One of our phone providers sold our number to some local “businesses” list and I got a phone call from someone trying to sell me custom pens, or paper, or office cleaning, or something else.

They’d always ask for the office manager, or decision maker. My favorite was when they asked for an owner, and seemed perplexed when I said we were a corporation with stockholders.

Lots of very angry salespeople.

One of the key take-aways of any class on running a business should be customer development; that is, talking to your customers, and finding out how – and why – they use your product. If a company isn’t doing that, they’ve either got too much money, not enough brains, or both.

I wish more entrepreneurs would take the time to understand who is really using their product/service. Sometimes we think we know the answer, but that’s what happens when we are a) lazy, or b) egotistical b/c we think we know it all.

Kudos to you for doing your market research and adjusting your software accordingly.

Joe

The management vs. users battle is one that you don’t want to get in the middle of, which is why it’s best to put in features that aren’t immediately apparent, but are available if someone wants to use them. Great points.

I absolutely agree. I’ve been reading your posts on and off for a little while and I like your style, and you give good tips.

Software is actually an interesting business model in regards to this post because management is very often the key decider, but won’t ever use it. Something that I’ve seen recently is a product that’s somewhat oversold to management in terms of what it can do, but in terms of implementation it sucks. Features vs. Quality. Eventually this piece of the puzzle kicks in as well and if users don’t use the darn thing, then management WILL eventually get the picture, so your initial point is on-target for that reason as well. It is good that you found out sooner rather than later, when change would be a bit more difficult!

Tell me it saves me time and money (how much over the buzzers?) and makes my customers want to visit more! (and we know because we surveyed 500 users who experienced the system where it’s currently deployed, such as at chilis)