Forum OpenACS Q&A: Marketing OpenACS to non-geeks

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Posted by Reuven Lerner on
I had a two-hour meeting yesterday with the bigwigs at an educational
institution in Jerusalem.  I told them about how we can use OpenACS to
make their Web site dynamic, to incorporate all sorts of cool
features, and maybe even use .LRN for course management.

The presentation went well overall, and it looks like positive things
are happening on that front -- but at the same time, it was clear that
my talk of dynamic sites, packages, databases, and the like went WAY
over their heads.  They didn't even quite understand what I meant when
I talked about Amaon.  I probably spent 30 minutes describing groups
and permissions in all sorts of different ways, giving examples of how
they could have private forums, moderated forums, and the like, to no
avail.

I've set up some applications on a subsite for my liaison to play with
over the coming week or two, and after we worked on that together for
an hour or so, he said, "I'm beginning to understand how powerful and
sophisticated this software is."  My guess is that people will only
understand what can be done with OpenACS when he says to them, "Look
what I was able to do on my own, without calling Reuven or paying him
to write any code!"

My clients, for the most part, are interested in the built-in OpenACS
capabilities, with perhaps 10-20 percent of the time spent on custom
application development.  They aren't hugely interested in the fact
that software development is easier and more modular with OpenACS.
They care about cheap, sophisticated applications.  (The fact that we
work with Unicode isn't clearly a win, since the graphic designers all
tell the managers that I'm a nut on that front, and that "no one" uses
Unicode.  Even though, of course, there's no other way to handle many
languages on a single page.)

I had already provided a list of sites using OpenACS.  But people are
easily distracted or fooled by the design, and they fail to understand
that OpenACS can look however they want.

So, does anyone have any good advice for how to sell OpenACS to
non-geeks?  What can (or should) I show them that will impress them?

Any and all advice will be appreciated!

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Posted by defunct defunct on
Hi,

Ahhh... this old chestnut.

I mean this in the nicest way possible, so please take it as constructive criticism, although I'm reliably informed my posts have a certain 'tone' to them... ;) (That right Pete?)

Anyway,as I'm sure any other salepeople here can tell you, you're going about it the wrong way round.Slipping into the vernacular for a moment.... 'bollox to the acs'... it doesn't matter if its the top-crack bit of tech at the moment or not.The kind of sales situation your in calls for a 'consultative' approach...

You are immediately doing your potential customers a disservive by pushing the technology into the discussion.By doing so you are not finding out what 'they' want but rather trying to persuade them to adopt what 'you' want. I accept that you are doing it from the best of motives (i.e. ensuring they have good software), but ultimately your still 'pushing' a product.

and lets face, no matter how well presented, polite and thoughful, no one likes a pushy salesman.

Yes, the OpenACS is fantastic.. that's almost self evident. So why are you pushing it at them? Try listening to what the customers real (or perceived) problems are. They are looking to you to help solve these.. Not find them.. there is an important distinction.

Instead of pushing the technology, why not benefit from the fact that you have a product that can solve their problems. This should give *you* confidence and allow you to present with confidence your understanding and ability to help them. This is how good consultative sales works.

People by solutions not software. I duno how many times thats been said but its soooooo true...

The best advice I can give you is to let the 'geeks' (unpleasant term that) bang on about the technology (its their job after all and they enjoy it) and focus instead on how you can do a good job for your clients..

Lets face it if you secure the sale they're going to benefit from the OpenACS anyway... which will in turn build their confidence in you.. and viola! you have repeat business and a loyal customer (and its 6 times easier to get business from existing cutomers)...

If you're resorting to tech to sell at that early stage, your already  saying to your customer 'I want you to do this' instead of 'You want to do that and I can help you effectively'.

Hope that helps (beleive me I've learnt this the hard way)

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Posted by Reuven Lerner on
Hi, Simon.  Your advice is more than welcome!

The meeting I'm describing was an unusual one for me; typically, I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what people want, and then try to match their needs with one of the technologies that I use.  (While I'm a big fan of OpenACS, I don't believe that there is only One True Technology out there, and I've certainly used my share of Zope, J2EE, and Perl/mod_perl over the years.)

In this particular case, I was brought in specifically to show people what OpenACS has to offer as a technology.    Perhaps I should have ignored that fact and tried to figure out what people wanted, but it's not quite as simple as that.

The basic story is as follows: One arm of this organization met with me about 10 months ago and was so persuaded by my description of OpenACS and how it could meet their needs that they decided to go with me.  At the same time, they realized that the initial administration of the system requires my help, and they can't quite afford that on their budget.  So this arm of the organization brought me in to speak with the management and educational staff, to discuss what OpenACS could do for them.

So I didn't know exactly who was coming, and I don't know what their plans are for a Web site from the other groups.  Indeed, they don't know what they want to do.  The only thing that they really know about the Web site is that the old one is ugly and the new one is nice looking.

So my task was basically to (a) introduce OpenACS, (b) tell them what they can do with a Web application, and (c) tell them why OpenACS  is good for this.

It's possible that I was setting myself up for failure, and/or that I should have spoken with people planning to attend this meeting before I made my presentation.  But all of the examples that I gave were concrete things that I know they want to do with their Web site -- but when I would give these examples, people would just look more confused, as if they weren't really sure they want to do these things.

And while it would have been nice to have a local geek with whom I could speak about technology, there isn't anyone who fits this description in the institution.  They have a network administrator (who isn't connected to this stuff), and they have a graphic designer (who hasn't ever worked on a database-backed site before).

Ah, well.  As I say, it was an unusual situation, and it went over OK overall despite the glazed looks on people's eyes.  And perhaps I should have come in with 10 or 20 practical uses for OpenACS that they could use in their own work, rather than encouraging them to allow their imaginations to run wild.  But I am still curious to hear how people describe OpenACS in a relatively short amount of time, particularly to folks who have never thought about the Web as anything more than a glorified brochure.