I am struggling with how to sell less as more. The idea that if software is more limited than it’s competitors, that is actually more valuable. We make Carousel, a digital signage product. It has a very focused vision. We resist adding features into it because many features stray from it’s vision. However, competitors have 20 more feature bullet points than we do.

This drives our sales staff crazy. They are always saying ‘We need to add X into the product because everyone else does it.’ This is NOT healthy for the product. A prime example is we were working with a customer that our product was were perfect for but they *required* the digital signage system import MS Word files. Our sales staff asked if that is something development could do. The stupidity of that feature made my head explode. I couldn’t believe that the customer, our competitors, and anyone else involved in the digital signage industry could think that is a good idea. I’ll rant more on the absurdity of this later. The point is, we couldn’t compete on this feature. We were going to loose out on a huge sale. It kills sales people to pass on such a perfect opportunity. We needed to educate the customer and the sales team.

Our product is better because it does less.

How can we sell this concept. If the customer says they *need* Word support we can’t tell them ‘Sir, that is ridiculous, and we can’t believe you’re suggesting it’. We CAN tell them that they maybe need to take a closer look at their workflow.

Our vision is simple, easy to use digital signage. Adding Word support to get 1 big sale would compromise that principal. If the product is based on a truly solid concept, it will stand the test of time and feature creep. In the software business it’s tough because there is always something new to link into, support, or add. And adding features to software is often pretty easy.

I’ve found that people respond well to the concept that there are some features we will never put into our product.

We need to diligently protect our product vision.