Software conference attendees reminded customers come first

(Excerpted from the Union Leader)

By STEPHEN BEALE
Union Leader Correspondent
Friday, Oct. 12, 2007

BEDFORD – Designing software should be an innovative process in which knowing the needs of the customer is as important as knowing coding, according to keynote speakers at a conference yesterday.

Larry Nuttall, a sales advisor to the Henniker River Group, and Robert Batcheler, a vice president at Newforma, opened the 13th annual InfoXchange conference for the Software Association of New Hampshire with the message that the design of new products should be driven by the customers, not the programmers.

Company Branding
Catherine Blake, the president of Sales Protocol International, gave a run-down on how branding has changed, becoming more about the company itself than its products.

"What's more important now is not so much the features, the functions," Blake said. "It is the company, the whole company."

When customers take a look at the whole company, they prefer one that cares about more than profits. Part of the success of a retail giant like Target, Blake said, is its reputation for recycling its products and promoting more women and minorities into higher-level management positions.

Humanitarianism is an important part of successful branding, but there are other keys to making emotional connections with customers. Developing new ways of talking about your products is one of them, Blake said. Apple, for example, has created a whole new vocabulary for its customers: iPhones, iMacs, iPods, and iTunes, to name a few.

Emotional brands also rely on attention to detail, such as the look, feel, and sound of a particular product or experience, Blake added. In other words, "To have sizzle, you gotta have soul," she said.

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