Post on 14-Jun-2015
description
BUILDING THINGS TO HELP SELL THE THINGS YOU BUILD
Patrick McKenzie
Want To Follow?
Hashtag #BoS2013 or tweet at @patio11 Slides are available at
http://bitly.com/bos13patio11
Update: She Said Yes
My Wee Little Business
Rather Smaller Than Many Here
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
0
80000
160000
Profits (Through 2012, Excluding AR)
TrainingConsultingBCCDay Job
Marketeering / MarkDev
SEO AdWords A/B testing conversion optimization funnel analytics Onboarding / first-run experience Lifecycle emails / drip email marketing etc, etc
Most Important Takeaway
You should have: full-time engineers who are only tasked with marketing/sales objectives
Why Don’t We Do This?
We’re too busy with day-to-day to invest. We can’t overcome
organizational/cultural barriers. We assumed integrating a SaaS would
do that. We can’t find the expertise internally.
Progress Is Measured In Working Code?
Organizational/Cultural Issues
I’d Like To Hire A MarkDev Person
Can I Just Buy This Off The Shelf?
How Often Do You Use $TOOL These
Days?
Getting Engineering Onboard
Exploit the hacker ethic: “Beat the system.”
Overcommunicate on experiments and results.
Surface business-level goals more explicitly to the engineering team.
Make this a career track, and award it appropriately, via salary/bonuses/status/etc.
Changing The Culture
Focus on early, obvious wins on low-hanging fruit.
Show engineers fun, challenging problems outside of Product.
Show marketers effective, measurable tools which supplement but do not replace them.
Emphasize mutual respect, empowerment, and opportunities to learn.
Tools Aren’t A Panacea
Just buying it isn’t enough. Make sure to continue exploiting things which you know to work.
Share what you’ve learned (internally and externally).
Remember the tremendous leverage you get from integration with your product/systems. If you’re not using the API, something is probably wrong.
How Do We Get Them On Our Team?
Train them out of your existing engineers. Best option for most of you.
Hire entrepreneurially-minded techies, give them a new brief and room to run. One option: “Failed” startup founders
Hire proven people who have done exactly these things before. Just saying: expect to pay through the nose
for this… … in the unlikely event you find anybody.
Sidenote: Career Advice
Concierge Onboarding
A Bit Of A Mismatch
We sell products but
customers want to buy solutions.
The Traditional SaaS Grid
Less product,Less cost
More product,More cost
Aligning Pricing With Customer Goals
We tell you how to fix the problem
We provide tools so that you can fix the problem
We fix the problem
We fix the problem
What Is Concierge Onboarding?
We proactively engage you at or before signup, to ensure you have a successful experience.
We deal with setup / integration / migration for you, to maximize probability of successful use.
We nag you constantly ^H^H^H assist you in achieving your expressed preference to get started using this software productively, even if you get momentarily distracted by other pressing business matters.
Can You Import From $SYSTEM?
Requirement: A user has a client/patient/etc management system, which we’ve never encountered before. Design a comprehensible onboarding experience which will allow them to export their current client list and import it into Appointment Reminder.
Goals: This takes under 60 seconds, always works, and can successfully be accomplished by Milly the Office Manager.
Minor challenge: We have no a priori knowledge of file format. We cannot influence it. The customer cannot edit it.
Good luck!
Format-Agnostic Import Feature!
Impact On Conversion Rate
4X
Impact On Account LTV (Guess-y)
4X
But Those Multiply, So…
16X
Other Examples Of Concierge
Drip (email marketing): Need an email campaign? We’ll write it for you.
WhooshTraffic (marketing analytics): Not sure what this will do in your business? Our CEO will give you 2 hours of personalized advice.
PlanScope (Project management): Our CEO will walk you through the whole software on Skype.
Campaign Monitor (email marketing): We’ll hold your hand until your first campaign goes out to your real email list.
Improves Innovation Cycle
Concierge
Onboarding
Automated
Onboarding
Product Changes
Getting Started
Offer it in a limited/timeboxed fashion to establish a cost baseline.
Make it a standard component of higher value plans, to drive customers to higher LTV plans.
Scale it up as far as the economics warrant.
Testimony
Thanks for Listening
Blog at http://www.kalzumeus.com https://training.kalzumeus.com Email
list. ~2 emails a month on selling software. You should be on it.
Slides will be posted. See @patio11 Send me email. I love chatting about
this. patrick@kalzumeus.com