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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Extreme Focus
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
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Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
Eric Sink lays out the problems with the "elevator speech" - it's too long:
The Law of Focus%A0would insist%A0that a 25 word description is about 24 words too many.
The Law of Focus demands that we explain our product in one word.%A0 Ries and Trout say, "No matter how complicated the product, no matter how complicated the needs of the market, it's always better to focus on one word or benefit than two or three or four."
Probably the best example he gives is the Sprint/Verizon competition in wireless. Sprint pushes one concept - Clarity. Verizon pushes one also - Coverage. Think of their ads - they all focus on this one point. Are there other benefits these vendors offer? Sure, but they want a simple message.
This is where a lot of us go wrong in the market. We come up with white papers, and bulleted lists, and all of the stock marketing stuff - but none of it sticks like the simple messages above. That's what we need to do with Smalltalk - boil it down to a simple direct phrase and/or word, and then relentlessly push that. Right now, we baffle people by getting bogged down in static vs. dynamic, or any of a number of other extraneous arguments. Eric's right - we need Focus
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