Low-hanging fruit and nuts (Was: Adobe Professional Publishing Seminar!)

["Stuart Burnfield" <stuartb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Rick Quatro [mailto:rick@frameexpert.com] said:
> FrameMaker does not need equal time at these Professional Publishing
> Seminars, but give it a brief, well-thought presentation on its
> strongest features...  Remember that members of your audience may
> find themselves needing 'Technical Publishing' solutions in the
> future. You want to plant the seed that Adobe has this area covered
> with FrameMaker. 

Exactly. And this is as much a selling point for Adobe's 'professional'
products as it is for FrameMaker itself.

Imagine you're at this seminar. You use Photoshop and Illustrator and
have some experience of Quark and Pagemaker. You've read up on GoLive
and InDesign and are interested to find out where all these products
fit in relation with each other and where they're heading.

You really like the sound of InDesign and the new features of AI and
PS for your traditional design-heavy publishing. However your company
is growing and you also need to think about issues such as consistent
corporate style, reuse, and Web/database publishing.

By the end of the talk you've heard everything Adobe has to offer
(this is the *Total* Publishing Seminar, right?). Sadly, they don't
seem to have anything that handles the long, structured doc work
you know you'll be doing. InDesign is nice, and they keep talking
about plug-ins, but it doesn't really seem to be meant for book-
length documents.

Oh well, maybe you'll upgrade Illustrator and Photoshop some day,
and meanwhile, you wonder what Adobe's competitors have to offer...


Some products really handle B as well as A. Some products don't really
handle B, but the sales guy has a story to make you think it can until
you've signed the cheque for A. And some sales guys have never heard
of B so they'd like you to keep talking while they invent something
plausible. Anyone who's been to a few vendor talks knows all these
scenarios.

The frustrating thing is that Adobe really can handle both A and B,
but this 'Total' Publishing Seminar may give the opposite impression.


SUMMARY: customers need to hear that "Adobe has these other industry-
leading publishing products which complement the products we'll be
showing today. If you want to know more, ..."

If the talk doesn't have a slide saying this, Adobe is nuts and is
bound to miss some low-hanging fruit (i.e. likely sales of both
InDesign and FrameMaker).

Regards
---
Stuart Burnfield
Gentoo Communications
mailto:stuartb@tpg.com.au


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