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setting-expectations

I’m rooting for the new Palm Pre.  I get nervous when I see more hype or buzz than anything else about a product as it launches.  Present a great product as a revolutionary life-changing product and you may kill it.  That’s why I try to practice balancing realistic expectations and buzz.

Palm is hyping the crap out of the Pre.  Countdowns, sexy spinning images of the product and over-produced video demos.  Careful fellas (ladies too)!  By all measures the Pre is a great phone.  I owned one of the first Palm Treos and liked it very much.  I own an HTC Touch Pro and am very happy with it.  Both great phones.  But if you had hyped either product as “touched by God,” I would have been disappointed.

My advice to Palm: get information out about the Pre, lots of it.  Set expectations.  Educate people in addition to getting them excited.

We’re in the middel of launching a great new Plantronics wireless headset for a Plantronics distributor Headsets Direct.  The Savi WO100.  Terrific product: let’s you take land line and VoIP calls on the same headset; longer wireless range; simple to install; solid sound quality.  My inclination is to hype the daylights out of it because it really is a great product (it’s replacing two of my headsets).  I hope I stop well short of the “touched by God” expectation.  If I do, we’ll probably sell more of them.