Thanks for your comment. I am really glad to have people with similar background and interests visiting my blog.

Sharing expert information has long term benefits

Customers do not usually try to take advantage. They just want to be sure you can do the job.

The more people you prove you are an expert, the more you are branded as an authority.

You might lose a few deals now, but you will win big when people start knocking on your door that you did not anticipate.

Why I think this works?

It is easy to solve a problem once you know the solution. Everybody knows that experts are the ones that come up with solutions.

When customers face similar problems who do you think they will go to? If somebody ask for recommendations, who do you think they will recommend?

If you lost a deal because you shared too much information, think of it as the cost of positively branding yourself and your company.

There are rare occasions where you need to be reserved. You can identify them by listening carefully at the questions being asked. If you perceive the customer is trying to get valuable information, you must assume they are planning to do it themselves or with somebody else. Very detailed implementation questions are a clear signal of this. You won’t benefit in any way if the customer has this attitude.

Interesting post, and very relevant to me. I am now an entrepreneur and consultant after years of being an software engineer and developer.

I often catch myself in a sales meeting with a client where I run the risk of giving away too much information. I have dealt with this in two ways.

The first approach is when I think that I can get away with overwhelming the client in a positive way. In this case I give them as many different ideas as possible, quickly describing the benefits, and moving on to the next idea. This strongly establishes my credibility. The downside is these sales meetings frequently overrun the scheduled time period, and if the client is smart and has a good memory then I risk losing out on the sale.

The other way I’ve dealt with is to give only as much information as is necessary to make the sale. I’ve found this to be a much more difficult approach, possibly due to my engineering background. But this is the way my business mentors recommend that I proceed.

I’m still searching for the right balance, and appreciate any advice you might have, without giving away the Crown Jewels of course

Cheers,
Alastair.

Its interesting stuff, but I am not sure how much one would benefit from this knowledge… how much did you gain from researching this?

@pixelPruner: Thanks for your comment. I am sharing with your my scripts and my best kept secrets!

An area I think really needs some OS development are government / school systems etc.

There is a lot of scope for earning money giving things away, Wordpress templates are a good example… they get the designer great exposure / sponsorship.

I believe many of the original Apache developers became very rich working for Netscape as a result of the expertise they collectively developed…

I can think of one time I helped someone out by sharing and before I knew it, that someone had spotted holes in my theory and actually helped me improve what I had showed him. It’s quite obvious that two brains think better than one!!!
Another great post and thank you for sharing 