A Year In

It’s now a year since celin.io went public, which makes it a good time time to reflect. But first, this anniversary brings two changes.

New Look Website

The website has been updated to signal a shift from exploration to product phase. The focus is now on what celin has to offer. The blog is still there, but now under a sub-site. And at the bottom is a timeline section with milestone markers – its purpose is more to show-off the theme’s animation rather than practical.

The website is based on Jalpc’s theme.

On-Line E1 Standalone

Up till now, celin’s demos have been limited by pre-cooked sample date. This is no longer a limitation with on-line AIS now accessible on http://e1.celin.io:9300/ and https://e1.celin.io:9302/. User name is DEMO and password TESTING.

Not only does this allow anyone to try-out celin’s mobile and web apps, but also provides developers with an AIS back-end.

I will be updating celin’s on-line demos in the next few days, but work-schedule, employee-work-schedule and org-chart are already updated with default user name and password.

Onwards

I remember from the days when I had to endure an interview for a contract, that one of my stock standard answers to experience was that “I’ve done everything except selling software” – which is fairly accurate still today. Of the whole software life-cycle, selling is definitely the hardest part. I’ve been at the very end of some mystifying software selection but also seen a decision process up close – and I still don’t understand what drives it.

When I worked for JDE nearly 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to get into the mindset of software salesmen a bit. They had two rules that I found memorable:

You are never selling an existing software, but a future potential.

In other words, you’re selling a dream – or vapor-ware.

An how do you get away with this:

Always sell to the C’s.

That is, don’t try to sell to the people that have to use or manage the software. Focus on those with title abbreviation starting with a C, that is CEO, CFO, etc.

It’s simple and effective. Sell a non-existing product to gullible people. In other industries, except gambling perhaps, this qualifies as a scam.

This reminded me of a joke I heard a long time ago:

What’s the difference between a used-car salesman and a software salesman?

Answer: The used-car salesman knows when he’s lying.

The salesmen at JDE didn’t find this funny – maybe to close to the truth.

In the defense of software salesmen, this tactic is probably the result of an evolution rather than intentional. Anyone who’s been involved in change-management knows how hard it can be to fight the in-grained “because we’ve always done it this way” conviction.

And a self-contained Excel implementation can be unbreakable in a civil manner and some may even be considered early form of AI. The creator is often unknown or possesses a mythical image and its authority unquestionable.

Maybe this innate change resistance can only be fought by selling the C’s a dream, but I still have faith in reason – provided that you get the right person to reason with.