Let’s face it, there comes a time when some applications just aren’t competitive anymore.  In this business, it’s very true that you ‘can’t put lipstick on a pig’.

Recently I worked with an organization that was trying to increase market share with an application that was Windows based in a marketplace where their main competitors were offering the same functionality either with off-site hosted/ software as a service or as a web enabled deployment model.

The CEO of this company solicited feedback as to how they could increase market share and we were able to help them - but not much - due to the changed landscape of their market place.  What was worse, the CEO got rather upset when he was told that the product was no longer competitive due to the reasons above and a few others (like missing functionality that product management was incapable of building because the application because they were too busy fixing issues in the existing feature set). 

We were able to increase revenues with upselling existing customers modules of the Windows application to their existing deployments and increase interest in the brand with some good old fashioned SEO and a new website. This was a short term, sugar coated fix to a bigger problem. 

However, when it came right down to it, that software was not longer saleable in the marketplace in my (and other’s opinion) and the time had come to put the company in maintenance mode or invest in a whole new, web enabled product line.  This was a decision that was clear to most, but not easy for this CEO to make.

Ego, jobs and personal interest in a publicly traded company were larger issues.

To make matters worse, this organization remained convinced that if they could just hire some really good sales people, that they could blow the doors off and grow revenues dramatically. 

We tried that and failed, despite best in class efforts. 

I told them that the business has to be a team effort…that product management and sales need to collaborate in order to bring products to market that people needed and wanted.  This wasn’t happening and it caused a chasm of communication internally.

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t like it when Sales is constantly complaining that “if I only had certain features I could sell more”.

This wasn’t the case here - sales couldn’t sell anything new because it was missing some major elements available from other vendors, for less money.

I think the lesson here is if you are considering a position with any company, you really owe it to yourself to see if you’re being hired to put lipstick on a pig.

Look closely at the competitive landscape, do your research and compare other vendors to your prospective employer and see what’s going on out there.  Make sure their value message matches the viability of the product or service.  You don’t need the stress of being hired only to find out that your product isn’t saleable and have the entire management team tell you that you’re failing, it’s your fault sales aren’t happening and you’re not as good as you think. 

~Brooks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 6:36 am and is filed under Jobs, Marketing, Sales Reps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.