Differentiated value is critical for sales and marketing (and your product roadmap)!

Why should someone pick your product over a competitor's product?

April Dunford wrote a great piece about why you need to know your differentiated value. You should read it.

There are some things to call out in an open source context.

1) Being 'open source' is not a differentiated value. Even if you are the only open source project in the competitive ecosystem, open source should not be a core part of your sales pitch. How prominent it should be on your website / marketing material depends on how unusual it in your competitive landscape, but overall the fact that you're an open source company should be easily discoverable but not the foundation of your messaging. Open source is not a value, it is an attribute. If, because you are open source, your customers get transparency and the ability to verify what your code is doing, then you lead with the transparency. This should be obvious, but if the other players in the competitive landscape are also open source companies, then open source isn't differentiated, either, and you should de-emphasis it.

2) You need to know your commercial product's differentiated value compared to your OSS. It's really common to feel like your OSS is competing with your commercial offering, and if that's happening — especially if you feel like you aren't in control of that competition — it means you need a better understanding of the value the commercial product adds. *Note... you should also have an idea of why someone might choose the fully open source option, other than them being cheap bastards.

Do you know someone struggling to understand their project or product’s differentiated value? Tell them to get in touch with me.