I have neglected my blog reader for the last week so I was reading fast--meaning I was scanning and I was distracted a little anyway because I was listening to music at the same time; I'm a guy so that means I wasn't really paying attention to either one. And I almost missed this: my friend David’s The Gobbledygook Manifesto was in the Top 10 ChangeThis Downloads for August 2007. Congratulations, David!! If you haven’t read The Gobbledygook Manifesto, you should. Oh, and if you're in PR and you're not reading David's blog, you should.

I bought a portable player made by JBL for my iPod. I bought it from a store on the web so I couldn’t really see much except for the one picture of the unit itself. And the experience of buying was fine but the experience of using was deplorable. And now I’m not a satisfied JBL customer. I know it may not be fair or even rational but who said I had to be? Customers aren’t.

For a start, it took about 15 minutes to break into JBL’s anti-theft packaging. I broke a pair of scissors, almost gored myself on a letter opener, and finally resorted to my Cutco shears--they can cut anything. Once opened, the innards spilled out of the floor in a huge mass of plastic and parts. Not really a great first experience. Of course, I’m sure the packaging is designed to prevent theft but I wonder how much theft JBL has from Amazon employees and customers; I’d guess none. But in the one-size-fits-all world, JBL decided that all channels were the same and it was easier for them operationally to standardize the packaging for BestBuy rather than Amazon.

OK, so I’ve broken into the packaging and have a pile of junk on the floor. That’s when I discover that the transformer for my portable iPod player weighs more than the portable iPod player. And the transformer is huge! No really very portable after all. Nicely, the player also has a remote control but no place to house the remote in transfer. And no case of any kind.

I don’t know; can I return this thing with the packaging completely destroyed? I doubt it. So I’ll put it in the garage for those times twice a year when I’m organizing the hoses and garden tools and want to listen to some Jackson Browne. And tell all my friends to buy the iMotion instead of the JBL. And (believe it or not) I have a lot of friends!

How often, when you buy a product of any kind, are you disappointed? For me, it has to be more than half the time. Horrible packaging. No batteries. A huge transformer. An absolute lack of integration.

I’ve started to notice, really notice, those rare occasions when a purchase is satisfactory. Buying my RAZR from the Cingular store started that way; nothing went wrong, the sales person was knowledgeable, and we encountered no problems during the setup. Only later did I discover that the Motorola software is infamously terrible. I still have high regard for my Cingular store but will never buy another Motorola phone.

My friend Kristin met Kevin, the world's worst sales person, this week. In The customer is always wrong, she writes:

There are two kinds of salespeople in the world. One knows that the customer is just trying to get some questions answered, and does what he can to answer those questions. The other sees the customer's questions as "objections" to be overcome - obstacles to his making the sale and getting a commission.

The salesperson behaves as if the customer is just plain wrong. During the conversation with the customer he is, by turns, evasive, dismissive, and downright rude as he spits out answers. He is combative during the question-asking process. He interrupts the customer, argues with the customer, and treats the customer like an idiot.

Is that the most that we can expect? That a good buying experience is merely the absence of bad?

One of the Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders is to see the product experience from the customer’s point of view. I don’t think many folks were thinking much about the total buying and using experience.

James R. Stoup offers these Things Every Programmer Should Know For Their First Job:

Hindsight being what it is, here are some lessons I have learned since entering the ranks of professional programming.

These tips are especially helpful for the new employee with years of experience who wonders, "Why isn't everyone listening to me?" New hires first have to prove themselves. If you reflect on your own behavior towards new hires in the past, it's obvious but you don't notice it when you're the new hire.

One tip (that I've been slow perhaps to learn) is silence never goes out of style.

My article on One Voice of Priority hit a chord with many product managers. I got emails from product managers and dev leads in agile environments as well as from those employing more traditional models. Come add your commends to the thread.

Also check out Jeff Lash's remarks in product development is not a democracy.

Does this sound familiar?

Kristin Zhivago writes:

The problem with marketing and sales is that they are the functions inside companies most likely to be driven more by emotions and anecdotal "evidence" than they are by facts. The result is never as profitable as it could be.

If salespeople dominate decisions, without the benefit of qualitative customer research and buying process analysis, the atmosphere is always dominated by fear of losing the next sale, and activity is always frantic.

I don't need to add any commentary. Go read what Kristin has to say.

Our ebook, The Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders, is now featured on ChangeThis. Pass it on to your managers.

I won! Or at least I'm a finalist.

Thanks to all of you who voted for my YouTube video for the Business of Software conference. My video, "Software is a hobby," was in the top five and I'm headed to San Jose in October. If you're going to be at the conference, be sure to come by and say hello.

Now I'll have to see if I can say anything in only 11 minutes. Those of you who know me know that I can barely say hello in 11 minutes!