Selling Simple & Easy

Rich Hickey built [programming language] Clojure on one ruthless principle:
"Simple and easy are not the same thing. Easy is just familiar. Simple means unentangled."

I came across this nugget hailed from his Simple Made Easy. As I now read, considered 'one of the most influential software engineering talks ever'.

At its core, [AI Grok suggests] 'the problem 99% of developers ignore is prioritising "easy" (familiar, quick-to-write) over "simple" (unentangled, low-complexity) coding'.

This matters because;

Focusing on “easy” gives you fast initial progress but complexity compounds and eventually kills velocity.
Focusing on “simple” (even if slower at first) lets you sustain speed and change the system reliably for years.

It's not such the jump to see parallels in our selling world.

An entry-level trap would be the 'easy' feature dump set against the 'simple' business drivers around what you offer. The former getting you nowhere whilst the latter leads neatly into true core value isolation. A kind of product-led versus problem-first error.

Moving on from that, there's misleading allure from another classic of seeking the quick-win through discounting. When repeatable sustainability comes instead from clearly setting the value upfront and not then jeopardise it through margin indiscipline.

And as a more general point from our present times, you can see the 'easy' in the adoption drive of many a tech tool and methodology wizardry promise. Yet which neglects that 'simple' proper pattern of events which when in train guarantee you win, and overwhelms whatever 'process' thinking you may have had, now doomed to under-deliver.