone and then they finally agreed to lower the cost this time but I'd have to pay full price next time but I really won't.

Overall - everyone was honestly gracious. Hunter wasn't there, which was a bit of a disappointment. Hopefully we'll catch up later in the week. But if I remember correctly, he needs to get home promptly on Monday night in order to make sure the staff have polished his Bugatti Veyron collection in the appropriate clock-wise direction (as this is the northern hemisphere) with just the right force, using the 50 year old single malt which he says makes the cars glisten and yet impervious to police radar.

On a side note - I'll be the first to admit I don't understand the science behind the radar absorbing qualities of expensive Irish beverages. But Hunter drives faster in reverse than most people drive going forward (and he never gets a ticket). How fast? Well, this one time on the way to Rhode Island, I glanced down at my watch and observed the second hand slow, stop, and then tick backwards.

As for Revit development, I get it. If a subscription renewal costs X and a brand new license costs 4X - who do you want to buy your software? It's a chapter in a marketing book entitled, "Lowering Barriers to Adoption." The challenge is that many would-be customers just don't get it. You're trying to explain the value proposition of working in a concurrent database for buildings, and they keep raising their hand and asking numbnut questions, most of which are variants of, "Can I do _ with _?"

So rather than attract new customers by creating software which appeals to the mediocre masses that don't yet understand the question (much less the answer) what then?

New customers are risk adverse. They are not motivated by hope or promise or potential: these are the early adopters. They got it. They get it. They're on board. They adopted it years ago, ran user forums on Linux boxes in their basement to support it, lurked in other forums to defend it, and a little more than panicked when, for about a year and a half worth of then net revenue someone else acquired it.

But now you've got the bulk of customers still waiting to adopt. They're still somehow unsure. They still think that software is a differentiator. And for a while it is. But then, like many things it becomes a commodity. A loss lead. My observation is that the late adopters are much the same and for the most part are most unfortunately motivated by one word:

Fear.

Want to lower a potential customer's 'barrier to adoption'? Create meaningful functionality for your existing customers: crazy-ass, tricked-out, ohmygodIknowyoudidn'tjustdothatohyesIdid, mind-blowing, absolutely insanely great kind of functionality. Then show the results of the efforts of your existing customers to your potential customers. And then go one step further: show it to your potential customer's customer. In other words, don't just show it to the architect. Show it to that architect's client and contractor. Because the architects are just the teenagers in this equation and their clients and contractors are the parents. And if you want to get the teenagers to shape up, why not appeal to the people that pay the bills, feed them, buy the iPods/tennis shoes/high-speed internet connections and basically keep a roof over their heads.

Now you're not just showing a potential customer what a bit of software can do for them. You're showing them what a bit of software is already doing for their competition. And for their competition's clients. And for their competition's contractor. And so on.

And when they realize their competition has already done it - they won't ask so many numbnut questions.