I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he was talking about his latest sales opportunity with a big multi-national company. How did they find you, I asked, since his business is quite niche. On Google, he answered. Who’s the customer, I asked. Google, he said.

Now, admittedly, everyone uses Google to find stuff, but this is Google using their own stuff, and it got me thinking about software generally, and those companies that are in the position of using their own software in their daily work.

I’ve worked for a few companies who are in the position of using their own software, and the double-edge sword is this: no-one uses your software more than you, and no-one is using more of your software, in the sense of its full functionality. No-one is using the stuff better than you. You’re designing it, building it, testing it, supporting it, but you’re also a user of it – a consumer of it – yourself too.

It’s useful to remind ourselves in this position that it’s our familiarity with our own stuff that brings this knowledge, so our job is to get our customers using so much of our software, so much of the time, that they approach the same level of familiarity as us and derive the same benefits. After all, with all the different types of software in any business, how much of the full functionality do we usually use? 10%? Less?

It pays us to regularly ask our best customers how they’re using our software too, since they can give us insights and shortcuts about our own stuff that we never knew.

The more of something we use, and the more we use it, the more value we derive.