Offerings > Products & Services
What the heck are we selling?
Hi all —
Had a big ol’ realization this week.
Everyone in software talks about products. I often talk about services.
But we should all actually be talking about offerings. Offerings are what we sell - they include products & services.
Sound like hair-splitting? It isn’t.
When we think we sell products, we make a ton of dumb mistakes:
We think customers want to buy products (they don’t)
We get suuuuuper rabbinical on product development (it’s not that complicated)
We put too much pressure on our products & engineering teams to build a product customers want to buy (reminder: they don’t want to buy products)
We think about product positioning, product roadmaps, etc. etc. etc. that siloes and deifies our product organizations
When we think we sell products PLUS services, we treat them as separate things… which confuses our customers.
When we sell offerings, we figure out:
What do our customers want to buy?
How do we design an offering that’s a “hell yes” for them?
What’s the configuration of products & services that make the “hell yes” offering possible?
Customers buy the offering. Products and services are HOW they get the value.
Rob, out.