The Business of Software

When you, being a one-man company, send the very first e-mail to a customer (e.g. a thank-you-for-purchasing message), do you say "we" or "me" when referring to your company?

What's better:
1) Feel free to contact us (the company)
2) Feel free to contact me (the only one company founder and employee)
?

Thanks for your opinions.

Why hide from what you are?

Unless your dealing with B2B, I think the "me" approach works great.  Sometimes the big guys don't like to deal with "one man".  They are afraid of getting no support.

Some of your big competitors are spending a lot of money on CRM systems that give their customers illusion of dealing with real human beings. You have that feature right out of the box, take advantage of it!

<<big competitors are spending a lot of money on CRM
CRM does not have to cost lots

Seriously I use both. I use me when I get to know the people and we when I dont.(3 people company).

Use the regal "we" when representing your company, and the single "me" when expressing your own thoughts and feelings.

Thus a "thank you for purchasing" should come from "us".

For me, the first thing to do after Bob Walsh has reviewed my site was to create "About" page. Here came this question, should I be "me" or "we". I don't have a company and see no reason to pretend like a one.

Therefore, I have created quite personal "About" page:
http://www.newsinjector.com/about.html

The Bob's review is here:
http://www.mymicroisv.com/?p=325

Steve Pavlina writes that you should not hide behind "we", see mistake #4:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/10-stupid-mistakes-made-by-the-newly-self-employed/

Not we.  Wii.

When I started out a year or so ago, I used the royal 'we', because I though that's just what you were supposed to do. It's a business after all, and companies are supposed to be companies.

Of course, I was totally wrong. Ever since I became 'just me' I've developed a closer, friendlier relationship with customers. They seem to be prefer it too, and often mention me when blogging about the product.

Having said that, if it were a big business product, I would probably do more to give the impression of not being a one man shop.

Being a 1-man-band myself, I like the "I" approach. http://renegademinds.com/Default.aspx?tabid=61

I don't believe that I'm going to impress anyone more than if I'm honest. Perhaps it's naive of me, but I believe in being brutally honest in all things. It gets me into trouble sometimes. :)

I'm selling to end-users mostly though (99%).

So far it works for me. I converse with my customers personally and treat them well. I've got nothing but praise for it in my email and some users email me personally as well. I view the whole thing as a cool venture into meeting people that like what I do enough to give me money for it. :)

I think some folks are afraid of "me", since it makes it personal.  You can say "We made a mistake and will remedy it" and not feel threatened.

Saying "I made a mistake" is much more personal.

++Bill

If you're selling to corporations, then they _need_ to feel like they're dealing with a big company.  I've had customers tell me to say "we".  I've had customers who wouldn't purchase from me because I didn't charge extra for a maintenance agreement (a big company arrangement).  I've had customers look me up in Dun & Bradstreet.  I've had customers want to know what my yearly sales figures are. 

These are all people that are trying to assess their risk, and they want very low risk (_their_ reputation might be on the line).  "Me" sounds riskier than "we", because a "me" can just up and quit or drop the project, whereas a "we" hopefully has a little more staying power. 

Still, I feel some guilt when saying "we"... (and plan to hire a part-timer partially so I can see "we").

No one is fooled by the "we", and it sounds really stupid when people know you are a one man show. 

Even when I worked at a help desk for a large company, I don't remember ever writing support emails by saying "we".  Try to keep it personal. 

If you had a problem with a Dell, would you rather hear that Jim Samson personally will look into your problem or that "Dell appreciates your concerns, and we will look into it"

Even though you are a one man outfit today, there is no reason to expect that always to be true. When you say something like "please feel free to contact me/us" you are making a "forward-looking" statement, and should temporize as appropriate (hence I would say "please feel free to contact us" since I don't know that I will be the only person in the company when the future contact is made).

If you are making a statement purely about the present or the past, however, I would use the singular: "I am happy that you have selected <product name>" rather than "We are happy that you have selected <product name>".

Another approach is to use the company name instead of personal pronoun: "<company name> is happy that you have selected <product name>" or "please feel free to contact <company name>". But this can become cumbersome in a long message.

I was in a dilemma too.

I am a 1 man show working on WP Text Ads, a free WordPress plugin that lets bloggers sell ads directly to advertisers.

It took quite a bit of courage using 'me' instead of 'we'. But I thought why bluff? When I used 'we', I had to write too formally. With 'me', I can use a friendlier tone.

Not that I am hiding. Personally I have no problem with people knowing that I am a one man show, and I dislike communicating with faceless corporations as well.

But my product is a B2B application performing some scientific calulations, and my worries are similar to those outlined by Doug.

I put the fact that I am a one-man band front and center on the About Us page and use the regal we everywhere else.  Personally I think this is another one of those choices that comes down to aesthetics and isn't worth thinking about for more than twelve seconds.

The choice is not that easy for some of us, but you are right.

Nice quote:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/30772.html

Love the quote!! I agree with all those were in favor of "Me"...in the day and age where everything seems to be automated, it is certainly a breathe of fresh air to receive the personal touch! Good Luck!

Patrick, with all due respect (and I do respect you), a teacher isn't going to be risking her job by buying your bingo card creator.  Compare that with (for example) your IBank buying a critical piece of core server software for the business from a single guy (would you get all of your live stock quotes from a guy working out of his basement?).  It wouldn't happen, and the manager that knowingly did it could get fired.

_I_ know I can support my customers better than an outsourced call center tech reading from a script, but the customer doesn't know me personally (and won't even from a nice blog entry).  They want to make a sure bet.  I suspect I'd immediately lose at least 50% of my sales if I looked like a one man show. 

Rolls Royce, Volvo, Sandia National Labs, Sony, the US Army, Visa, Boeing, etc don't (knowingly) buy from one man shows.  B2B is very different than B2C.

And no, I haven't sold to *all* of the above :)

Doug, probably something could be done to convince business customers that buying from a one man company is OK?

I personally think it depends on how critical your software is to the business.  Something that a few (small department?) will use you can probably get away with.  The problem is, will they even bother contacting you to initiate a conversation, or will they see that you're small from your website and just move on?

Another thing to note here... it will often by FOUND OUT that you are a one man band operating in an apartment in the suburbs.  Supposing the above scenario where someone could "get fired" for buying from a one man company.  They find out that your not only a one man company, but have been pretending you are more?  That seems much worse in my book.

I use "we" on official emails, generally the autogenerated one, for example the sale email.
When the customer contacts me, I always use "me".

It all depends on the application.

A large enterprise *will* buy software from a "one man band" if the business risk is low enough. So a small utility required by a team or an individual that - sure. A mission critical multinational ERP system - not in a million years.

Discretionary budgets are probably a big factor here - if it's under the $100/$1000/$10000 limit then it may just get expensed and corporate IT may never know about it.