An interesting editorial on the IT business edge site discusses the recent Netsuite IPO.

Of course there is the expected discussion on whether or not SaaS has come of age, and the arguments for or against Netsuite being a potential SMB product, but what really got my attention was this line;

NetSuite’s marketing pitch is more like those of traditional software vendors than best-of-breed SaaS providers.

The inference here is that the easiest way to circumvent the issues around buyer not understanding, having faith on, or preparing to adopt a SaaS product is to simply not push the fact that it is. Instead of jumping up and down and claiming that “this product is SaaS, SaaS is the way of the future therefore by default this product is the right one”, vendors should rather adopt the perspective that “this is simply the right choice” – sure push the benefits of central admin, no onsite upgrading required and an easier revenue stream, but rather than push those as some magical result of the SaaS model (and bear in mind that SMBs neither know nor care about SaaS per se), push them as a distinctive feature of your software product as opposed to the competitions software product.

Its a logical piece of advice when one remember that the customer doesn’t care about acronyms, just solutions.

Maybe the hot marketing tip for SaaS companies for ’08?