What I learned from Jason Fried (37signals)
The creative conversation of Dan Schipper, Firefly's co-founder , and Jason Fried, 37signals 's co-founder, led the author to entertaining conclusions about how and who to sell the software. We hope, and you, Habrazhiteli, will benefit.
Translated by Alconost Localization Company
I decided to meet with Jason Frayd to learn how to sell software and stop interrupting occasional sales. For 10 years of my programming experience, I made quite a lot of money online, but most of my sales were made by chance.
')
That is, I never really thought about how and why products are bought at all. I create a product, release it, provide traffic to it - and sales almost always start. But I never tried to understand who buys my product and why. I have never refined selling text and have not analyzed which types of traffic lead me to more buyers.
As soon as the product is released, I do one of two things: either I start working on adding new features to it, or I take on a new project. And I never wondered what worked and what did not, did not care about improvement and simplification - I was always fascinated only by the prospect of creating something new.
It allows you to learn. And I learned a lot in the last 10 years. But it seems to me that something more is needed to go from a normal level to a good one. To make first-class products, you need to constantly practice the art of understanding. And also get rid of everything except the absolutely necessary.
Over the past months, we and Firefly co-founders have been working on the realization of this idea - we learned how to sell intentionally, and not by chance. We wanted sales to occur due to the fact that the text about the product is precisely aimed at the problem of the consumer and offers a solution that forms an emotional connection. We didnât want sales to happen just because the buyer was smart enough - he could get through the list of product features that he didnât need and found the reason to pay for it.
Non-random sales require an understanding of customer needs, and Jason is perhaps one of the world's best experts on this issue.
In November, we agreed to meet through Twitter, and three months later I was sitting in the office of 37signals - at one round wooden conference table with him. We spent about two hours talking about Basecamp (its product), Firefly (my product), and many other things. And that's what I learned.
There are two obstacles to non-random sales: a lack of information and its excess.
When work on a product is just beginning, you donât have much information. Given this vacuum, most people only guess to whom and why they may need what they create. But often the initial assumptions are wrong.
Therefore, we are talking to each and every one of what we are creating, counting on feedback. In my Evernote there are 37 notes about conversations with different people about Firefly. And these are just the ones I took care to record.
But such communication creates an informational problem: it is very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the information should be completely sorted. If you try to create a selling text based on the feedback received, it will not work out all opinions, and it would not bring any benefit. The general principle of sales is: selling to everyone, you will not sell to anyone.
Jason's solution is simple and effective. There are only two people who can give real feedback about your product: the one who just bought it and the one who just refused it.
You can certainly collect other people's opinions, but in the end they will be less valuable. A client who has been with you for 8 years and loves everything you do will not give useful feedback. He just snags you to death. Also, the one who promises to register and pay money is useless if you, say, add such and such four functions. He will deceive you and eventually disappear.
A newly registered user can give good feedback. He has just completed the purchase process, and it is easier for him to share information about why he made this purchase, what emotional reason led him to your product, and how much of the product is really useful for him.
If you interview new customers, you can use their words to sell your product. This will allow you to understand their way of thinking, to figure out what is important to them, and what convinced them to tell you their credit card details.
Similarly, a consumer who has just abandoned your product can tell you exactly what you are missing. These people have registered and entered their credit card details in the hope that you can solve their problem. If they leave you, then your product did not give them what they expected.
Sometimes itâs about the text: you didnât provide what you promised on the site. Sometimes the problem is in the product itself: perhaps it is too slow, or contains too many errors, or does not solve the problem it is intended to solve. In any case, detailed interviews with those who have just abandoned the product can help you identify and correct shortcomings.
What to do if you have no customers yet? Jason also has an answer to this: find your competitor's customers and talk to them.
Even if you know who to talk about the product with, it does not mean that you know what to ask and how to ask questions. Actually, this was my biggest problem with the client's development methodology: it says that you need to ask questions, but there is not a word about how and about what.
Let's start by asking questions.
The human brain is a complex and confusing thing. It doesnât handle high-level abstractions very well, like âWhat problems do you have?â Or âHow can we improve this?â. If you ask someone a high-level question about what problems they face in their work, as a response, you will usually get a vague story of hatred of foul-smelling employees or fear of annoying your superiors. These answers are useless, since abstract human problems cannot be solved with software.
But the human brain copes with the specifics. Questions such as âCan you tell me what you do during the day?â Or âAre there any repetitive tasks that you do on a daily basis?â Will lead you in a much more interesting way. You can identify problems solved with your software.
Now that we know how to ask questions, let's discuss what answers we need to understand how to sell a product.
First of all, you need to find out what work your product does.
At first glance, the answer to this question is easy. A shower helps you to become clean. Backpack helps to carry things. Wallet - keep the money together. Firefly makes it easier for customers to take screenshots.
But people are irrational. Their buying decision is not affected by what the product does, but by what it means in their life.
During the conversation, Jason showed me a video of Harvard Business School with Professor Clayton Christensen . Clayton argues that "products find their market only when they help consumers do the work they are already trying to do."
He tells the story of a fast-food restaurant that was trying to increase sales of milkshakes. A traditional market survey was conducted, which makes any large company. The target audience was identified and focus groups were conducted with these people.
At the focus groups, the participants were asked the question: âWhat can we do to make our milkshakes more appealing to you?â. And the answer was received: people wanted more pieces of fruit, or more chocolate, or a new interesting taste. The company listened and changed the line of milkshakes. But this had no effect on sales.
Then the company invited a consultant who approached the problem from the other side and asked a very specific question: âDo people hire a milkshake for what kind of work?â
After collecting the answers, he found that 50% of consumers buy milkshakes in the early morning. Therefore, he decided to talk to those who had just purchased a milkshake the very next morning. As a result, a very interesting model emerged.
Almost everyone who buys a milkshake early in the morning, do it during a long trip behind the wheel - they need to do something with themselves. It turns out that a milkshake is an ideal meal for a long morning drive to work. He is sweet. Eating it takes a lot of time, that is, it lasts almost the entire trip. He is in a glass - does not stain the salon. And it's pretty satisfying.
So, for all these people, a milkshake was not just a sweet drink. He was something that took them on the road.
Once you have determined what work your product does, it remains to find out one more important thing.
In the milkshakes example, it turned out that people who bought them in the morning had tried other products. Some have tried eating bananas. This is a healthy and tasty food. But unlike milkshakes, bananas end quickly - they are not enough for the entire trip. And they are not so nourishing. Others tried to eat donuts. They are good because they are sweet. But because of them, the steering wheel quickly becomes sticky and the interior gets dirty. And again: they are not so nourishing.
That is, people switched to milkshakes because they turned out to be an ideal way to occupy themselves during a long trip at the wheel.
The same happens with any other types of products.
If it seems to you that people do not switch from something else to use what you have created, it means that you either do not understand your own product, or nobody needs what you sell. Each product has competitors. They may be other products or processes.
If you know where your customers are moving from, it seriously adds an understanding of how to sell your product and what problem it should solve. And when you do this research, you will find that people often move on to completely unexpected things.
In the milkshakes example, fast food initially believed that McDonalds and Burger King were its competitors in the milkshake market. But a much wider competition was revealed, which the company had no idea about.
This turned out to be fully applicable to my product.
Firefly provides screening for customer support without downloading the application. We thought a lot about how the screenshooting market is modified. There are enough free products. Therefore, in order to take money for our software (which we do), we had to understand the needs of our consumers better than everyone else in the market.
I showed Jason a demo, and he seemed to like it. He called his employee from customer support, who also watched the demo. To determine what kind of work this product does for her, we asked what she does when a client contacts her for help. It turned out that screenshooting is not included in its workflow. Cannot enter, because any kind of screenshoting that requires downloading a separate application from a client is a nightmare for a support staff member.
Instead, she asks the client to describe the page he sees, and what he needs to do. Then she instructs him from memory, telling which buttons to press to solve his problem.
It often happened that, despite careful descriptions, it was still not clear what the client sees. It happened that she asked the client to press a button that was supposed to be on the page opened in front of him, but received an answer that there was no such button. Worst of all, at that moment she could not tell whether it was a mistake in the product or the client was simply not looking for a button there.
Firefly solves this problem: it can see exactly what the client sees without forcing him to interrupt viewing in order to download and launch third-party applications. But what is interesting: we do not actually compete with other screenshot software in this case. We compete with the memory of customer support staff and their willingness to daily instruct customers from memory.
Here is the key to understanding how to sell this product. We seem to be doing the same thing - we allow the support service to see the client's screen, but this does not mean that we do the same work as traditional screening.
If we reflect this in the approach to selling our product, it will help find more buyers and make more money.
Think about who your real competitors are. To calculate them, determine what work your product does and where people go from there.
After meeting with Jason, my girlfriend and I spent the rest of the day in our hotel room, sorting out different products and trying to determine what kind of work they were doing. This is a fun game, and some finds, believe me, will surprise you. For example, a shower does not just make you clean: its job is to provide you with a place where you can escape from everything, to be alone with your thoughts.
You have probably noticed that much of what I have said here seems applicable both to the development of the product and to its sales. This is because the understanding of your consumers determines what opportunities to put into the product and how to promote it. So we come to the next item.
Jason never told me directly about this, but, in my opinion, it comes through in his every word. If it turns out that he really didnât mean anything like that, all the glory will be given to me.
Many people think of marketing as tricks and tricks that are needed to trick people into buying something. But first-class marketing does not: it relies on an accurate understanding of consumer needs on an emotional level and demonstrates how your product will meet these needs.
A first-class product is made based on the same understanding. When you know the emotional needs of your consumer, you can create something quite simple, but exactly meeting these needs.
If you understand what each interface element of your product means in the life of its user, you can understand how best to sell this product. The essence of your product and the method of selling it are closely interrelated and depend on a detailed understanding.
This awareness is simple and beautiful.
I think the most important thing that I learned from all of this was not Jason's specific advice, although his advice was unquestionably valuable. Most important was how he advised and how this reveals his approach.
The first thing I noticed was that he did not try to convince me that he was right.
âThis, as we found out, works for us. Perhaps this is wrong, but it seems to work, âhe said, pointing to the image of the Basecamp home page projected from the MacBook onto the wall by a wireless projector.
I came prepared - with a lot of questions to which he had answers. But not quite normal.
You see, when smart people give advice, they tell you what to do. But over the past few years, I realized that the smartest people, giving advice, do three things:
Jason is no exception. He was equally interested in what I was doing, and why. (As a student-philosopher, this makes me especially happy). And he did not try to defend his case at any cost.
What he is really good at is finding everything that is not relevant, irrelevant, and getting rid of it. This requires a deep understanding of its customers, what they are aggressively pursuing.
It is very easy to do something without appreciating how well it works. It is much harder to constantly and consciously review everything until you get to the bottom of the problem. So I understood his way of thinking. And this is what I would like to learn from.
About the translator
The article is translated in Alconost.
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Translated by Alconost Localization Company
I decided to meet with Jason Frayd to learn how to sell software and stop interrupting occasional sales. For 10 years of my programming experience, I made quite a lot of money online, but most of my sales were made by chance.
')
That is, I never really thought about how and why products are bought at all. I create a product, release it, provide traffic to it - and sales almost always start. But I never tried to understand who buys my product and why. I have never refined selling text and have not analyzed which types of traffic lead me to more buyers.
As soon as the product is released, I do one of two things: either I start working on adding new features to it, or I take on a new project. And I never wondered what worked and what did not, did not care about improvement and simplification - I was always fascinated only by the prospect of creating something new.
It allows you to learn. And I learned a lot in the last 10 years. But it seems to me that something more is needed to go from a normal level to a good one. To make first-class products, you need to constantly practice the art of understanding. And also get rid of everything except the absolutely necessary.
Over the past months, we and Firefly co-founders have been working on the realization of this idea - we learned how to sell intentionally, and not by chance. We wanted sales to occur due to the fact that the text about the product is precisely aimed at the problem of the consumer and offers a solution that forms an emotional connection. We didnât want sales to happen just because the buyer was smart enough - he could get through the list of product features that he didnât need and found the reason to pay for it.
Non-random sales require an understanding of customer needs, and Jason is perhaps one of the world's best experts on this issue.
In November, we agreed to meet through Twitter, and three months later I was sitting in the office of 37signals - at one round wooden conference table with him. We spent about two hours talking about Basecamp (its product), Firefly (my product), and many other things. And that's what I learned.
An informational problem arises with the product.
There are two obstacles to non-random sales: a lack of information and its excess.
When work on a product is just beginning, you donât have much information. Given this vacuum, most people only guess to whom and why they may need what they create. But often the initial assumptions are wrong.
Therefore, we are talking to each and every one of what we are creating, counting on feedback. In my Evernote there are 37 notes about conversations with different people about Firefly. And these are just the ones I took care to record.
But such communication creates an informational problem: it is very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the information should be completely sorted. If you try to create a selling text based on the feedback received, it will not work out all opinions, and it would not bring any benefit. The general principle of sales is: selling to everyone, you will not sell to anyone.
Information problem can be solved
Jason's solution is simple and effective. There are only two people who can give real feedback about your product: the one who just bought it and the one who just refused it.
You can certainly collect other people's opinions, but in the end they will be less valuable. A client who has been with you for 8 years and loves everything you do will not give useful feedback. He just snags you to death. Also, the one who promises to register and pay money is useless if you, say, add such and such four functions. He will deceive you and eventually disappear.
A newly registered user can give good feedback. He has just completed the purchase process, and it is easier for him to share information about why he made this purchase, what emotional reason led him to your product, and how much of the product is really useful for him.
If you interview new customers, you can use their words to sell your product. This will allow you to understand their way of thinking, to figure out what is important to them, and what convinced them to tell you their credit card details.
Similarly, a consumer who has just abandoned your product can tell you exactly what you are missing. These people have registered and entered their credit card details in the hope that you can solve their problem. If they leave you, then your product did not give them what they expected.
Sometimes itâs about the text: you didnât provide what you promised on the site. Sometimes the problem is in the product itself: perhaps it is too slow, or contains too many errors, or does not solve the problem it is intended to solve. In any case, detailed interviews with those who have just abandoned the product can help you identify and correct shortcomings.
What to do if you have no customers yet? Jason also has an answer to this: find your competitor's customers and talk to them.
How to ask questions to get worthwhile answers
Even if you know who to talk about the product with, it does not mean that you know what to ask and how to ask questions. Actually, this was my biggest problem with the client's development methodology: it says that you need to ask questions, but there is not a word about how and about what.
Let's start by asking questions.
The human brain is a complex and confusing thing. It doesnât handle high-level abstractions very well, like âWhat problems do you have?â Or âHow can we improve this?â. If you ask someone a high-level question about what problems they face in their work, as a response, you will usually get a vague story of hatred of foul-smelling employees or fear of annoying your superiors. These answers are useless, since abstract human problems cannot be solved with software.
But the human brain copes with the specifics. Questions such as âCan you tell me what you do during the day?â Or âAre there any repetitive tasks that you do on a daily basis?â Will lead you in a much more interesting way. You can identify problems solved with your software.
Now that we know how to ask questions, let's discuss what answers we need to understand how to sell a product.
What work does your product do?
First of all, you need to find out what work your product does.
At first glance, the answer to this question is easy. A shower helps you to become clean. Backpack helps to carry things. Wallet - keep the money together. Firefly makes it easier for customers to take screenshots.
But people are irrational. Their buying decision is not affected by what the product does, but by what it means in their life.
During the conversation, Jason showed me a video of Harvard Business School with Professor Clayton Christensen . Clayton argues that "products find their market only when they help consumers do the work they are already trying to do."
He tells the story of a fast-food restaurant that was trying to increase sales of milkshakes. A traditional market survey was conducted, which makes any large company. The target audience was identified and focus groups were conducted with these people.
At the focus groups, the participants were asked the question: âWhat can we do to make our milkshakes more appealing to you?â. And the answer was received: people wanted more pieces of fruit, or more chocolate, or a new interesting taste. The company listened and changed the line of milkshakes. But this had no effect on sales.
Then the company invited a consultant who approached the problem from the other side and asked a very specific question: âDo people hire a milkshake for what kind of work?â
After collecting the answers, he found that 50% of consumers buy milkshakes in the early morning. Therefore, he decided to talk to those who had just purchased a milkshake the very next morning. As a result, a very interesting model emerged.
Almost everyone who buys a milkshake early in the morning, do it during a long trip behind the wheel - they need to do something with themselves. It turns out that a milkshake is an ideal meal for a long morning drive to work. He is sweet. Eating it takes a lot of time, that is, it lasts almost the entire trip. He is in a glass - does not stain the salon. And it's pretty satisfying.
So, for all these people, a milkshake was not just a sweet drink. He was something that took them on the road.
Once you have determined what work your product does, it remains to find out one more important thing.
Where do people go to your product?
In the milkshakes example, it turned out that people who bought them in the morning had tried other products. Some have tried eating bananas. This is a healthy and tasty food. But unlike milkshakes, bananas end quickly - they are not enough for the entire trip. And they are not so nourishing. Others tried to eat donuts. They are good because they are sweet. But because of them, the steering wheel quickly becomes sticky and the interior gets dirty. And again: they are not so nourishing.
That is, people switched to milkshakes because they turned out to be an ideal way to occupy themselves during a long trip at the wheel.
The same happens with any other types of products.
If it seems to you that people do not switch from something else to use what you have created, it means that you either do not understand your own product, or nobody needs what you sell. Each product has competitors. They may be other products or processes.
If you know where your customers are moving from, it seriously adds an understanding of how to sell your product and what problem it should solve. And when you do this research, you will find that people often move on to completely unexpected things.
Your competitors may not be what you think.
In the milkshakes example, fast food initially believed that McDonalds and Burger King were its competitors in the milkshake market. But a much wider competition was revealed, which the company had no idea about.
This turned out to be fully applicable to my product.
Firefly provides screening for customer support without downloading the application. We thought a lot about how the screenshooting market is modified. There are enough free products. Therefore, in order to take money for our software (which we do), we had to understand the needs of our consumers better than everyone else in the market.
I showed Jason a demo, and he seemed to like it. He called his employee from customer support, who also watched the demo. To determine what kind of work this product does for her, we asked what she does when a client contacts her for help. It turned out that screenshooting is not included in its workflow. Cannot enter, because any kind of screenshoting that requires downloading a separate application from a client is a nightmare for a support staff member.
Instead, she asks the client to describe the page he sees, and what he needs to do. Then she instructs him from memory, telling which buttons to press to solve his problem.
It often happened that, despite careful descriptions, it was still not clear what the client sees. It happened that she asked the client to press a button that was supposed to be on the page opened in front of him, but received an answer that there was no such button. Worst of all, at that moment she could not tell whether it was a mistake in the product or the client was simply not looking for a button there.
Firefly solves this problem: it can see exactly what the client sees without forcing him to interrupt viewing in order to download and launch third-party applications. But what is interesting: we do not actually compete with other screenshot software in this case. We compete with the memory of customer support staff and their willingness to daily instruct customers from memory.
Here is the key to understanding how to sell this product. We seem to be doing the same thing - we allow the support service to see the client's screen, but this does not mean that we do the same work as traditional screening.
If we reflect this in the approach to selling our product, it will help find more buyers and make more money.
Think about who your real competitors are. To calculate them, determine what work your product does and where people go from there.
After meeting with Jason, my girlfriend and I spent the rest of the day in our hotel room, sorting out different products and trying to determine what kind of work they were doing. This is a fun game, and some finds, believe me, will surprise you. For example, a shower does not just make you clean: its job is to provide you with a place where you can escape from everything, to be alone with your thoughts.
You have probably noticed that much of what I have said here seems applicable both to the development of the product and to its sales. This is because the understanding of your consumers determines what opportunities to put into the product and how to promote it. So we come to the next item.
Excellent sales and great product have a common base.
Jason never told me directly about this, but, in my opinion, it comes through in his every word. If it turns out that he really didnât mean anything like that, all the glory will be given to me.
Many people think of marketing as tricks and tricks that are needed to trick people into buying something. But first-class marketing does not: it relies on an accurate understanding of consumer needs on an emotional level and demonstrates how your product will meet these needs.
A first-class product is made based on the same understanding. When you know the emotional needs of your consumer, you can create something quite simple, but exactly meeting these needs.
If you understand what each interface element of your product means in the life of its user, you can understand how best to sell this product. The essence of your product and the method of selling it are closely interrelated and depend on a detailed understanding.
This awareness is simple and beautiful.
The role of doubt
I think the most important thing that I learned from all of this was not Jason's specific advice, although his advice was unquestionably valuable. Most important was how he advised and how this reveals his approach.
The first thing I noticed was that he did not try to convince me that he was right.
âThis, as we found out, works for us. Perhaps this is wrong, but it seems to work, âhe said, pointing to the image of the Basecamp home page projected from the MacBook onto the wall by a wireless projector.
I came prepared - with a lot of questions to which he had answers. But not quite normal.
You see, when smart people give advice, they tell you what to do. But over the past few years, I realized that the smartest people, giving advice, do three things:
- Before they say anything, they ask what you hope to achieve.
- Their advice is accompanied by several caveats.
- They do not hesitate to say: "I do not know."
Jason is no exception. He was equally interested in what I was doing, and why. (As a student-philosopher, this makes me especially happy). And he did not try to defend his case at any cost.
What he is really good at is finding everything that is not relevant, irrelevant, and getting rid of it. This requires a deep understanding of its customers, what they are aggressively pursuing.
It is very easy to do something without appreciating how well it works. It is much harder to constantly and consciously review everything until you get to the bottom of the problem. So I understood his way of thinking. And this is what I would like to learn from.
About the translator
The article is translated in Alconost.
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/167477/
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