Enough Freeware — LET ME BUY! NOW!
OK Product Managers, listen up. The concept of freeware is great. I love freeware. I love trials. I love getting started.
But stop taking this too far. When I want to buy, LET ME BUY! NOW!
To illustrate the point, right now I’m working on a survey to help us better understand how our early customers are using our first online Innovation Game, Buy a Feature online. Since there are a lot survey tools out there, I thought I’d just use the tool that our partner, Pragmatic Marketing, uses for their annual Product Management survey.
Sure enough, there is a link to the tool they use—Vovici. I clicked on the link from the Pragmatic site and got to the Vovici web site. I read the overview. Looks like it has what I need. I want to buy it. Ok, technically, I want to ‘rent’ their software for a one-time survey, but now’s not the time to split the buying vs. licensing of software hair.
Except, I can’t figure out how. Oh, sure, I can register for a free trial. Oh – wait. I can’t do that. I can fill out a form that enables one of their sales representatives to contact me to create a trial. Or I can request a call from a [sales] representative (same thing?). Or I can request a product demo.
But I just can’t buy the tool. Sorry, Vovici. When someone wants to BUY, LET THEM.
Self-service, here I come. SurveyMonkey, anyone?
October 18th, 2008 at 18 Oct 2008
The CPM saw similar behavior at a company where the sales people ruled the roost and were OFFENDED by the idea of self-service sales. Happened when the company was transitioning from a high-end enterprise software sales model to a open source-ish lower-end model.
Needless to say, the company continues to have all kinds of problems.