Yes required to get the sales, but that doesn't mean the market needs it or is asking for it.
Features are used to distinguish yourself from the competition and the remaining task is then to convince the market they should go for it.
This is really marketing 101.
jan
DF96, that was a very sensible input. You KNOW what it takes to run your own business, and how some people thought that you were 'ripping them off' when you would not do extra effort for little return.
Many people here think the same way as some of your former clients: They think that we can compete, in small scale, with mass produced product prices, kind of like a Bentley should cost nearly the same as a Lincoln town car. It just is NOT realistic.
Also, audio, being a relatively easy market to get into, unlike autos, etc. tends to admit a significant number of advanced laymen who think that they can 'make a killing' selling whatever they are offering. They come and they go. This does not mean that everybody in the audio business is misguided or a 'crook'.
Now here is an example of a 'crook': A number of years ago at CES there was a guy from South America who showed a bunch of different audio products that were enhanced by 'snake's blood'. He had pictures of 'atoms' showing the improvement, and he had, what appeared to be Korean made electronics of modest origin. He also insisted that he could remove the noise of magnetic tape with this process.
So here are John Atkinson and I independently listening to this guy give his spiel. He was GOOD! But not good enough to convince us, or many others. He came back one other year, and then disappeared forever. That is part of the audio experience, but a rare find among the many sincere offerings at CES.
To be amazingly successful in audio, you have to catch a wave of enthusiasm.
This happened in the 1950's with the Acoustic Research loudspeaker, because it would fit on a bookshelf, and perfect for stereo. Principals became millionaires.
In the 1970's, Mark Levinson came out with the first 'really good sounding' solid state audio preamp, the JC-2, and ultimately, he made a lot of money.
In the 1980's, Noel Lee founded Monster Cable, and he is now a multi-millionaire.
And so forth, but most of us don't do more than eke out a living at audio.
There is little money in it, especially today, with I-this and I-that creating today's 'wave'.
Many people here think the same way as some of your former clients: They think that we can compete, in small scale, with mass produced product prices, kind of like a Bentley should cost nearly the same as a Lincoln town car. It just is NOT realistic.
Also, audio, being a relatively easy market to get into, unlike autos, etc. tends to admit a significant number of advanced laymen who think that they can 'make a killing' selling whatever they are offering. They come and they go. This does not mean that everybody in the audio business is misguided or a 'crook'.
Now here is an example of a 'crook': A number of years ago at CES there was a guy from South America who showed a bunch of different audio products that were enhanced by 'snake's blood'. He had pictures of 'atoms' showing the improvement, and he had, what appeared to be Korean made electronics of modest origin. He also insisted that he could remove the noise of magnetic tape with this process.
So here are John Atkinson and I independently listening to this guy give his spiel. He was GOOD! But not good enough to convince us, or many others. He came back one other year, and then disappeared forever. That is part of the audio experience, but a rare find among the many sincere offerings at CES.
To be amazingly successful in audio, you have to catch a wave of enthusiasm.
This happened in the 1950's with the Acoustic Research loudspeaker, because it would fit on a bookshelf, and perfect for stereo. Principals became millionaires.
In the 1970's, Mark Levinson came out with the first 'really good sounding' solid state audio preamp, the JC-2, and ultimately, he made a lot of money.
In the 1980's, Noel Lee founded Monster Cable, and he is now a multi-millionaire.
And so forth, but most of us don't do more than eke out a living at audio.
There is little money in it, especially today, with I-this and I-that creating today's 'wave'.
jan.didden said:
Jan, i'm not sure that still applies as much today, many manufacturers (the smart ones) will elicit feedback as to what people want in the development phase, as well as researching forums and reading head to head reviews with their product or competitors products, sending pre-release samples out for review, reading and participating in appreciation threads for their product on various forums and noticing what the customers really like, what they are asking for, or lamenting the lack of.
They may also endeavour to find why they have lost sales to perhaps lesser products etc. previously this may have taken the shape of surveys or something I guess and refreshes of products happened nowhere near the rate they do today.
mr_push_pull said:
I know, but I couldnt help dissecting it and adding my own joke at the end.
to an individual yes, a question framed as such can only be answered one way or the other, but it still a matter of opinion. Some people really do believe that. the conversation was hardly that cut and dried, it was such a conversation that you yourself would have been forced to have an opinion of your own, which may not be aligned 100% with either of us.
=) I can guess
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Providing for free to one customer what other customers were very happy to pay for is not good business, and would lack integrity (unless the particular customer was a special case such as a charity, which it wasn't). We often gave customers free advice; we didn't do free training because for every hour I stood in front of a class I had several hours of preparation. I tried to spread the cost of preparation over many customers by charging them a 'per student' fee on top of the time charge. All except this one customer were happy to pay on this basis - they wanted not only free preparation but also highly-specialised training at an hourly rate more appropriate to jobbing programming. I would have lacked integrity if I agreed to this.M Knight said:
Money doesn't come into it. It's about serving your customers. They aren't all going to be the same. Let satisfaction at a job well done rather than resentment be your guide. Give the customer what he wants.
you have to accept though that the industry products are sometimes superior. basic logic and facts tell us so. IMO used prices of commercial products give DIY a hard time. of course, given that price is the only issue involved. and this may be the real issue: is one willing to accept a few failures for a long-term learning experience? don't tell me that filling a few values in some free software gives you the perfect speaker, forever.
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it doesnt sound like the customer deserved such a favor. the customer wanted something for nothing on an ongoing basis by the sounds of it.
yeah Space Egg Corp, that does sound pretty naive to me. I love DIY and have made some superb gear unlike what I could get elsewhere, but there are also some things that I could not even hope to achieve given infinite time
yeah Space Egg Corp, that does sound pretty naive to me. I love DIY and have made some superb gear unlike what I could get elsewhere, but there are also some things that I could not even hope to achieve given infinite time
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there is the knack, the fun factor, a bit of masochism and the willing to learn by doing mistakes. and (but that doesn't happen until a lot of experience is gained) there is the confidence that one can build a better product.
I can only assume you have never run a business.M Knight said:
If I do freebies (or cheapies) for one customer he will tell other customers. They will all demand freebies/cheapies. Business goes bust. Then none of them get any help from me at any price.
In this case all customers were (more or less) the same: UK power stations, their suppliers, and their headquarters engineering people. One training officer in one power station did not understand our pricing model, and objected to paying (for very specialised training) less than he would have to pay for very generic (e.g. Word, Excel) IT training from other people. He wouldn't budge. I wouldn't budge. His power station staff received no training. A single mistake by any of them, caused by lack of training, could easily have cost tens or hundreds of times what the training would have cost. Up to the customer to run his own business.
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