Another story from my early career that I often tell to make a simple point.
I worked for the New Zealand distributor of a major OEM manufacturer in the laser printer space. I was actually hired as a software developer for their suite of proprietary accounting software systems (covering CP/M, DOS, and PoS platforms), but I found that far less interesting than their newly released, fully IBM-PC compatible range of 8086 and 80286 PCs (they were also one of the few hardware manufacturers that released an 80186-based compatible PC), and through that interest, their own laser printer range. They had direct sales staff and a channel sales force pushing these platforms, but their service team were break/fix oriented, a team whose existence was primarily to support and repair faxes and photocopiers. It would have been early 1988.
While our laser printer engine was every bit as capable as HP (the dominant brand), and could be made to do some amazing things with expansion boards and font cartridges, the one thing it couldn’t do was support PostScript. At the time, PostScript was quite new (originally released by Adobe in 1984), but the capabilities it enabled in printers that supported this page description and programming language were quite advanced. Adobe partnered with Apple to create the Desktop Publishing industry, and in 1985 Apple released the Apple LaserWriter which had an inbuilt PostScript interpreter. Soon after, HP released a cartridge add-on for their LaserJet II, which provided a PostScript emulator. Our model, however, didn’t support PostScript.
The technology engine (hardware) underlying all of these laser printers (and a few others on the market) was all manufactured by the same company, Canon. But each manufacturer overlaid the hardware with their own smarts – processor, printer language (like HP’s PCL – Printer Control Language, later the de facto printer standard), memory, and the like. Our system was actually quite bare-bones, lower cost system. But without PostScript, we were locked out of the desktop publishing space. To sell to businesses running MS-DOS PCs, we needed to develop ‘drivers’ that plugged into the then text-only word processors, like WordPerfect, DisplayWriter IV, WordStar, and Microsoft Word (the non WYSIWYG DOS-based original versions) so they could instruct the printer to use Bold, Italic, Bold Italic, or Normal fonts, and (if available in the printer) change the size of the fonts.
To address the lack of PostScript on our printer, we had a two-pronged approach. The major thrust was, basically, ‘you don’t need PostScript.’ We spent a huge amount of effort on this marketing ploy, with limited success.
The other ploy was to release a very smart, capable desktop publishing software suite that talked to an add-in card in the laser printer to enable a page to be ‘built’ graphically (essentially dot-by-dot) and sent directly to the hardware for printing. It was a smart, nifty system that was quite expensive and also quite unstable. (The desktop publishing software ran on Microsoft Windows 2.0, which was a non-retail and non-standalone version bundled with systems specifically designed for this early version of Windows). So the stack being run was MS-DOS, Windows 2.0, the desktop publishing system, talking to the graphics card in the printer. Any part of the stack could abend the environment, and the user would lose everything since their last save. This even happened a number of times during sales demonstrations. Customers stuck to Aldus PageMaker (which also ran on the bundled Windows 2.0) connected to HP printers running PostScript cartridges.
Sitting in the Sales’ Manager’s office on a Friday afternoon after a brutal week of sales demos and non-sales, lamenting the lack of PostScript, the sales manager told us ‘We can only sell what we have. We can’t sell what we don’t have.’
We redoubled our efforts with strategy #1 – ‘You don’t need PostScript.’ This was a hard slog, but it became our sales mantra: over and over. We probably should have had it printed on our shirts.
We couldn’t sell a PostScript solution, so we gave all the reasons why buyers didn’t need it and shouldn’t use it. We became quite skilled at bending reality. And to a large extent, our core argument was right. Only a small part of the market were using desktop publishing systems (an even smaller proportion were using MS-DOS-based desktop publishing systems), so the need for PostScript wasn’t really there. But HP had made a song and dance about their ability to add PostScript, and customers liked this ‘headroom’ – the option to add it later.
We kept pushing the basic needs-were-best message. Until I guess October 1988 or thereabouts, when our OEM provider released, totally without fanfare or advance notice, their own plug-in cartridge-based emulator. Literally overnight, our message went from ‘You don’t need PostScript’ to ‘PostScript is a fantastic add-on to your laser printer.’ Our customers’ heads were spinning; our heads were spinning with the speed of the repudiation of our original message.
The simple point I use this story for is: You can only sell what you have (until you have something else to sell).
The sales teams I have led, in particular, use two excuses for not being able to close sales. Every time. It is either the price (irrespective of the market pricing, this is the most common excuse), or the features. But they are just excuses. We will work relentlessly on features and capabilities where we can, but you can only sell what we have. This is a truism for every business in every industry. Or you lie to your customers, and sell vapourware, slideware, and false promises.
Unless you are a consultant. We can do anything!