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Rethink What You Sell

Let's talk about rethinking what you sell. Um I mentioned earlier there was an email that was sent by Stewart butterfield, the ceo of slack to his whole team before they launched and I wanted to share with you some of the excerpts of it because it's one of the most clear cogent explanations of someone who's already done the work of rethinking what you sell in the way that I'm gonna ask you to do. He wrote to them these words, he said, we know that we've built something which is genuinely useful. That's table stakes, right? Like you shouldn't even be in this conversation if your product doesn't actually do something that people need, it's something people want. However, I think all of us will relate to this. Almost all of them have no idea that they want slack. How could they have never heard of it? Right. Just as much as our job is to build something genuinely useful. Our job is also to understand what people think they want and then to translate the value of slack into their terms. Wh...

at we're selling is not the software product, what we're selling is organizational transformation. So he literally asks, who do we want our customers to become right? Like what is this transformation that we're selling? And then he says, we want them to be relaxed, we want them to be productive workers, we want them to be people who have confidence from knowing that any information that they might need is just a search away, right? We want them to be masters of their information, not slaves to it. We don't want them to be overwhelmed by the constant flow of information. We want them to be less frustrated, right? We want them to be able to be people who communicate with purpose, knowing that everything they ask is actually building value for everyone on the team. So when I talk about rethinking what you saw in the paradigm shift that I'm asking you to engage in, I want you to rethink what you saw in this way, You don't even sell a product, you sell a transformation, you don't sell apps, you don't sell clothes, you sell a transformation and you sell the transformation that your specific customer is looking for. So it's often the transformation from like having a specific problem to no longer having that specific problem, it's um it might be a transformation of feeling like feeling more confident, feeling good in their body, being better and feeling better about their career, being better at their career, better at relationships, you may sell the easing of some frictions that they now currently experience along that journey of transformation, you may sell fuel to get from one stage to the next of their journey or to get there faster and more easily or more beautifully than they would have otherwise. Um like we talked earlier about someone's love. Mark was the goop face mask, right? Like, you know, you could possibly use sandpaper and get the same effect. But there's beauty to it, feeling like a spa, right? It's easy, it's beautiful. It's certainly more beautiful than you would have been able to do without it. And the, what I love about this is this mindset reset opens up fodder for anyone in the company to rethink what they specifically do through this lens, right? If you're in product, you're like, uh, interesting, I have to be thinking about like how does this, how do these features actually remove frictions into progress triggers? If you're in marketing the same thing, you have equal power and I say this as someone who's run marketing teams and very technical companies, a lot of times, the marketers and technical companies don't necessarily feel empowered to change a lot. But once you start thinking about what you sell as a transformation through the lens of your customers journey. There are actually a lot of frictions that you as a marketer can ease strictly with content. There are knowledge frictions and knowledge barriers and knowledge progress triggers that you can deliver with content. So I want to, I have a friend who runs communications at Pinterest and I I love she's, I mentioned her in the book a lot. I love talking to people at Pinterest about how they think about um their customer and the transformation that they create for the customer. So I asked her to share a little bit with us. This is Christine Shermer. Good morning. I'm Christine Shermer. I'm the head of columns at Pinterest, and we like to say the Pinterest mission is to help you discover and do what you love. Um, we think that's relevant because in today's world there are so many apps to connect with other people, with family, with friends, with news, with celebrities, but it's pretty rare to have something to help you connect with yourself. So Pinterest has about million active users around the world and about countries. It's most commonly used to find ideas in beauty style food and home. And you know, Pinterest is really for anyone, anyone with an idea, but those who really love it are those who are inspired to take action in their lives. So that might be the meal that they want to make for dinner or the trip of a lifetime that they want to take. So Pinterest is for people who want to try new things in their lives and people who really want to find and do the things that they love. Um, in order to deliver on that message, we've done a few things in the product. So we've built what we like to call it personalized discovery engine and what that really means is no home feed is the same. Mine is going to look different than yours because it's filled with useful and relevant ideas that are personalized for my tastes and interests. So any product feature that we build from organizational tools to recommended pins, um, it's really designed to be used by you in a very individualized and customized way there a blank canvas for no matter what you want to discover, it will work to help you leave you down that path From a marketing perspective, we spend a lot of time helping people understand that Pinterest is not a social network. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Uh it may have grown during the rise of visual social media, things like instagram, but it is not designed at all to share, connect broadcast to other people. In fact, it's the opposite. It's designed to lead you to possibilities that you never considered for yourself in an attempt to help you connect with your true self. So if we deliver on our promise, we like to say that you will connect with your true self, you will discover the true person that you are all right. So I love that because I think it's first of all, super counterintuitive, right? We're all like social networks, this, this, this interest and she's like, nope, all we care about is helping people discover and do discover that is the transformation they sell is discovering your dreams and doing your dreams and I've spent a lot of time with them. Um They've got an incredibly vast body of insights about their customers and they build them into every conversation. There's customers on site all the time in all kinds of meetings where they're like this is the kind of person this we have to build something for that need. Um All right, so that is like rethink, rethink what you sell. First step is understand that you don't just sell a product. You sell a transformation. The second step is to make that shift from prop from product 1st from a product. All I do is focus on the product that we sell from a product first perspective to a problem First perspective, Right? Stop fixating on what we sell and start fixating on what problem We solve. That's just meant to be a greater than sign problem. First perspective is greater than product 1st and I'm going to offer you a tool that you can use to help make that shift. Um Okay. When you're thinking about the shift from product 1st 22 problem first they're kind of two parts like you do have to know something about the problem that you exist to solve and you have to deeply understand the people that have that problem. So that's like a whole field of interest that we're going to cover in the next session. But first you almost have to like internally reorient right? Because so many of us have been so focused for so long on our product. We're in those weeds. You have to do something to make the shift that we just talked about to start thinking unless unless you're lucky and your Ceo has always been super focused on, we tell this transformation most of us will have to do something to make that shift. So I'm going to offer you this tool called the story spine. We're going to walk through it and I'm going to offer it to as sort of a change management tool to start making that shift internally in your own mind and then internally with the people that you work with from a problem first, from product first to problem first. This is this is the same as making the shift to understanding that your customer and their problem matters the most. Right. All right. So remember the hero's journey, right? We all remember the hero's journey that um our customer is on some sort of a quest of transformation that we're going to help them do. And our role in that quest is as a mentor guide tool, something like that. So the story is fine, is essentially a very specific way in which you can tell literally, right, the story of your customer and their transformational journey in a way that sort of captures the power of narrative and storytelling. Two capture the hearts and minds of your internal audience to capture your own or hard in mind and get it lined up with that extreme customer focus. Right? So it's just, it's a storytelling template for crafting a story about your customers transformational hero's journey and the power of it is that it sort of starts to get you in the mode of articulating your model for how their transformation should go. If things go right and you help them the way that you set out to help them. This story should be true, Right? So there's uh, in some like nonprofit, in the nonprofit world, a model of change, every nonprofit organization kind of has its own model or story for how it creates change. This is don't usually have that. Right? So this is sort of that and I want to walk you through the steps. This is actually a tool that comes from the world of improv. Um and I just use it in companies when I work with them and consulting to sort of sketch out a new possibility for the way they could think about their customers and their relationship on their customers journey. So it's just fill in the blank template. You start with once upon a time and usually it's like once upon a time, we'll go through an example in just a second. It's usually like once upon a time there was someone who had this kind of a thing happening and every day this thing happened. But one day something happened that created a little shift or a change. And because of that a change happened because of that a change happened. Because of that a change happened until finally they reached the end of their transformational journey and ever since then they, you know, we were changed, they were transformed in the process of the journey to. So I want to share with you. Um a couple. Actually. Let me give you a couple of points pointers before I share an example with you. The first is don't feel any of the blanks in with your company name. Um What what we're doing is we're starting to tell ourselves a different story about the role we play in our customer's journey, right? What you should be filling blinks in with are the ways in which or the vehicles through which your company might simplify what's hard for them, offer them knowledge or logistical ease, remove resistance or trigger progress, give them tools to make the things that are hard easier, lead them through a process. Um, let me share our story with you. This is a story um, that I wrote and ensuring with permission of a client quite a while ago, the client was lou nobody tech. Um, funny enough, the, the uh, client actually is a posture app. So the fact that we're doing story, spine, it's funny. All right, Here's the story. Once upon a time there was a man, woman athlete or desk jockey in parents. In fact, there were tens of millions of them and every day they sat too much and moved to little slouching on the couch in the car or at the computer until one day they had developed bad posture and because of that they had back pain. They looked less attractive, became less active and lost confidence. And because of that they took pills, had surgery and made all sorts of unsuccessful efforts to fix their posture. And because of that they got depressed, experienced side effects and ultimately lost some of the joy of living. Until one day they started tracking their posture and setting small movement goals. So you see there, I didn't say until one day they started using this specific device. I said they started tracking their posture and sending small movement goals which is the way in which this device helps. And since then they stood up more sat less moved more and developed correct posture and so they looked better than or hotter. Their backs were pain free and they were healthier and more active. They burned more calories and so they felt alive, more powerful and we're able to fulfill their potential in life and at work. And then we just added here moral of the story because it was important to the leadership of the company. Oh yeah, by the way. And now they also know how to achieve any other health goal or change that they want, right? It's not even just about helping their backs feel better. But also we'd like to help them have confidence that they can make any other health change they want to make honestly depending on what your business is and how close to it you are. You might be able to get some good stuff going pretty fast. Let's go back to that one. Okay, so what's your business? So I'm selling power tool classes for women online. That's cool. So, but I'm not sure because it seems a little different than what I was gonna say because that example seemed like the negative is first right? Until because when you're talking about your story, basically. Yeah. So before, for me would be, where's the third? Let's start here. So who's your, It's a woman. So once upon a time there was a mother. Mhm. Or a professional young, professional woman who's at a job or with her kids, right? She's bored and she wants to be able to build and do stuff herself instead of asking her husband, her brother, friend, her neighbor, her father. Um she feels demotivated and overwhelmed by the thought of building projects from Pinterest. Okay, preacher until one day, so there's a warm stack. So until one day she's frustrated and well, until one day she finds that project that she just wants. Right, okay, So until one day she finds the actual chicken coop she wants to build or the little because she loves kids. Exactly, Exactly. Or Davis. Yeah. So this is the part that I'm not sure though and because of that and then you keep listing all the negative stuff. So yes we did in this example. But it could be because of that. She got really frustrated that she didn't have, you know, some of this comes when you don't know your customer audience. So that would be um so she goes to Lowe's and she's completely lost and she buys all the wrong would And she comes home and she's just spent $100 and nothing gets built. And then because of that she buys the wrong cordless drill and she can't figure out how to use it. She brought another $100 and she still doesn't have the thing made. And then because of that she finally asked her neighbor to build it and she's kind of pissed because he basically built it and she still doesn't know what she's doing or he didn't even build it that well or he didn't build it that great and he did it the way he didn't even hit the way he wanted to do it right. It's still not the way she wanted to do it. I can't even get in right right until one day. So until one day she took my online to a class or until one day she took, that's very much she got some education. So this okay saying where I was general, yes, I would make it general. Um so to one day she got some real actual training from a woman. Can I say that because it's different because it might be that it's from a woman, it might just be that it wasn't mind numbingly boring. It might mean it was specific to women being smaller and eating leverage and needing at the actual better technique because there is a difference then teach differently. So um so until one day she got some better training and setting small movement goals and finally learned how to actually use her cordless drill correctly In like 10 minutes or something like that. And since then she now has built Like 10 pitchers project site. Is that too much right away? Um since then she's built one overachiever one, complete. Yeah, she's built one complete pinchers project from start to finish. It turned out beautiful, it looks exactly like she wanted and it cost her like $20 and so they looked and so yeah I would do something like, so this is more like what you just said and then like she she's able to build things when she wants to and so she, so she's no longer frustrated when she looks at Pinterest. She stopped looking at Pinterest like 1000 hours a month now she just looks at it for five minutes, finds the project she wants and built it on the weekend. Mhm. And so how does she feel differently as a result? And how does she build feel sorry does she feel differently? So now she's not overwhelmed and frustrated by feeling like she wants to do things she can't do and she feels empowered because she can basically build anything she wants with her kids and she doesn't have to ask anybody for permission or for help or to wait around. Yeah and she seems a bunch of money. So she feels good about saving a bunch of money and in that one especially for you. So a lot of what we use this story for is internal. Right? Because it's not um it's kind of pre customer research usually that we do this, we are literally trying to make that internal pivot what we're thinking, what we do is sell a transformation. Um Just to the point that you made when you stood up where you're like this feels bad because it's like the negative stuff first. You want to go somewhere really positive at the end. So like not only does she not feel frustrated, she doesn't have to do these things anymore, she feels like confident and creative and maybe even, you know that creativity trickles over into other things she does in her life. She just generally feels more pro I feel more empowered. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um Yeah so you do have to make sure that you phrase it in a way that was like helpful for turning your own inspiration up to continue serving is that was that was great. But you knew that all that stuff. Mhm. And then also we all want to take the class. So that is it's as you can see now, having seen a couple of examples, it is truly a hero's journey story that we're telling with that template um in a way that reminds us that our job is to start thinking of what we do as being a mentor, a guide or tool along their journey. Um Your customers actually any person, we're pet in some cases who has the big picture of human scale problem, your company exists to solve right? You exist, your company exists to solve a problem that is bigger than just getting people to buy what you sell. And once you've clearly identified like who your customer is and what their problem is that you exist to serve, um you need to put distill that insight into some sort of a framework that you can use to systematically make decisions in your business and that the framework world, there are many their personas and avatars in all kinds of ways. The one we're going to talk about today is a customer journey map and once you have that you'll want to rethink the way you do your content in your marketing before you get to all of that though, I want to I want to share that. One of the things that I see derail and distract many transformational brands is a fixation on competitors. A fixation on this is true for solo preneurs who are just like, you know, you get that email from the person who has a business kind of like yours and you're like, why didn't I think of that? Or I was building that, I'm trying to do that right now. You know, like that kind of focus and it's true for public companies and you've seen it, you've seen the company come out with like a product that's really just like the product that they're competitor has had for a long time, that that focus on competition can be very distracting from focusing on competitors. So before we even get to rethink our customers, building customer journey maps, rethinking content marketing, I wanna take a pause and ask you to rethink your competition.