Transparent principle (software business)
Release Date: 4/15/2005
| Update Date: 4/15/2005
Eric SinkSourceGear Software Engineer
Summary: ERIC claims that if ISV is unwilling to trust its customers, they will have no customers. (This article contains some links to English sites.)
Dear readers, once again, please pay attention, I am not Microsoft employees, I have seen this in the past two years, the world has seen a different gesture from the Microsoft Development Tool Group. They are already open. This movement is called "transparent". Some people tell me that the leadership of this concept is directly from senior vice president of server and tool Eric Rudder.
This transparent concept can be seen from many different ways, including their community technology preview and product feedback centers. But the most obvious change may be a number of network logs that Microsoft fans are nowhere. I have read a web log written by Microsoft employee every day soon. Today's Microsoft Network log is so much, I can't read it all. Only Scoble can read so many materials. :-)
In this column, I want to study the concept of transparency, discuss why it is also important to a small ISV.
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Magic for selling software 1. Has a web log 2. Provide web-based forums 3. Do not hide products 4. Don't irritate honest people 5. Provide a relaxed demo version to download 6. Provide refund guarantees 7. Sharing a little Financial status 8. Talk to your future plan You may want to maintain an opaque thing that I advocate in an opaque?
Magic selling software
If you think about the essence of ISV, you will find something magical. Throughout the history of records, most products are tangible. When I bought a land, I can plant grains above. When I buy a table saw, I can use it to saw the wooden board. When I bought an orange shirt, I might wear neat, I am going to watch the Illinois basketball game. These products are tangible.
Instead, the software is a digital form of intellectual property products, but a string is just a byte that is arranged in a certain correct order. In fact, in Sourcegear, most of our sales do not involve any physical things. Money flows into our T-1 line, and the product flows out from it. Sometimes it looks like magic. Customers bought some completely invisible things, and I paid to our real money.
However, as proverbs said, there will be no money on the tree. Whether the customer is to buy software, the gun is still butter, all product purchases need to have a certain degree of trust in the product before making a painful decision for separating their money. As a customer, different types of products need to feel different trusts. Buying a car is a transaction with a high trust. Buy a paperboard? Don't need much.
I noticed that buying software is close to the "high trust" end in this section. When people buy software from your ISV, they are expected to have a lot of things, and there is also the future:
• They believe your product will work on their computer. • They believe that if they encounter problems, you will help them. • They believe you will continue to improve your products. • They believe you will provide them with a reasonable and fair price to get those improved versions. • They believe that you will not terminate business quickly.
Therefore, by requiring customers to pay for your software, you will ask a lot. You want them to trust you. But how much is your trust?
In order to show my intentions, this metaphor is to be approved, and I compare the relationship between ISV / customer relationship with two people. If there is no "mutual" trust, the relationship has no effect. If one party wants to be trust but does not want to give trust, the relationship will naturally fail.
Therefore, I often see some software entrepreneurs do not want to trust their customers. Indeed, trusting others will make us vulnerable. Just like interpersonal relationships, trust is a risk. We may be hurt. But if there is no trust, the relationship will not work at all. Transparent is a trust of ISV on customers. By letting customers see behind the company's veil, you have expanded their trust in them and make them easier to trust you.
There is a chain restaurant called Steak-N-Shake in the US Central Western Region, which seems to understand the meaning of transparency. Its slogan is "in Sight It Must Be Right". Its concept is if you let the customer watch you prepare the food, you will not accidentally fell some strange things to the meal.
If you think this is still nothing, please bear it. In the following sections, I will discuss the ISV can trust eight ways of their customers through transparency.
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1. Have a network log
When I as another ISV customer, I hope to view the web log:
• I don't want to listen to those traditionally processed marketing sounds. I want to listen to the real people tell their company and their products in the first person. • I am not interested in the news manuscript that references a small CEO. I hope that all things will be cited CEO. • I don't want to listen to those who have introduced to me. I want to read materials written by the actual developers of the product.
The network log provides me a way to see people behind the product.
The network log is not always a taste - this is what I need to clarify. Many web logs are written by those who need to talk to the world due to life. Others keep writing network logs is to talk about their religious or political views, or form an extended family through the daily photos of their children. These are not the "log" in my mind.
What I recommend here is that most people call the "company network log" style. The aim is to provide a personal look of people behind the product, but do not "too" personalization. It can make people know who you are, but most of them still stay on the topic. Mainly to write your company and your product, not the secret details of your life.
If you are working in a small ISV, consider writing a web log, but please write it on your own point. Writing a network log is much more difficult than it looks. It needs to pay a lot of time and effort. But when it is completed, a network log can be a superior way to make your company more transparent.
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2. Provide web-based forums
You and your customers make up a community. What kind of community do you want? Do you want to live in a place where everyone stays at home to watch the "legal and order" replayed environment? Or you are still willing to come outdoors, enjoy the air, praise the lawn of the neighbor, and then sympathize with gas prices?
The easiest thing you can do for your customers is to provide them with a place to talk to them. People like to speak, especially when they have some kind of common feelings. A simple web-based forum can provide such a place.
The greatness of this forum is that it allows both communication:
• First, your customers can talk to you. They can ask questions when they need help. They can tell you the defect. They can request new features. They can complain when they are angry. • Second, your customers can talk to each other. They can get sympathy when your product is annoying. They can help each other.
When everything is working properly, the result will have a great advantage to you and your customers. Active community will increase the overall appeal of your product.
However, the actual community is a strange thing. You can't force it to appear, but you will undoubtedly prevent it from happening. The basic principle is to provide infrastructure and clear obstacles:
• Make people easy to post comments or requests. Use the good forum software that does not hinder everyone. • Encourage everyone in your company to actively participate. If your developer is actively involved in discussions, the community will be better. • Do a gentle mediation. Delete personal attacks or miles of materials, but don't just remove posts because of complaining your products. (If they complain, it is because they care, you may do that there is such shortcomings. Let them complain, and do your products better.) By the way, I will do a free advertisement for my friend of Telligent Systems. If you need a good web log or forum software, they have. (I didn't connect to the company.)
Provide a place to talk about your product, even if you don't always like what they talk about. This is a good way to show you your trust.
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3. Do not hide the product
As I mentioned above, software customers generally want to know that the product will be steadily improved in the future.
Of course, this rule also has some exceptions. Last week, I spent $ 20 I bought a computer scrabble. For this situation, the future upgrade is not important to me. I just want to play this game according to the present form. Unless I discover some terrible defects, I will not really hope that the supplier will provide me to upgrade.
But most software products are not like this. When people buy Vault from us, they will generally ask questions about the future of the product. They intend to use our products for a long time, they just want to know that we will have always improved the product.
But users don't just want you to maintain improved products, they usually care about the product will grow and mature. They want to be guaranteed, that is, the product will be more and more "deep", not just more and more "wide". I define these terms as follows:
1. The product attracts new users, it is "wide". 2. The product is better for existing users, it is "deep".
The general way to make the product is to add more features. To reach a new customer area usually means that the product has added a new feature. For example, we are currently adding Eclipse integration features for Vault. Although some have some customers have requested this feature, its main motivation is to attract new customers.
The problem is that ISV is easy to fall into a bad habit of making its products getting wider and deeper. The link between "new features" and "new profit" is easy to see, but it is difficult to make an existing customer happy and difficult to become a business case.
However, we intuitively know that if our customers are not happy, we will encounter trouble. So you must extrude time in your small ISV, do something that keeps current customers:
• What is your product improvement? Just can I use, or is it shiny? • Did you find time to fix low priority and priority defects? Or do you fix an emergency and high priority defects and ignore other questions? • Do you spend development time makes the product more elegant and faster, and is more easier to use? Or are you forgotten when you got their money?
So what is my point of view? YES: Companies that try to hide its products are usually those companies that do not correct these issues.
There is no perfect software product. All products have problems. The only problem is that the supplier is not amending them. By publicizing your product, you have identified your own companies that are willing to take responsibility to fix those questions. This is the kind of customer who can trust.
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4. Don't be angry with honest people
First, let me know, I do to believe that achieving a mechanism to help users follow the license terms of the product for most ISVs. I call this mechanism as "license forced code".
But let us not hide here. The license forced code is a terrible waste. We spend time and money for design, implementation, and testing, just like any other characteristics of the product. But this "characteristic" did not add any benefits to users.
So I believe that don't walk too far in the containment of licensing code. The purpose should be just "honesty to keep honest." If we far more than this, there will only be two cases: 1. We are doing a battle that is impossible to win. Those who want to deceive will win. 2. We have hurt honest users because it makes the product difficult to use.
Be sure to optimize your products for honest users, they are the most common situation. The license enforcement code should be simple and set. You tell you that you don't trust them by including the license forced code. Don't blame this news, whispered. Because this is worthless of honest users, the best thing you can do is not hurting them.
All SourceGear products use a simple serial number as a basic license. We try to make this feature completely painless. But I have to admit that we can only go back to advance to achieve goals.
When we publish Vault 1.0, we include a "product activation" system that prevents people from using the same Vault serial number on both servers. We want to hate the product is activated even if everyone hates the product, and we can also worry, because Microsoft is doing this. ("This is not our fault! It is Microsoft initiated!")
But the situation is not developed according to our expected development. First, Microsoft Products activation scheme is not as bad as I think. In principle, I still hate this concept, but I have to admit that Microsoft's product activation has never given me any actual inconvenience. I have purchased a new PC for my family a few months ago. I bought a new Windows and Office copy, in two cases, product activation works.
On the other hand, SourceGear's experience on product activation is very unsatisfactory. This "function" can work properly, but it is really amazing when it doesn't work. Several times I tried to help customers solve the activation problem in the phone. It is a bad thing to install the product because of stupid configuration. However, due to the small fault of our license to enforce code, the customer cannot install the product is poor ten times. Sometimes it is really embarrassed.
Product activation has improved our technical support, annoying our customers, let us maintain more code. If we have received the benefits of any product activation, then they are also invisible. We have dropped it in the Vault 3.0 version. Not just to make more trust customers, but also reduce a lot of work.
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5. Provide a relaxed demo version download
Now this has become a standard, which seems to be a bit boring: provide a demo version to download so that people can try your product before buying. I have a skeptic attitude towards the current policy of any serious ISVs, that is, customers always have to pay to see the product.
Although there is no doubt about "whether" offers the demo version download, there is still a lot of problems to be discussed for your "how". High trust is like this:
1. Use a time-limited demo version instead of a functional restriction version. (People who use "disabling software" as a demonstration version unwilling to trust me, so I don't trust them.) 2. Don't ask people to register to see the demo version. (I want to assess your product, not your confidential rules.) 3. Don't try to make people agree not to talk about your product. (I tried to stop me from talking about what I want to hide, I can't trust.)
The way you handle online demo version is another chance to show your customer.
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6. Provide refund guarantee
Maybe for an ISV, the best trust is said to be a refund guarantee. If it is for some reason, they have changed their thoughts after deciding to purchase, they stop using the product, and you return their money back. It is usually given for sale 30 days for this decision, sometimes longer. The motivation of this policy is very simple: you make them easier to enter the relationship with the ISV by eliminating all the risks of our customers.
Refund assurance will significantly improve your company's transparency. Now your potential customers will see everything you can see. They can trial products, consult technical support and feelings. If anything is unsatisfactory, they only need to click "Withwitching" to get a refund. This policy looks great, but actual evidence is always displayed. I have discussed many ISVs that provide refund assurances, they all said: Only few people ask for refund, and a lot of people experience greater trust in their products.
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7. Share a little financial status information
When I purchased software from a small ISV, I usually want to know all the circumstances of the company's finance:
• Is the company profitable? • How many cash is it? How much debt? • What type of company? Who is the owner? • Do they have external investors? • Is the founder to participate in the operation? Her / do he still have an appropriate amount of ordinary stocks?
I think I have to be more than most people. I understand the situation of ISV operations, so I always find that I want to know all details.
I don't recommend you to expose all this information. However, sharing some carefully selected Jane sometimes improves customer trust to your company. A large number of software companies failed to survive. Customers want to know if your company can stick to it. If your company manages appropriate, operates earnings, please let people know.
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8. Talk about your future planning
Traditional wisdom tells us not to make a promise that cannot be kept. This is a good advice, I agree.
But some people explain this advice to don't do any promise. I believe we can do better. Customers are really "thinking" knowing your future plan. They want to know what new improvements will be in the next version, and the new version will be launched. When they ask these questions, I am sure that "things" can be said?
Please keep the promise is always low and redemption is high. As long as you care about this principle, you can talk to our customers to your future versions.
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You may want to keep an opaque way
At this point, the trust and vulnerability I have discussed seems to be ridiculous. As a response to those who may (maybe understand), I will say two people who have been diagnosed as a madness, I will say two things:
First, I don't need to hope that every ISV is implemented every suggestion I have listed above. As usual, please use common sense to judge my suggestion to the extent of "your" situation.
Second, I don't want any ISV "complete" transparent. Even if you have implemented all the above points, there will still be a lot of things you might want to keep private.
For example, customers do not need to know your actual profitability and income numbers. They don't need to access internal databases you use to track work items or technical support notes. They don't need to listen to your team about what priority to the defects they report.
Just like without mutual trust, you can't work, there is no proper limit, and they will not work.
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Practice what I advocated
When I wrote this article, I felt a conscience crisis. I can say sincerely, now Sourcegear is doing well in 7 points above 8:00. However, when I wrote this article, I was able torture me again.
Since I founded the company in 1997, we have been selling software products in accordance with the statement of "non-refund" policy. We encourage potential customers to take advantage of our 30-day display time and generously extended time when they need. We hope that people spend a lot of time before buying, thus avoiding refunds.
Overall, this method is effective, but not the best. We even handed a refund for those who requested refund, although our website clearly stated our "non-refund" policy. Real reason is that although we have clearly strict policies, we don't want to accept people who don't like our products. We did not receive a lot of refund requirements, but I can't imagine that we refused customers to refund the situation in a reasonable time.
Therefore, our policy is inconsistent with our practices, and when the refund really occurs, there is no standard procedure to process in a consistent manner. In addition, our "non-refund" policy we declare has made us look unfriendly. I doubt, for some people, this increases their credibility of our credibility. It's time to change now. Sourcegear's policy will provide 30 days return guarantee, and take effect immediately. I don't want to use details to use the details, all inside, can be found on our company website. I will share this with everyone just because I have some revelation of the reader on the transparent experience.
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Substantive problem
After each article is published, I usually listen to people's opinions, they want to discuss problems with me. This time I want to try and guide the discussion to the right place:
• If you want to talk about SourceGear products, please visit our open forum. • If you want to discuss the principles and recommendations in this article, join Joel Spolsky Forum Site, I will host a forum called The Business Of Software here. • If you want to discuss how the Illinois basketball team performs "great" this year, sometimes I will go to illiniboard.com. :-)
I will end this article at the last suggestion. If you like, you can invisibility around the details, but don't avoid this theme: If you are not willing to trust your customers, you can't expect them to trust you. You may not like my suggestion. It's ok. But you still have to consider clear this principle to your situation.
Software business
Eric Sink is a non-legendary founder of SourceGear. The company is located in Illinois, is an ISV for business development tools. Eric is very fortunate to one of the few people who have been watching themselves. Although his seat is very rely. For more works and exciting speakers, please visit his web log: http://software.ericsink.com/.
