Lessons

Lesson Info

Gather Feedback

Welcome back guys welcome back out there you ready to get started if that's the best response we've had so far all right so today the lessons that we've got for you are all about basically taking this brand new product that you've created and taking it to the next level and I know taking things to the next levels kind of cliche but that's what we're going to d'oh we're going to talk about how you're going to iterated on this product make it better make it different we're going to talk about how you figure out how to do that we're going to talk about how to create an amazing customer experience with customer on boarding with brianne dick we're going to talk about howto automate your marketing and so sales systems so that you can keep the money coming in because I know that that's a big pain point for people so by the end of today you'll not only know how you're going to get this product to market but now you'll also know how it's truly going to revolutionise your business and revolution...

ize your life sound good all right so often during the product development process people get them people start feeling like wow this is a lot of work and they they'll say to me hey I thought this was supposed to make me more money and leave me more time yes it can be intense it can be a lot of work absolutely but there are important next steps to follow to ensure that your products really do make you more money and really do save you more time those are the steps that were going to do today so often people get stuck in that initial phase and get mired down in the work that it takes to get a product to market to market it to sell it to build it that they get scared and never want to do anything with it again today I'm going to give you with next steps that you need to get out of that stuck place and onto the road to really making more money and more time that you really really wanna have so let's take a look at what we're going to do today in lessons nineteen three twenty seven you will create a process for gathering feedback from customers and use it to to liberate, reposition or differentiate your product you'll create a process for giving your customers the best experience possible you'll automate your lewd generation process so new customers are always coming your way and you ll automate your sales process so that you can sit back and relax sound get all right all right let's move on to lesson nineteen which is to gather feedback so where we left it in less than eighteen was that we had an offer and we were delivering the value of our product we were maybe we were co creating it, collaborating on it with our customers maybe we built it and put it in their hands and let them started using it just as making and selling your product is not the first step of the product development process it's not the last step either if if delivering the product is where you stop, you won't ever get to where you want to go with your business, you won't ever get to that more money, more time place you won't ever get out of that time for money cycle that you're still stuck in so step twelve is to gather feedback and this can be scary. I am especially scared of it and it's scary because we love our ideas we love our products and it can be hard to ask people hey, what did you think? But the good news is, hey, what did you think isn't actually the best question to ask? There are a lot of other questions that you that you can ask that help you figure out what's coming up next, right? Testimonials and reviews are the only kind of feedback that we need gathering feedback isn't just about getting testimonials all those that's important and what's a testimonial it's someone saying yeah, I love this product here's what it did for me here's how it helped here's what it allowed me to change in the results that allowed me get and that's fantastic but people telling you how wonderful your product is doesn't actually give you the information that you need to make your product better and so you have to ask different questions and you know, product development is actually all about learning it's learning what you need to know it's learning what you need to know to six feed on and here's how eric reese talks about it in the lean startup he says I've come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for start ups the effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated as we've seen it's easy to kid yourself about what you think your customers want it's also easy to learn things that are completely irrelevant if you guys six variants that before I'm seeing a lot of nods and smiles in the audience yeah it's very easy to learn things that are completely irrelevant and kind of derail your whole product development process with them again I've been there I've done that I totally understand what I think I love most about this idea is that any effort that doesn't that isn't necessary for learning that doesn't help you figure out what to do next khun be eliminated we spent so much time with extra extra ideas extra effort extra you know developing this little feature making the website just a little bit better again been there done that actually, funny story, right? Right as I was preparing this creative live class, I was like, you know what I need to do? I need to change this sidebar of my website when I changed the cybermen website, that was not a good idea. I mean, I'm glad I did it, but if you're if that's the kind of stuff that you're doing thinking about like, how can I make this product better? How can I make my creative live better? I know I'll change the sidebar of my website not smart, but not smart. You can eliminate that effort, you can give yourself a pass if the effort that you are embarking on doesn't help you learn mohr about how to make our product better, how to make it more effective, how to sell more it's not necessary and you can get rid about rid of it and here's why feedback is so important here's why asking these questions is so important feedback changes the way you change your product feedback changes the way you change your product. In a previous lesson, I mentioned that one of my very first products was a course called website kick start and that course I sold on the premise that it we'll teach you how to build your very first word press website without using someone else's theme but instead using a really simple simple theme that you can customize using actual code or things that are like code on dh and that's that's what I sold it on like this is what I will teach you but the feedback I got wass terror this was an amazing with new way to look at my business or thank you for helping me see my business in a completely new light help thank you for helping me figure out what was really important in my business wait a second that's not what this product was designed to dio so what did I do overtime. Once I realized that that was actually a good thing I was able to adjust the product so that people got more and more out of it that way which then actually finally led me to retiring that product and focusing on products that would help their help people see their businesses in a new light and that was that was a huge growth process and a huge learning process for me and it's helped me get to exactly where I am now. So what will your customers tell you that will help you change the way you change your product? Well, customers will tell you how they actually used your product. This is hugely important because your customers very well may not use your product the way you think they will it's all a guess until you put your product in someone his hands it's a guess so you've gotta ask them what did you actually do with this? What was that experience actually like? Did you fit it in in the morning? Did you incorporate it at lunchtime? Was it part of your daily routine? Or did you have to kind of find space for it? And that goes for an information product? It goes for a physical product. It goes for something that seems really utilitarian. It goes for something that seems really luxury. We need to know how customers are actually using our products. A big trend right now, actually, in product development is bringing in anthropological teams of researchers into people's homes into people's places of work and watching them use the products that the companies that hired these people have sold people so that they can see what is it actually look like to use this product? How are people actually incorporating it into their day? Now you don't have to be an anthropologist to figure this out. You can just ask people tell me how you're using this or you can observe the way they use it. People will also tell you what the what the greatest value of it was to them well is the greatest value like I mentioned with website kickstarted, the greatest value was not building a website. It was looking at the their business in a whole new way I was able to change my sales copy I was able to evolve the course and I was all of it also able to pivot my whole business to reflect that greatest value so that I could charge more so that I could get a bigger audience and so that I could resonate with mohr people that was huge uh they also tell you what worked for them and what didn't the fact of the matter is not every feature you build into your products not every curriculum of your every module of your course is going to sit well with people and you want to know if there's a trend there is there a module that you can eliminate is their extra explanation that you need to add in is there a different way that you need teo you know, structure every a thing so that it makes more sense and so that everything becomes usable so people will tell you what's worked for them and what didn't they also tell you why they would recommend it to others? This is a great question why would you recommend this product product to someone else? Because they'll tell you what problem they thought think it solves they'll tell you where they see their friends or their colleagues suffering we're you know, getting frustrated or getting stuck and then you can again pivot or iterated your product so that it more closely aligns with why someone recommended to somebody else so that you can get mohr referral traffic from that I'm gonna briefly introduce brianne who's sitting over here on the left and kinds kind of taken the place of a couple of our case study panellists now brands gonna be teaching are a few upcoming lessons but first I want to get your take on some of this so what what else would you add to this? What else can your customers really tell you? One thing that I like to ask is for the customers to think about before you bought what was the number one concern or objection that you had and what did you find was actually the case so what what was the concern you had that might have prevented you from making the buying decision and what did you find was true because that gives you some really good information as to what not only what the objection wass but how you can circum event that and also strengthen your case the other thing that I like to do is one of the questions we talked about is how they actually used your product what's really useful with that is to not just ask people how they use their product but if you have the opportunity as terror was saying to abs serve them you're doing an online product that can be something like which emails are they clicking on? How are they actually using it? We'll talk a lot in the upcoming segment after our break about how we want to make sure that people are able to do the things they need to do to be successful. So if you're aware of what those success criteria are that's, what you're looking for when you're looking at how they're actually using him and is the value that they're getting what you expected when you set it up in the first place? Yeah, excellent, thank you. All right, so how does what your customers tell you actually change the way you change your product? And I've got again some more thought experiment questions on this, so think about that product that you have in mind because we're kind of workshopping ahead of time right now. You probably maybe some of you have gotten your product into people's hands already I'd love to hear from you if you have, but mostly you probably have not you're you're thinking ahead of things right now, so thinking about that product that you're considering developing if your customers tell you that they actually use your product differently than you intended, how would that change your next step? If your customers tell you they actually used your product differently, how would that change your next step? Would you change your sales message? Would you adjust your curriculum would you change the design of it the form out of it the package of it the price of it I've definitely worked with clients in the past who realised that the way their customers actually used the product would allow them tio double triple orm or the price of what they were offering they low balled that initial price because they were wrong about how the product was actually gonna be used absolutely exciting sometimes all we need to change about our product is the price to make it more valuable if your customers tell you they value the uh the expo if your customers tell you the value they experienced was different than what you thought you were delivering how would that change the next step if the value was different for your customers how would that change the next step how you how could you increase then that value cause likely if you weren't designing to deliver that value in the first place you probably designed it designed the product differently than you would knowing now what the real value is so could you add in another module could you change a feature so that it was more and more obvious that that was the value that they were going to get so that they could get mohr of that value and remember value is transformations were talking about change here how could you help people change that thing even more than they already did if your customers tell you certain features are unnecessary how would that change your next step that's a fun one because you get to do less work but I love that one anything that lets me do more less work and be more lazy makes me very happy if your customers tell you that certain features are unnecessary how would that change your next step if your customers tell you they would recommend it to others for different reasons than you imagine how would that change your next step? How would that change your marketing process? How would that change the way you wrap up the product? How would that change the way you follow up with customers all sorts of things you might change because of that reason now let's look at some ways you khun gather feedback because this is always a big question for people first of all you could do individual customer interviews you can actually follow up with people get him on the phone, email them and and ask them these kinds of questions how did you how did you use this? What was the state? What was of greatest value for you? What change did you make? What are you doing differently now? What problem did you have it the beginning of this product that got solved or before used this product that got solved you do customer surveys which is basically the same thing just kind of to scale or leveraged beyond then you can watch customers as well customer observation you just kind of see how they use it you can look at some of the metrics the analytics behind it our people opening the emails are they clicking through? Are they filling out the worksheets? Are they watching the videos? Luckily, if you're creating a digital product, there are all sorts of ways you can build those metrics into what you're doing on dh maybe not on the first round but definitely on subsequent rounds when you're really thinking about how to get this thing going adding those metrics in so that you conf figure those things out very easily without having to bother your customers is pretty exciting. Eso brie on what? What are some best practices when it comes to gathering feedback from your customers? One of the things to think about when you're gathering feedback feedback is a scary word because we don't want to ask for feedback because what if they say something like nasty way don't want to go there. So one thing to think about what you're thinking about feedback is think of it as getting really curious and being really curious about the way that people are using your product because that's where the truth lies the truth lies in the way they're actually using it and the most valuable thing you can do in order to you know, bring that curiosity up is to ask the question why just you could I mean, you don't want to sit someone pepper them you know we're on a call with them why? Well why is that? Well, why is that why you don't want to pepper them with why there's actually a technique that comes out of the manufacturing world which is called the five wise and it says you don't ask someone why three four, five times getting deeper every time that's where you'll start to get the rial feedback is whenever you ask an initial question in an interview or a survey you're never going to get the truth the first time off you're going to get the surface level thing it's when you asked the same question again slightly differently usually starting with why that you'll start to get to the root underneath and that's where the real meet iss yeah that's awesome I think that's also something that you can kind of do for yourself as well is if you notice a certain behavior over and over again you can ask yourself okay, why is that happening? All right, why is that happening? Okay why's that happening until you really get down to it? I think we know more than we give ourselves credit for I think were very quick to say I don't know why that's happening right now you know why people aren't using this correctly? On def? We just kind of pepper ourselves with the question why we really can get down to some nitti midi, gritty truth. Okay, so now I've got a question for our panellists. What were some surprising things that you learned from customers in the early so stages of your product? So, jen bob, what if conference? What did you learn in the early stages of delivering your conference? Well, I thought my conference was an educational event. Oh, and it turns out it's community building event? Yeah, s o that reframed everything. I d'oh. What were some of the concrete changes that you made when you realized that? Obviously building in more downtime or community building activities, more kinetic trust activities making dance parties of priority making karaoke night a priority, and they actually are they're like they're like they're must have there's a reason there's a reason, all of fun, very purpose driven, absolutely. And it's why we have them in all inclusive resort so that we can have everybody eat together and hang out together and be in one place together. So the community is boston from the moment you arrive till long after you leave yeah, well, you know, figuring out well, community building can be a little stressful for sure. Right? Meeting new people working, finding out just building new relationships. And so, you know, the all inclusive resort thing like it sounds really good, but that's that's really purpose driven. Teo, if you take that, you know, concern out off the table, then people can really open up and develop those relationships much more closely. Absolutely that's fantastic. That's. A really good example of a feature that is driven by something very deep and transformative about the event itself. Like we think about features as in you know what? Well, what would make this really great? But you really want the features that you used to be driven by the purpose and the you know, the value of the product. What, you need people to get out of the experience. Thank you. That's. Right example. Jennifer, what did you learn? That's? A very similar experience. I thought I was building a resource library, a place where people could come and download materials and have everything at their fingertips. But really, people, what I'm hearing is that they stay because of the community. They stayed because of access interaction to me as their coach, leader, yoda, scrapbooking, whatever you wanna call me, um but then it's that the types of experiences we have together that really makes them feel a part of this world that we haven't simple scrapper and you know they really like the things that I produce is well but that's not why is not the true value they're getting out of it yeah so what are some of the changes you've made to your product? Teo emphasize that value um focusing I actually added a podcast this year just for members so it's more like instead of doing a q and a call which I know a lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable asking questions live I have them submit questions and then I respond to it on a podcast and then they had like a secret feed they can they can subscribe to on and then also doing these events more frequently because I said that's there their favorite part of the membership is to participate I know that live yeah do you think they feel like when there's something active going on that it's easier to connect with other people is well alex structure yes, the structure to connect with other people with me and their hobby just overall kind of that intensity creates more excitement in action sweet mary and I'm going to ask you this question teo I'm thinking about you know, the progress that you've made with the master class what are some of the surprising things that you learned in that program and first tell us what it is, because we've we've heard from these people also, sure, sure, the master classes, a program that terror and I are offering, starting in november, it's, actually something that I've been working on for the past eighteen months or so, and it's intended to help people, especially people who have a one to one service that want to better leverage their time and energy to turn it into a group coaching program or an online course, or even an important an in person course. As I said, I've been working on this for about eighteen months or so, and different iterations I was actually mentioning on the ride in this morning to michelle, I said the first time I offered it, uh, marie, who isn't here this morning, but who, if you were tuning in yesterday, you would have met. She took that program, that was the start of digital strategy school, and her return on investment for that program, the first time, was about a hundred times it's, not a hundred percent return on investment one hundred times, return on investment, and so I learned that my prices, we talked about how prices sometimes one of the things that you change, my prices, were completely in the wrong order of magnitude, so that was something changed. Another thing that I learned as I was going through is that the customers I thought I was serving with this product, we're not actually my best customers, and so I focused on who were the people that we're getting the best results, and how could I make the program more appropriate to them? That was a lot of change, a copy of changing messaging, talking about how it's not spoke, creating a program it's about creating a remarkable learning experience and using that kind of language to talk about excellence and craftsmanship and that kind of thing. And then the final change that I made in terms of lessons learned was it's when it's gone from a six week program to now a three a month program because I learned things like, you know, you can't do what I was asking people to do in six weeks. Andi, I also learned that there, you know, we the program is set up that there's two months worth of kind of strategy up front, and then a month of implementation on the back end and that month of implementation is something I added, because what I found was people were getting all excited about their program, and then the six or eight weeks would end and you know, then that it would be a year before they'd launched their program to the deep end exactly and so I added a month where I didn't I actually don't have content during that last month it's about me being there to support as they go and do all the stuff that you guys talked about yesterday in terms of finding your audience delivering, testing, getting feedback all that kind of stuff. Yeah, perfect. Thank you for those examples guys, what questions do you guys have about gathering feedback? Where where have you gone wrong in the past? Where do you have things right now that you'd like to get more feedback on silence? Do we have any questions from online? Not yet. Okay there, tio, right? I I actually have a plethora of feedback because I'm a part of my course runs in a private facebook group s o I'm because I'm addicted to facebook I'm in there all the time and on I see what people are saying about every single module in the course every day on dso and and so my problem is actually stepping back away from the day to day noise and looking at ok, what are the overall trends that people are saying and who are the people that I actually want to take feedback from and which pieces of feedback would be the most valuable to leverage the next time I operate on the course yeah, that's, that's a really good point said lots of things to unpack there I think one of the big benefits that many of us have is that we do run groups or communities alongside oven information product or sort of like a service as digital product kind of kind of thing and and so yeah, they can they can give us feedback the whole time so we can make changes even on the fly, especially if we're building a product for the first time we talked in a previous lesson about how you need to think about like, which are the customers that you want to xerox he's a very old phrase and then what are the what are the customers that you don't need to pay so much attention to because they're more out liars? It's not that you don't want to make him happy, but you don't want them to necessarily directed the development of your product. So bree and I'm going to actually turn this question over to you as well. How do you figure out who to pay attention to or what feedback to pay attention to the core? You'd actually hinted at this in his question, which was looking for the trends, so if you have a facebook group, one of the things that I like to do is don't look at the information in facebook take it out of facebook into a document or a spreadsheet I'm a spreadsheet geek but copy and paste it into another format and then just started grouping them according to thieves you can color code this actually something psychologists do where they start like color coding based on themes you want to look for the patterns that emerge and do it anonymously at first to take the names out of it and just look for the patterns that emerge and then what you can do is say ok this is coming up over and over and over again now go back and see who made those comments and look at you know who were the people's names that are coming up and what you know can I can I uncover why this is a concern for them that helps you to understand if it's something to actually pay attention too because sometimes the feedback is not something you want to act on right sometimes the feedback this happens in my business a long time I get questions about what technology should I used to deliver my course that's not a question I'm interested in asking and so when I backtrack to figure out where is that coming from I actually can see the people are asking those questions are not the people who are asking the other questions that I do you want to pay attention to but looking at it in the abstract and stepping back first makes a lot easier to do that because you don't get caught up in the minutiae of who's saying what to start with great michel, I was just going to add to that because I know from I speak for impact process I call it well, sally hogshead calls it the throne of agony on there is always a point like session three is the height of the throne of agony, and so I've been getting really intentional about how do I support my clients through that painful process? Because it's gonna suck? How can I make it suck less? And like one thing I've added now is in the first call, I tell them what's going to happen, I wanted my new clients responded he was like, oh yeah, this first call was great and I'm excited, but I can see how this is going to suck, so but I can prepare him and then be like, you know, reach out, you know, tap into me more, let me support you more through it because it was so consistent like, oh, it's session three this is going to suck for them, they're gonna be frustrated and because of all of their ideas so it's been great to like, see those sticking points and be like, how can I make this better for you and asking them how can I make this part better for you? Yes so I love that you shared that example because that's absolutely something that we've dealt with with quiet power strategy as well the throne of agony there is the customer perspective process no one wants to do that work it's hard it makes me think about things that you I haven't had to think about before and we know that if we can get you past that and to the chief initiative module that you will love the program you will feel like it is worth every bit you paid for it and mohr and so there's been a lot of conscious effort figuring out how do we get people through that point? One thing I've done this session is just to reiterate the message over and over and over and over again so in portent in other words, because you don't want to do this the reason you don't want to do this is the reason your products have failed in the past. It's the reason you have been able to move into the next phase of your business here's what that looks like here's, why? And I messages over and over and over again in all sorts of different ways and I finally feel like people are like, yes, this sucks, but I understand and so now we're moving you know we're moving straight ahead into the rest of the program yes, absolutely that also happened to me with website kickstarter as well where people would hate the actual learnings css and says this is not that hard it actually could make a lot of sense there's tons of resource is out there it does not have to be mysterious but they would hate when we'd finally get to that part of we're starting to learn a little html we're starting to learn a little css and so what I would do at the beginning of that course when I figured that out was just making each new group of video and I would say, hey guys, when was the last time you learnt something brand new twenty years ago? Do you remember how difficult it wass to learn how to ride a bike? Remember how difficult it was to learn how to roller skate if you'd never roller skated before this is going to feel that way you've spent the last twenty years just kind of building knowledge in the same area you know, knowledge build on knowledge build on knowledge this is completely different and it's going to hurt sometimes and you're going to feel like I'm just not smart enough to do this but you are you've done this a number of times in your life just recently on so be gentle with yourself push on through ask us when you need help and we'll help you and just making that video at the beginning completely changed the experience that people had and completely changed their willingness to bust through that roadblock so that was huge thank you so much for sharing that willie was there a question from online? Yes but there are a couple of questions one is from mel who says analyzing the feedback from my customers they're looking for toe low cost solutions and what they like about me my unfair advantages the personalized service that I provide I'm worried that this means that I should go lower in price and provide more personalization service and in my mind that obviously goes against my company's growth you don't want teo so I would say that you're paying possibly most likely you're getting feedback from the wrong customers and that if you actually increase your prices even without changing anything increase your prices to a whole new level maybe that means doubling them which I know can be scary but it could be so super effective you'll stop selling to the people who value low cost solutions and start people start selling to people who value yours solution and then you can use their feed back to actually guide your product development brienne do you have anything to add to that I think that's just a really good example of the example I gave before which was as I raised my prison my prices now or five times what they were in that initial offering, and as I've raised my prices, I've gotten more of the people who give me the kind of feedback that I can and want to use. Yeah, absolutely. Was there another one? Yes, it another one from christine stump, who asked when I go back to reach when I go back to the few feedback forms I think she does retreats ninety nine percent of the feedback is positive high class problem, right? But how high class problem, right? But how do you iterated if you don't have negatives to change? And how can I ask better questions in the future? Yeah, so this is where, like, great good feedback is wonderful and absolutely it's a it's a high quality problem to have s o I think you need to look at the substance of it, and if all you're getting is this was wonderful, I loved it, you know, I can't wait to do it again, then you need to ask different questions, but if the good positive feedback that you're getting is, I was able to realize this thing or I was able to change this mindset while I was at the retreat or I made these new friends while I was here, if you're getting that. Substantive feedback. You can use that to better your marketing in your sales process. You can use that teo, add new activities into your retreat experience, or take some away a cz jen was talking about on dh, then the questions that you should be asking if all you're getting is, you know, high fives are exactly those things. What did you change as a result of this experience? What was your favorite part of the event? What was what happened? That was unexpected that you really value. You start asking really substantive questions like that, so people just can't just say, wow, that was awesome. That's going to give you the stuff that then you can use into the future, because iteration isn't about necessarily changing something that's, bad it's, quite often about making something maur good, right? And so that's, what that's, what we want for you.