brentashley

In the past couple of weeks, there’s been a bit of hoopla about KnowNow. This company has cool interesting technology and is populated by more than a couple of industry cognoscenti, but likely due to the dynamics of the post-bust dotcom situation found itself with an internal power imbalance leaning away from the technology and its potential and towards venture capitalists and marketers. The website read like a “how-not-to” guide for clarity in communication. I was glad to see that they listened to the various voices who decried the vacuous marketspeak and rewrote their introductory pages to actually convey understanding.

I’ve been researching some CRM stuff this morning, specifically call scripting software. Marketspeak abounds. It’s remarkable what lengths they go to to provide rambling verbose descriptions of their products without ever giving me a clue what its actual technical specifications might be, how I might be able to use it or integrate it, etc, etc. Just who is the target of these sites? I can only assume it’s aimed towards government and corporate buyers who don’t actually know the problem space the product fills, although my experience with them is that they’ll at least want a technical laundry list.

If I want to know more, I have to supply my contact information, exposing myself to a sales call, numerous followups and a lifetime of self-authorized spam. One place requires me to give them contact info just so they can send me their whitepaper.

Hey guys, just give me INFORMATION. Allow ME to discover your product and its specifications, and I will ASK when I want to know more. The minute you try to force me into your salespitch stream, you’ve lost me. I’m out the door to find a shop that will let me browse in peace without a salesman stalking me through the store.

Ain’t it always the case. I blog about something and then immediately run into someone yakking about the same stuff, usually saying it much better than me.