Unique Selling Points

From Sandro Groganz, Open Source Marketing Consultant

There are USPs which apply in general for any Open Source product and there are those which are specific for your product - most likely, you will end up with various combinations of both.

Keep in mind that USPs do not only convince by providing proven facts, instead they also appeal to emotions. For example, vendor independence is an often heard argument in favor of OSS. It means that potentially, a customer could ask another company to take over a project. Usually, no customer wants to take the risk of changing a system integrator, because this causes costs.

A customer will first of all choose a reliable partner. Hence, the vendor-independence argument serves as a placebo from Dr. Feelgood, giving the customer the feeling that they could quit working with you if they were urged to (although I know a few projects where customers actually decided to switch).

You can learn from this example that it is more important for a customer to realize you are a reliable partner, instead of knowing he could pass the project to someone else. Accordingly, vendor independence is not a USP you should mention at first contact.