Oysters, Colas and the Product Delusion ...

“Sweet, brown and fizzy”

Question: What drink am I talking about?

Most of you probably guessed Pepsi or Coke. But some may have opted for Dr Pepper, Sarsaparilla, Dandelion & Burdock or a whole raft of others.

Sweet, brown and fizzy is clearly not a good way to differentiate and sell any of these.

So, why do so many software companies all describe their wares in the exact same way?

Is your software package integrated, easy to use and flexible? Does it offer a single version of the truth whilst running in the cloud and being easy to upgrade? (I see you nodding enthusiastically)

You might then proceed to educate your prospects about the architecture and features of your system with increasingly detailed slides?

Yep. Thought so.

You see those in the business software game tend to think that the buyer cares as much about all the details as they do.

But they just don’t (Even if they pretend to)

What the B2B buyer really cares about is minimizing any downside variance. What’s to worst that could happen if this whole thing goes pear shaped?

What the buyer is really doing is practicing Defensive Decision Making.

Defensive decision making is where choices are made not for the optimum solution for the business but for what will look the best and be the easiest to defend to others.

Imagine you are about to board a 24 hour flight from Sydney to London. You have two choices for a meal before you board the plane.

1.??????A dozen fresh Sydney rock oysters

2.??????A MacDonald’s burger and fries

I think it’s fair to say that the oysters would be considered to be the “better “meal of the two. Yet the vast majority would opt for the burger & fries. You see, the risk of having a bad oyster before boarding a long-haul flight holds unthinkable misery. It’s burger every time! That’s defensive decision making.

It is undoubtedly true that the B2B buyer might genuinely believe that they are seeking the optimum solution with the ubiquitous RFx process.

There will be lots of detailed questions and an elaborate scoring mechanism to ensure that the very best solution is rationally and logically selected.

But what are they really doing?

I would argue that the outsourced RFx process is a masterful piece of defensive decision making. It has three wonderful things going for it:

·????????It has the appearance of rationality

·????????If it all goes wrong you can blame the 3rd party evaluator

·????????A personal Teflon coating

I have a theory that this is the reason why so many large organisations get the big consulting houses to run their RFx processes.

If you hire Deloitte, Accenture or Cap Gemini and it goes horribly wrong, they get blamed.

If you hire ACME Consulting and it hits the fan, you get blamed for not hiring Deloitte!

So you see, with something as complex as business software where relative strengths and weaknesses between offerings blur and fear of blame is a powerful factor it pays to do a couple of things to stand apart from the usual suspects.

·????????Avoid the Product Delusion. What really makes you different? Tell a different story from everyone else.

·????????Embrace Defensive Decision Making. Make and keep promises. This is how trusted brands are built.

Or, to put it another way.

Don’t be sweet, brown and fizzy or a plate of oysters.