Software and Sushi are two of my favourite things.

I like the customizability of sushi meals. There’s always a sushi meal that fits with my appetite. I also like the inexpensiveness of sushi. Or actually the inexpensive price per item. Three Euros for a Temaki, two for an Uramaki, etc. Low price per item means low pain in the buying process. Moreover I like the zenlike design of sushi sets.

Like with the sushi, some software editors offer component-based software, where clients choose from a “menu” the modules they need.

Sushi restaurants & software companies success factors:

1.     High quality components

2.     “A la carte” pricing

3.     Product design

Brain science recently discovered that purchase decisions are processed in less-evolved areas of our brain.

Therefore, product buying process, is processed by the same brain-area interested in basic matters like reproduction. Emotions make our customers buy even complex products like software.

Rational thought leads customers to be interested but it is emotion that sells. People, engineers included, aren’t much interested in attributes and features; they want to know if the product, software included, fits with their personality.

Women have been used to sell products to men for decades.

IF         – Male brain is wired to respond to attractive females.

AND     – Engineering software are mainly used by young males

THEN   – Engineering companies should attract prospects with sexual marketing tactics

I wonder whether this would have real impact on sales. A study made by a Neuro-economics expert, (”Heat of the Moment: The Effect of Sexual Arousal on Sexual Decision Making”), shows that men who are sexually aroused are more focused on short-term gratification than on long-term logic.

Being a software buying process the outcome of a long term logic, I recommend No-Bikini in your marketing campaign. Professors at MIT say it won’t work.

People use either “Code” or “Software” as if they were synonyms. Sales-engineers often use “code“. Sales-non-engineers always use “software“.

The distinction between Code and Software is subtle. Programmers write codes, the list of statements that give instructions to computers. The software is the end product: what the users perceive.

When demoing the software, the above difference can be significant. It’s software what our customer is buying.

I’m wondering who is my customer.

In our Interlocked world, identifying the customer is not easy. From a sales person perspective, the customer might be the engineer who uses the software, or the IT person who tests it, or the manager who decides. There’s a whole team behind every customer. Users,  influencers and buyers are Linked-In, ruling other buyers.

From a sales manager’s point of view, the primary customer is the sales representative. Sales people are the intermediate buyers; they might see product benefits you have not considered yet.

An engineer of a company called me saying: “Our COO wants us to evaluate your software for our product design”. Then we set a meeting with him and the COO.

This morning I went there; a first technical meeting with the designers, before seeing the COO. They said the software would be used as an on-off application on a single project. They found the software difficult to learn, therefore they asked me for a quotation for a consultancy project. Then, the COO joined the meeting. I resumed what I was asked by his engineers, and this is what he said: “I don’t need you to design my product, I want my engineers to do that for all our products”. His engineers nodded in agreement.

Customers lie, for many personal reasons. Rephrasing the Newton’s law of inertia:

An object (an engineer) at rest (working in Research & Development) will remain at rest (will use the same technology, methods) unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force (unless their boss twists their ears).