I’m hardly the first person to complain about the word “user” to describe people who do stuff with software…People don’t think of themselves as “users” and in all other contexts the word “user” is not generally positive and certainly not evocative of the kind of intimate, day-to-day relationship we’d like our work to have with the people who interact with it.
[…]
Perhaps if we all thought of it more as the Minimum Human Experience (hereafter referred to as MHX) we’d be less likely to release products that aren’t ready just to get them rushed out the door and instead focus our thinking on what the smallest coherent and valuable experience for a real person would be.
Nathan Dintenfass in “Human Experience“
Your prospects and your customers are real people.
Give careful thought to the impact of your offering not only on their ability to finish a task or do their job or to grow their business but also on their mental state and emotions.
Exercise care in your sales and marketing efforts to avoid treating them with any less respect than you would a relative.
Assume that they want to perform meaningful work and improve their skills: give them tools and environments that enable them not only to contribute but to succeed and to flourish.