Confusion Is The Enemy and Inconsistency is His Ally

Pioneering a new market and introducing an innovative technology in the process invariably results in customer confusion, usually driven by a fairly predictable "I've never seen one of those before" reaction:

• What is a relational database and why would I need one when IMS is doing just fine?
• What is a business intelligence tool anyway why would I need it in addition to ReportSmith?
• What is a data warehouse and why would I need one in addition to my operational databases?
• What is search engine optimization and why should it matter to my marketing team?
• What is server virtualization and why would I care?
• What is a social network and why (in the world) would I want to part of one?

One of my top marketing rants is that pioneering new markets is difficult enough that vendors shouldn't make the task any harder by muddling their message along the way.   While this would seem obvious, it happens all the time.  Why?

• A diversity of internal opinion on how to describe the company and/or its product.  This is normal.
• A lack of marketing leadership in establishing one clear "correct answer" that the company should follow.
• A lack of discipline in sticking to one message on the part of the field and/or marketing team members.

Invariably, when pioneering a new market, there will be a variety of internal opinions about how to talk about it.  For example, as a technologist, I could honestly describe MarkLogic Server in any of the following ways:

• XML database
• XML server
• Content database
• Document database
• Unstructured database

There are pros and cons to each of these choices.  While our media customers like the term "content," it does not resonate with our Federal customers who see a data/content dichotomy as meaningless.  For years, we were gun shy about calling MarkLogic Server a "database," because that would tend to prompt a reaction of "oh, we have one of those, it's Oracle, thanks for coming by."  So, for years we referred to MarkLogic Server as an "XML server," attempting to follow the example set by Arbor Software who positioned its multi-dimensional database system as an "OLAP server." Recently, we decided to come out of the database closet and, going forward, you will see us positioning MarkLogic Server, arguably more accurately, as a database for unstructured data.

But that's not the point of this post.  This post is about consistency.  Note that we have quickly found 15 ways to position MarkLogic Server.   {XML, content, document, semi-structured, unstructured} x {database, server, platform}.    The question for marketing should be:  which way is best.  The question for everyone else should be:  which one did marketing pick?

Why?  Because it's better to be consistent than better.

Imagine in your heart-of-hearts that you think "content server" is simply a better answer than "unstructured database" and you decide to use your own lingo instead.  The first thing you might do wrong in this instance is bleed.

Customer

You:  Well, that's a great question.  It's actually quite confusing and did you know that there are about 15 different things we could have called it.  Marketing -- and you know those guys -- what's the expression "if you can, do, and if you can't do marketing" -- ha, ha -- well, marketing decided to position it as an "unstructured database" but I think that's a bad answer, so I actually think of it instead as a "content server" because it really does serve content -- and boy does it go fast -- and some of my buddies on our DC team call it an XML database, but that's bad because everybody knows that Gartner hates XML databases -- ix-nay on the atabase-day, har, har  -- and it isn't really all about XML, it's really about marking up semi-structured information, you know?  Uh, what was your question again?

The are many problems with bleeding on the customer:

• You're talking instead of listening.  Look how many words you took to answer the simple question of "what is it?"
• You're confusing the customer, giving three or more different answers to one simple question
• You may think you're making yourself look smart with a great analysis, but to a sophisticated listener, you are making yourself look dumb instead
• Most important, you are confusing the customer.  He/she asked a simple question and you were unable to give them a simple answer.  Quite possibly he/she had several follow-up questions in mind, all of which were forgotten during your stream of consciousness response.

The fact is that selling a new technology is hard enough that you shouldn't make it harder through inconsistency and bleeding.  It isn't easy to understand what MarkLogic Server is and we don't have the benefit of a category with 3-5 other vendors all evangelizing the same idea.  If you're in a similar situation, then you have to ask yourself:  shouldn't you make things as simple as possible, speaking precisely and consistently so we can make it as easy as possible for customers to understand our message?

If you agree, that means two things:  (1) you need marketing to step up and choose:  to define the standard vernacular --ideally in a conversational Q&A-style format -- and then drive it into all marketing communications and (2) you need to lead by example in sticking to it.  If you think marketing has chosen poorly, do not bleed on the customers (or fellow employees).  Go raise your concerns to marketing.  If you think there are common questions that need standard answers that are not yet addressed, then go to marketing.

When pioneering  a new market, your primary competitor is confusion, and inconsistency is his ally.