A good person doing sales will do anything for his customer, would even die for him. But a smart one, would ideally not be generous enough to sacrifice himself, he would rather kill for him. That way he saves his life as well as keeps his client happy. However stupid it might sound, i believe in this.
You will only be knowing too well if you have been doing enterprise sales that, the customer requirements in most of the cases are varied, diverse and would initially make it look as if you might have to change your entire product code base. For those who freshly entered the domain of enterprise sales, the temptation to go ahead perform this rather suicidal move to change the product, in dire need to satisfy and gain at least one customer would sound lucrative. At times the move might have won them the customers confidence and at times it might have broken the the entire product. In either ways the move leads only to a loss loss situation. if it was the former case it would lead to a situation in which the product would have attained a highly customized state and would require several weeks if not months of roll back in order to get back to a generic state with which you could approach the next customer. If it was the latter then well, you did not even manage to get that one customer and because of the amount of work you already put in to customize it and then the amount of work required to roll back, what you essentially did is dig a long pit in which you voluntarily jumped and buried yourself.
So do i mean to say that we should never think about customization to client requirements? Nope, no customization, means we will not get even potential clients. Customization to client requirements is essential. After all, the guy will only be interested in a product that solves his problem.
Recently i attended a conference in which the speaker came up with an interesting point. i think that answers this dilemma. Know when to say "no". When ever you go in for a pitch always have a list of things in your mind that you will never accept to. If you are a die hard sales guy then get this input from your tech team. Make an effort to know when a particular customization / feature request would throw your product in the doldrums. Productizing is a complex subject altogether. Do not complicate things further by accepting unreasonable things that will throw your product into a turmoil. In other words do not martyr yourself and your company in order to win a client.
Now if you are really smart then try to find the root issue the client is trying to solve by requesting such an unreasonable feature. Then try to find a workaround for this unreasonable request, that will not affect your core product drastically and that will at the same time solve the clients problems. In other words look at plugins, connectors, integrators, extension packs and if possible a child product / parent wrapper product that will address the situation aptly and elegantly. If you have a product whose primary and only scope is to sends emails to individuals, and a client wants to send bulk emails through it, then don't bother to touch your base product. Write a plugin wrapper that will do bulk emails.
Most of the time when we start on a product we have a clear vision on what common minimum denominator it tries to address. The trick is to remember this common denominator when ever we go to a client. A Smart sales person will do a Steve jobs act. He will preach to the client what they really require, this will definitely be addressed by the common denominator(If it does not then you have an incomplete product.) Then he will sell the sizzler in the form of extensions / plugins that will not affect the integrity of the base product but then , will solve the clients requirements. I see this as the only sane and scalable way in which we can sell to clients having varied requirements, and at the same time maintain a complete base product that is stable and unbiased to any particular client's special needs.
You will only be knowing too well if you have been doing enterprise sales that, the customer requirements in most of the cases are varied, diverse and would initially make it look as if you might have to change your entire product code base. For those who freshly entered the domain of enterprise sales, the temptation to go ahead perform this rather suicidal move to change the product, in dire need to satisfy and gain at least one customer would sound lucrative. At times the move might have won them the customers confidence and at times it might have broken the the entire product. In either ways the move leads only to a loss loss situation. if it was the former case it would lead to a situation in which the product would have attained a highly customized state and would require several weeks if not months of roll back in order to get back to a generic state with which you could approach the next customer. If it was the latter then well, you did not even manage to get that one customer and because of the amount of work you already put in to customize it and then the amount of work required to roll back, what you essentially did is dig a long pit in which you voluntarily jumped and buried yourself.
So do i mean to say that we should never think about customization to client requirements? Nope, no customization, means we will not get even potential clients. Customization to client requirements is essential. After all, the guy will only be interested in a product that solves his problem.
Recently i attended a conference in which the speaker came up with an interesting point. i think that answers this dilemma. Know when to say "no". When ever you go in for a pitch always have a list of things in your mind that you will never accept to. If you are a die hard sales guy then get this input from your tech team. Make an effort to know when a particular customization / feature request would throw your product in the doldrums. Productizing is a complex subject altogether. Do not complicate things further by accepting unreasonable things that will throw your product into a turmoil. In other words do not martyr yourself and your company in order to win a client.
Now if you are really smart then try to find the root issue the client is trying to solve by requesting such an unreasonable feature. Then try to find a workaround for this unreasonable request, that will not affect your core product drastically and that will at the same time solve the clients problems. In other words look at plugins, connectors, integrators, extension packs and if possible a child product / parent wrapper product that will address the situation aptly and elegantly. If you have a product whose primary and only scope is to sends emails to individuals, and a client wants to send bulk emails through it, then don't bother to touch your base product. Write a plugin wrapper that will do bulk emails.
Most of the time when we start on a product we have a clear vision on what common minimum denominator it tries to address. The trick is to remember this common denominator when ever we go to a client. A Smart sales person will do a Steve jobs act. He will preach to the client what they really require, this will definitely be addressed by the common denominator(If it does not then you have an incomplete product.) Then he will sell the sizzler in the form of extensions / plugins that will not affect the integrity of the base product but then , will solve the clients requirements. I see this as the only sane and scalable way in which we can sell to clients having varied requirements, and at the same time maintain a complete base product that is stable and unbiased to any particular client's special needs.