I’ve said it in previous posts, but I do prefer people (service) based business better than product based businesses. I don’t get emotionally invested in design specs, user-experience, or technical functionalities. I could care less about product roll-outs, additional feature plans, marketing/packaging, etc.
Personally, I’d rather go out to dinner with a client and have great conversations with them, invite them out to parties, meet their families, etc than provide service to fifty clients I’ll never meet. I just don’t find any job satisfaction make fifty sales and not knowing why or what happened, or anything tangible.
Dom loves products. He loves the process of conception to completion, the iterations, the optimization, all the goodness in building something from nothing. At the end of the day, he looks at what he built and THAT is the satisfaction. Conversely, projects come and projects go, and there’s nothing at the end of the day to show for it. Nothing that we – D&T – own.
I think we complement each other uniquely because of those two generic passions. Dom’s passion for the products we build make him the best person to work with clients on their projects. He makes it personal. As for me, I care more about the relationships grown. As I look at the D&T family, I would say it’s split down the middle with two camps, all pulling in the same fashion. With both halves, we produce a pretty great service/product/experience.
It's like a hotel - the experience is essentially the product.
You get that same client engagement with product based companies – at least in B2B. And it’s equally fun hearing about how customers want to use your products, and what THEY want to see in your product arena in the future. And, having been in both service & product, I find the deadlines & specs & technical issues MUCH more emotionally laden in services: as a service provider you have less control over deadlines & decisions that impact your engagement. And when the proverbial whatever hits the fan because those deadlines are missed, or there are technical errors, it’s MUCH more stressful. A product company can take a much longer point-of-view in weighing deadlines, tech, etc. that a service company that is engaged by a vendor for a short period of time.
And are you REALLY saying as the marketing half that you don’t care about making client deadlines, not making the wrong architectural choices, etc? I can help educate you in why you should care…if you want 😉
Funny thing, one of our employees interpreted that meaning as well. It’s not either/or, it’s understanding the root of one’s passion. I’m more passionate on the client-relations side, but of course I get satisfaction (and passionate) from doing a good job – meeting client deadlines, correct decisions being made, etc. Same with Dom – he gets satisfaction in both areas, but if he had to choose one I’d say he’d rather put forth a great product than making sure the client is up-to-date and happy. We all know that that both areas – marketing and services – have to be excellent.
Funny I asked you this question weeks later.
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We think of our products as vectors for delivering experiences to players. How’s that for a brain twist?