Good Enough

One of the interesting ongoing marketing battles is Cablevision's attempt to sell cable-based Internet against Verizon's DSL service.

Cablevision's advertising features a couple of turtles to represent DSL users that are happier with slower speed. The company questions why anyone would settle for anything other than the blazing performance of cable.

I use Verizon's DSL service, which is available in two flavors. There is one at full T-1 speed. And then there's the 768K service, half the speed, but at a much cheaper cost of $14.95 a month.That's my choice. And I ignore the Cablevision ads because its top-speed service is so much more expensive.

What I have is good enough.

Good enough can a very powerful product. IBM PCs and their successors were good enough compared to Macs, which are much easer to use. But the PC products combined good enough at a more affordable price. We know which platform has dominated that game.

Similarly, when Intuit brought QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to market, there were reviewers who railed against the new entry. It had the slow QuickBooks database. It lacked features. And so on.

But I used to tell critics that QBES had one big advantage--it was good enough. It was good enough for users who had outgrown QuickBooks, but wanted to stay with that platform. It was good enough for mid-market users who didn't want to shell out for the prices typically charged for mid-market products and services. With it's new SQL database engine, it's more than good enough these days.

What is good enough, anyway? Buying good enough is not the same thing as settling. Good enough is something that balances features, ease of use, ease of learning, and price.

It's too easy to focus on products with the latest and greatest features. But there is a balance that needs to be addressed in running a business. Ease of use and ease of learning are cost factors because if the product takes too long to learn or is too hard to use, customers will either have to spend money on training or they will walk away from a difficult-to-learn product they have already purchased. All of this represents costs businesses try to avoid. If you can't afford to pay for software licenses and services, they aren't of much value to you. A product that meets all of a business's needs, including the budgetary ones, is really more than good enough.

It's the right product.

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