Eric Sink has posted his latest Business of Software column titled Tenets of Transparency. The article contains some excellent recommendations for selling software in today’s world and I agree with many of the points he made. What I like most though is the ‘Practicing What I Preach’ section where he changes his 8 year old policy of no refunds. No, I don’t plan to purchase his software and ask for a refund, but I do think this shows two things, you can’t hide your faults and that, quite simply, transparency is easier.

You Can’t Hide Your Faults

Consumers have always had a choice of whether or not to spend their money, but for a long time they had to make these choices based primarily on the marketing of the company selling the product. In today’s world, the company can put out any message they’d like about their products but the truth will eventually be made public by the consumer.

Blogs, Amazon reviews and numerous other websites have made it so that the consumer can be as informed as they choose before spending a dollar. That’s an awesome power for both the consumer and, if handled properly, the company selling their products. Even if there are flaws in a product, a company can be informed quickly and take corrective action before it becomes devastating. There may also be times that the company finds out that they need to go back to square one. In either case, the company can’t hide their faults, they can simply make a decision on how to handle them.

Transparency is easier

While reading Eric’s article, I immediately thought that many people would feel that too much transparency would equate to a loss of control. Transparency, in my opinion, will lead to even more control. You as the business owner can control both the good and the bad by leading the charge. If there is a problem, you can be the first to tell everyone. Many customers will appreciate a company who is the first to say that they have a problem and that they are fixing it. If they have already spent money on your product and you address their concerns quickly, you’re probably going to increase your salesforce rather than creating detractors. This is very powerful when trying to attract new customers.

On the other hand, if you try and keep everything hidden in the back office, you’re going to spend your days trying to control the message about your company and your core business will suffer. By trying to hide anything that’s negative, you’re going to lend it even more credibility, possibly more than its worth, and you’ll be spending your time fighting rather than selling. Its just easier to put it out there for all to see. If your product is good, the positive will quickly outweigh the bad and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2005 at 9:43 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Eric Sink has posted his latest Business of Software column titled Tenets of Transparency. The article contains some excellent recommendations for selling software in today’s world and I agree with many of the points he made. What I like most though is the ‘Practicing What I Preach’ section where he changes his 8 year old policy of no refunds. No, I don’t plan to purchase his software and ask for a refund, but I do think this shows two things, you can’t hide your faults and that, quite simply, transparency is easier.

You Can’t Hide Your Faults

Consumers have always had a choice of whether or not to spend their money, but for a long time they had to make these choices based primarily on the marketing of the company selling the product. In today’s world, the company can put out any message they’d like about their products but the truth will eventually be made public by the consumer.

Blogs, Amazon reviews and numerous other websites have made it so that the consumer can be as informed as they choose before spending a dollar. That’s an awesome power for both the consumer and, if handled properly, the company selling their products. Even if there are flaws in a product, a company can be informed quickly and take corrective action before it becomes devastating. There may also be times that the company finds out that they need to go back to square one. In either case, the company can’t hide their faults, they can simply make a decision on how to handle them.

Transparency is easier

While reading Eric’s article, I immediately thought that many people would feel that too much transparency would equate to a loss of control. Transparency, in my opinion, will lead to even more control. You as the business owner can control both the good and the bad by leading the charge. If there is a problem, you can be the first to tell everyone. Many customers will appreciate a company who is the first to say that they have a problem and that they are fixing it. If they have already spent money on your product and you address their concerns quickly, you’re probably going to increase your salesforce rather than creating detractors. This is very powerful when trying to attract new customers.

On the other hand, if you try and keep everything hidden in the back office, you’re going to spend your days trying to control the message about your company and your core business will suffer. By trying to hide anything that’s negative, you’re going to lend it even more credibility, possibly more than its worth, and you’ll be spending your time fighting rather than selling. Its just easier to put it out there for all to see. If your product is good, the positive will quickly outweigh the bad and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2005 at 9:43 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.