Too Many Features!
by Paul McGoldrick
I was once the VP of Sales & Marketing at a company that had been spun off from one of the largest T&M companies in our business. The founders -- all but one a working engineer -- had some wonderful ideas about graphics products which, at the time, were way beyond what was available either in the stand alone graphics market or on plug in cards for PCs.
The VCs involved in funding the start-up, including the mover and shaker behind Costco, had other ideas. They wanted the team to get into competition with their alma mater. So they were forced into designing and making basic T&M equipment for the video industry.
The most difficult end of the system -- the display -- was handled by getting into bed with a Japanese manufacturer of oscilloscopes but then the fun began with the specifications for the products themselves. Because they could put them in, the designs included measurement systems that were extremely sophisticated using software (some under two button control) and display techniques that were completely different to previous work.
When I came on board things were in production for software-generated video test generators (in truly hideous black boxes) and designs were finalized for the first measuring devices.
Our principal sales person -- poached from the competition with promises that were later reneged on -- came in one day with a product from the competition and showed us the single circuit board design with the exclamation, "No guts! no glory!" Compared to our products they were, indeed, naked in the extreme. The only person not to laugh at the hilariousness of the competition's ineptness was me…
What I saw in that naked, basic design was simplicity -- and profitability. What I saw in our products was a plethora of features that only a design engineer would probably use, virtually laboratory instruments which would actually be used by basically-trained operators and sold at the price determined by the competition.
We sold instruments, to be sure, but that was nothing to do with all the features; it was, as with all selling, to do with the relationship between the seller and the buyer. People sell to people; people don't sell things.
Look at your feature set. How much is need, how much is ego? One way
or another every feature is going to cost the potential customer money.
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