Drawing tools are always evolving, seeking to improve and streamline image and diagram production. And in the world of chemistry, drawing chemical structures has its own particular challenges that resulted in this unexpected outcome!
Our product manager and development team had created a chemical drawing capability that enabled chemical structures to be drawn with a single mouse click followed by dragging. It was fabulous! You could click, hold your mouse button down, and draw out the complex hexagonal chemical structures in a single fluid motion (think “tetra-methyl-chicken-wire”), saving the user dozens of clicks.
It was truly way cool! And so, it was named the “Way Cool Tool.”
As soon as it was released, we showed it in every demo to both new prospects and existing customers. We reveled in showing it. We found every possible reason to show it, over and over, because (of course) it was waaaay cool!
One day, several months after its release, a long-term customer took us aside after a demo and said, “I’m sorry inform you, but we never use your ‘Way Cool Tool.’ We are almost always working from existing structure templates, which we then modify with a few additions or changes. But we never use your ‘Way Cool Tool.’”
True story!
The moral?
Seek to understand – and gain a clear understanding – of how your customers actually use and want to use your software. Those are the best pathways for your demos!
You can find more product, presales, sales, and customer success stories in “Suspending Disbelief” here!
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