When I look around both the technology industry as a whole and the hosting industry specifically, I see an interesting phenomenon that’s become the “norm”.
Many of us got into tech and hosting because we liked technology and wanted to use the latest and greatest hardware and that led to an expertise and we monetized that expertise by building businesses in this space.
However most of us are leaving the vast majority of the money on the table and only working for the worst part of what’s available in our industry.
See here’s the thing, Technology is a Commodity. Hardware gets cheaper by the week, control panels and automation have made it so non technical people can run hosting companies (that doesn’t mean they’re doing a great job, but they can “fake it until they make it”) and competing on the commodity items in hosting Bandwidth, Memory and DiskSpace is a recipe to drive your profits to the bottom.
Our customers want Solutions not Technology.
The only people who care about the underlying technology are other solutions providers.
Every time I meet someone from another technology company one of the first questions they ask is about how our product is built, what it runs on, etc… But I can’t recall a single end user (the actual business person buying or approving our product) ever asking us those questions.
Our Customers want to know HOW WE CAN HELP THEM, end of story. I’ve never gotten someone upset because we’re optimized for Linux over Windows, but I’ve certainly had customers get upset because we didn’t warn them of a bad decision we watched them make without jumping in to offer help.
When we forget why our customers are hiring us (hint: It’s to help them), we inevitably end up doing a poor job. We focus on the wrong things, which causes expectations to be mismanaged and customers to be left feeling improperly served and the end result is we fight for scraps by cutting our prices to match the decline in the commodity prices we’re essentially offering.
Monetize your expertise and help customers navigate through the problems they face in their business using the technology you provide and your margins will stay high, your customers will stay loyal and your business strong since your advertising will be improved because your reputation will precede you.
About Rick Wilson
Rick Wilson is the Executive Vice President for Miva Merchant a popular online shopping cart software.
Rick has been with Miva Merchant since 1999 when he began at the original Miva Corporation as an outside sales representative and took over as Vice President of Sales in 2002 and ultimately as Executive Vice President in 2007.
Rick's more than 12 years of executive-level sales and marketing experience also includes his tenure as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Providence Systems, a privately held sales training company. At Providence Systems, Rick developed and executed the sales and marketing strategies that helped lead a successful corporate turnaround between 1998 and 2002.
Through his WHIR blog, Rick will cover ecommerce trends, products and services from the perspective of the online merchant. He will focus on best practice thinking, tools that help them improve their business and be on the look-out for the information that provides merchants the competitive edge to be successful.
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