5/ The reality is that, while a vendor is focused on absurd metrics like the Total Addressable Market and tactics to displace competing products, an end-user organization buys and uses multiple products, each best fitting the worldview and problem-solving approach of diff groups.

6/ This asymmetry can be seen even in roadmaps. For example: product integration is end-users’ 1st priority, but the last priority for vendors. “Integration” is just an industry term for co-existence & cooperation. Customers know they’ll keep using alternatives and need a plan.

7/ One vendor commits to integrating only if the other vendor is committing, too. But without initial market demand nobody does anything. Except that the market demand is there. It’s just filtered out by the indoctrinated mind that can’t accept anything but absolute domination.

8/ All of this results in incredibly ineffective sales. The field pitches for one solution that will replace all existing alternatives (as soon as the end-user “sees the light”) and doesn’t see any business value in promoting the integration with those alternatives.

9/ This happens both between two products belonging to the same technology wave, and between products belonging to different technology waves. The old has to be exterminated as much as the alternative new.

10/ After decades of this dynamic unfolding over and over, a sane person would have acknowledged that people are wired in different ways and that they are not going to change that behaviour. The same sane person would have then started focusing only on finding like-minded people.

11/ If you can’t convert the entire market to the approach used by your solution, then maybe it’s more effective to find people that naturally embrace that approach. The shift in skills & tooling goes from “convincing” to “identifying”. But no. Stubbornly we keep selling to all.

12/ It doesn’t matter if you are in engineering, product management, marketing, or sales. You might want to pay renewed attention to the reality of, well, everything around you. Not just the customers’ environment but also your own personal environment.

One day, we’ll wake up realizing that we don’t own anything anymore.

https://t.co/EQ6pvDAv10

13/ Then ask yourself if it’s effective to keep designing, building, and selling products with the assumption that they will replace every alternative in that environment. Maybe there’s a better way that increases customer satisfaction AND profits?