Bad feedback is good, it helps you to understand why you are not selling and what you need to change to improve.
Instead, no feedback is very very bad. No feedback means that you have no clue why people don’t like your product/service. Even more, no feedback means that people don’t even care enough about your product to waste five minutes complaining about it. No feedback means that your product does not provoke any kind of controversy. And to me this is bad, very very bad.
As we say in Spanish (and possibly in many other languages but I couldn’t find the origin of the sentence nor the corresponding version in English): “es mejor que hablen de ti, aunque sea mal” which, approximately, means that it’s better people talk about you even if it is just to criticize you.
UPDATE: Two similar English sayings suggested by you:
Oscar Wilde: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about
Dave McClure: “people can love you, or people can hate you, just don’t be irrelevant”
Thanks to @jgfanjul for this English version of the Spanish sentence mentioned at the end of the post -> Oscar Wilde: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
This is a good question and one that I’ve often ponder to what is the correct answer.
Why with such a good idea do people not use it? Personally I think it is down to knowledge, understanding and awareness. You can have the best product in the world, but if no-one knows about it then who is going to use it? Do people really understand what the value of your product is? Are you targeting the right people?
I’ve been through your site and personally I have no use for it because I do not program in those domains (no offence meant), but I do think it is a great idea that has the potential to considerably reduce project effort.
Personally, the general feeling that I get from the site is that its too heavily focused on the blog side, it is not apparent straight way you are offering a killer service. I need to look for what you are offering (which is to the left). I think that it needs to be slap bang in your face and to tone down the blog focus (but this in its own right is a means to generate interest as well).
Have you done any analysis on how many hits you get and how many of those translate into sales?? or if they view your services page??
Some food for thought.
I could not agree more with Mark that this is a good question. I would even say this is “the million dollar question”.
In addition to what he has pointed out, the reason why you do not get as much feedback as you would like is that your products/services have not reached a sufficient level of visibility yet.
Nevertheless, if you already have customers, how about posing this question to your current customer base?
I bet you can get valuable feedback from them.
You could conduct a small survey and ask direct questions to the people currently using your products/services, or even let them have a say on ways they would like you to improve/enhance what your company currently provides for them.
If you have a large number of customers, then you will get a more representative set of answers. If, on the other hand, you still have a small customer base then you can concentrate better on each of them.
BTW I like your modeling languages website. Congrats on such a nice initiative!
To ellaborate on Mark’s suggestions, instead of downplaying the contents of modeling-languages.com in favor of promoting your company, why not keep the portal as it is and devote a separate site just to publicize your company?.
Juan Carlos,
Whether to keep the services in the same site or move them to a completely different site has been the million dollar question for me!
I’m sure I’ll end up doing it, because deep inside I know it’s the right thing to do, but it’s not something I’m really excited about (another site to administer, another template to choose, need to synchronize the user bases on both sites,…)
Another opinion , from Joel Gascoigne
I’ve always taken the “hate mail” I get to my blogs to be an indication that I’m doing SOMETHING right!
Fan mail is fantastic, but the chirping of crickets is just soul destroying.
When it’s come to feedback on products, negative criticism (constructive or not) has helped us polish and refine what we’re offering.
If you’re not getting feedback at all, as far as I’m concerned, you’re better off asking for it and hearing the hard truth.
Good article and very relevant to my current situation. I find it is a fine line one treads when trying to get feedback for something. If you push too hard you feel like you are verging on spammer territory, if you don’t push hard enough you don’t get any results.