Some time ago my daughter came home from her job as a checker at a grocery store, sat down and pulled a wad of money out of her pocket. I asked her where that came from. She said she had been getting a lot of compliments on a leather bracelet she wears and a lot of people wanted to know where to get one.
My daughter talked to the boy who made it for her and told him he should wear one because people would buy them from him. He really liked the idea of selling them since he enjoyed making them, but he didn’t really want to wear them. My daughter and the boy figured out a good price and my daughter told him she would sell them for him.
The next day she wore the bracelet to work and sold 20 of them! She didn’t “sell” any of them, but simply wore it. When people asked her where to buy one, she said she could sell them one.
Are you dogfooding? Whether you are making bracelets or complex products, you need to use your own products, otherwise known as dogfooding. I originally heard this stated as “eat our own dog food.” Due to the negative nature of this, some now say “drink our own Koolaid” or “drink our own Champaign”. One Microsoft executive calls it “IceCreaming.”
No matter what you want to call it, the benefits of dogfooding are huge. This is just one example involving a sales benefit of dogfooding. The benefits scale sales, marketing, engineering, quality assurance, public relations, and more. If you are not dogfooding now, start today!