There Are No Bad Products, Only Bad Salesmen

Or so Microsoft thinks. With the sales of the Zune, its answer to the question “What Apple product can we try (poorly) to copy?”, tanking, the company heads still don’t understand that their product is not loved by the masses.

Microsoft (MSFT) has tried everything it can think of to turn things around for the Zune, which saw sales fall 54% last holiday season. Price cuts didn’t work. Free wi-fi at McDonald’s didn’t work. Music recommendation didn’t work. Microsoft even tried astrology — didn’t work.

But still not giving up: Now Microsoft is re-orging its Zune executive team, which means a Zune shutdown is probably off the table for quite a while:

Yes, after all, Microsoft needs more “stuff” to fill the shelves at those red-hot retail locations it is planning on opening. One bad idea leads to another.

CNET: Microsoft has quietly reorganized its Zune team, splitting up the hardware and software teams…

The software and services portion of the Zune team–the bulk of its staff–will be added to the portfolio of Enrique Rodriguez, the vice president who currently runs Microsoft’s Mediaroom and Media Center TV businesses. The hardware team, meanwhile, will now report to Tom Gibbons, who also leads the hardware design efforts within Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unit…

In an hour-long interview on Thursday, Rodriguez said the move was not made in response to recent Zune sales, but rather as the company looks to create a more unified entertainment business and gears up to expand the Zune service to be available on more than just Microsoft’s own devices.

Yes, after that date reset bug the software team does need to be repurposed, like to the janitorial department.

That’s at least consistent with Microsoft has been saying for months: The company sees the Zune idea as Microsoft’s way into the music distribution business, with the Zune hardware just a stepping stone along that path.

But we ask the Zune apologists in the audience (and there are Zune fans!): With the Zune a spectacular failure, with negligible market share years after launch, on what basis does the company think people will flock to the Zune on another device?

There’s enough worries for Microsoft: A competent but unexciting Windows 7 coming, MS-Office competitors getting better every year, and a MSN badly in need of an overhaul. Far better to focus on core competencies, cut losses on the Zune and move on.

Why don’t these people just put out quality software and then call it a day for everything else? (For Microsoft, quashing bugs in software should be job one, with all other things secondary, at best.)

This points out another idea (at least to me) that no one else is voicing - Mr. Ballmer is not the salesman that Mr. Gates was. Gates was not a great programmer, but he was a master salesman and manipulator. Whatever other qualities he had, he had those. Ballmer has nothing but the monkey-boy dance.  Unfortunately, he also doesn’t seem to want to allow any of the underlings to shine, by allowing some sanity to rise to the top.

When the Zune dies, and it eventually will, we will look back and say to ourselves “What took so long?”; there will be no fervent cries for a reprieve of the death sentence.

-