When a Prospect Asks for Customization it Means He/She is Not a Real Buyer

When I was in construction, we made most of our profit off changes. Every change has a price tag. Part of the price is how much you want to do the change. Ugly changes don't come cheap. Changes we suggested do come cheap. Any salesman who can't attach a price tag to a change request isn't doing his job.

I disagree that those aren't real buyers. Many rich people are so used to getting their way that if you won't bend a little and include those windows treatments, they'll just go find someone who will.<p>Look at it from the other perspective: If the seller will walk away over 1%, they aren't a real seller.<p>Seems just as likely, doesn't it?

If your product integrates with existing systems in any way, or even is still just a fairly minimal product, this doesn't really apply. You can have clients who are willing to pay for example for reports your product generates, but it's useless to them unless your product accepts data from one of their systems. You still need to prioritize requests, but to say they're not real buyers is extreme. If you don't believe they'll really become clients, that's what contracts (and maybe letters of intent) are for.

There are certain customers and prospects, and certain industries, where this is endemic, where you just have to stop listening to customers. Sometimes they actually do not know what they want/need. If you faithfully log feature requests, you might find there is very little commonality. If you still have a customer base, it just might mean you actually serve your target audience/industry something useful.

Working in a customer-facing position, I have a hard time not wanting to champion every legitimate feature requests that comes in. However, I've learned that if I want to get engineering to work on something when it really counts, I have to be very judicious about what I send their way.<p>Thankfully, having a product with multiple customization options (API, plugins, javascript and CSS), I can always give the customer the opportunity to write their own feature, and if it's simple enough, I'll just write some code and do it for them.

Our experience with the software engineering tool PREfix in the 1990s was very different. our $4 million site licencse with Cisco depended on customization and so did several other $100k-plus deals. When the customer's needs are slightly different than your offering, you can either say "no" and walk away, or work with them to come up with something that works for both of you -- which may not be possible or worth doing, but it's at least worth exploring.<p>Agreed though with Earl's point about "don't do business with dicks"

The author seems to think that people who are nitpicky before sale use their feature requests as a way to avoid making a purchase.<p>The solution, from my perspective, is to have individual feature requests be bankrolled by the requestors. Tie features directly to dollar amounts, and ignore the totally oddball. Or you could price them to the point that the customer wouldn't buy them (or you're laughing yourself silly all the way to the bank when they do).

I don't think it is as black and white. It could be a signal that they aren't a real buyer, or it could be a signal that they do want to buy.<p>This is what I say when a potential customer of significant value asks for a feature. "That is an interesting feature. That is the first time someone has requested that feature. I think it might have some value in our core code base and other customers might find it useful. I can build the requirements for the feature into your PO. I'll find out when we can deliver that functionality and we can start working on it as soon as the PO is signed."

This is open to interpretation. I would say a customer who comes along asking for something you don't already have may present itself as an opportunity. If, in fact, you're already planning to do X and X is the thing the potential customer is asking for and you charge him double what it would have cost you to build it anyways (and it was in your list of "features" all along), then why wouldn't you? It ends being "free" money and you land a new satisfied customer.<p>While I agree with the article, there are, as always seems to be the case, many exceptions.

From the article: "My father has had prospective buyers of multi-million dollar apartments threaten to walk away from a deal because of an additional $10,000 in closing or alteration costs at the 11th hour." And you have a problem with that? Seriously?<p>I have a hard rule that after many painful lessons is now inviolable. Every single time I've broken this rule it's hurt. Don't do business with dicks. If we negotiate a contract and you toss in another $10k at the last second? Hell, I don't care if you try, but the answer is absolutely not. We had an agreement, you changed it, the answer is no.<p>If that answer doesn't satisfy them, well, they already lied to me once. They're dicks. I don't know what else they're going to try to screw me on, but they already tried once and are going to try again. The only answer to someone tossing an extra $10K in and daring you to walk away by saying you're not a buyer is tell them they're assholes and you'll never do business with them again.<p>Life is too short to have dicks in your life trying to screw you at every turn. If someone isn't honest, drop them and count yourself lucky.

This is really not a problem. All you need to do is get this client to sign a contract before you make any changes and everyone can get along just fine.

That's funny. If they're not a real buyer, does that mean I don't have to declare it as a real income?