You’ve heard me use the phrase “eat your own wildebeest food.” (Like eating your own dog food, but I differentiate myself from the rest of the world.) When can you eat your own wildebeest food? Let’s take a product marketing example.
Be reasonable?
I recently encountered a company that does NOT use the product it sells for its own in-house purposes.
The company has a good reason for this. The product is meant for a particular market category, and the company itself doesn’t fall into that category.
Without revealing anything confidential, it’s akin to a bus agency executive using a limo to get to a board of directors meeting. Yes, the executive could take the 61 to the 83 to the 66, but that takes time.
It would be a stretch for the firm to use its product internally. So it uses a semi-competing product for internal use.
Sounds reasonable, right?
I don’t care about reasonable.
FOMO
The company is sharing a subliminal message, or perhaps a super liminal one: yeah, our product is great, but this semi-competitor is good enough for us so we don’t bother to try to use our own.
By not jerry-rigging its product for its internal needs, the company’s missing an opportunity.
- External prospects and customers will see that the company uses its product. As of now, it is VERY obvious that the company uses a different product.
- Internal people will have to use the company’s product every day, and will know its strengths and weaknesses very well.
So try to use your own product, even when you shouldn’t. You, your prospects, and your customers will learn a, um, bunch.
Bredemarket 