Laura’s Winning Ideas

On the one hand, I love it when I find an echo of things I’ve been saying for years in someone else’s work. On the other hand, I wish I’d written this post.

On the blog, Creating Passionate Users, a post about Avoiding the Features is a great one.

When I’m working on a proposal, we don’t spend time talking about the competition. I hear some proposal teams do. That’s a mistake the winners don’t make.

It isn’t about “keeping up” or “getting ahead,” as much as it’s about “delivering the right stuff.” This requires a rigid focus on the proposal recipient (customer). When you do this well, you don’t have to play catch-up on features of your offering.

Too often focusing on the customer seems much harder than adding features and playing follow the leader with your competition. Here’s when proposal leaders are considered mean — we want to dig into the needs and desires of the customer, and couldn’t care less about what the competition is doing. The inventive and expert in your technology or engineering groups think we’re daft.

After all, more is always better, right?

STORY 1

When the first PalmPilot came out it was doomed. It didn’t have the features of the Apple Newton, that had failed a year before. It’s features were limited and the price was steep. However, it succeeded spectacularly because it did only what the target customer needed, and nothing more. It fit in a shirt pocket. It synchronized your address book, calendar and task list. Not much else.

Humph. That little gizmo replaced the 8.5 lb. industrial strength dayplanner I carried with me everywhere. When I travelled, I slept with it because the notebook had no backup. If anything happened to that dayplanner, I was out of business.

My first PDA weighed 4 oz. and it was a backed up on my computer harddrive. It was a dream come true for a real customer. And you’ll have to pry my PDA out of my cold dead hand.

STORY 2

My husband and I each have a cell phone. I carry a PDA phone and I adore having everyone’s phone numbers in my cell phone and up to date. I use all the features and trade invented tricks with other accomplished users.

My husband never reads the owner’s manual for his phone. He doesn’t know what/whether/how it does anything, and he relies on his own memory for phone numbers he wants to call.

Imagine the problem when I was comparing Sprint (my carrier) with Verizon (his carrier) to determine which service we should use for both our phones. The poor service reps were confused. First, I had plenty of questions about the equipment available for me. We were digging into technical detail, and I had them replicating tasks with their sample phone.

Then, we start going over equipment for my husband. I stopped them when they started explaining how many different ring tones…resolution of the camera…speed dial…etc. Just a phone. It needs to ring loud, and the buttons should be large enough to avoid having to put on reading glasses to dial. Not too small or it gets lost or crushed. KISS

We’re happy as clams. I wouldn’t be caught with his phone because geeks have to know where to draw the line. And I’m not sure he could figure out how to answer my phone.