Collaborative Notes 30x500 Sept 2014
 
You're not required to take your notes here, but if you'd like to work together with the other people attending the bootcamp in real time, this is a great place to do it!
 

Tools & Logistics

  • Turn off Campfire sound: volume icon on upper right corner next to "30x500" title
  • +30x500 Connections - if people want to connect w/others later w/o distracting the group during class - just a list of Twitter names
 

1.1 What If...?

  • Software as a service typically has a trial period so there is a risk of conversion drop off and a delay on the initial payment from your customers.
  • Books are impulse buys, paying for a service that requires habitual change is a different business and a harder sell.
  • No support after the book sell. One shot deal.
  • A book is selling a prescription + a relationship.
  • Books/relationships help you identify pains that you can then address in the SaaS product.
 

1.2 Fail-ful Ways of Selling

  • "Natural" Approaches (that don't work)
  • Meet with someone in your target audeince and you ask them to buy, find them on the internet, or set up a webpage for them to find you.
  • No need to market - the product will sell itself! No call to action, they will come to me.
  • Ask people whay they want to buy (aka. "focusgrouping" or customer interviews).
  • People won't tell you what they want if you ask them outright - they don't really know what they want.
  • “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” -Henry Ford
  • Tactics of how to sell something (content marketing, landing pages, etc.) doesn't equal strategy; tactics don’t define predictable success. Strategy is a system, a way to approach selling products.
 

1.3 There's a Formula

  • Before writing the book, he set up a landing page for presales.
  • Copy is important. Every sentence on the pitch page should be deliberate and functional.
  • You make it relevant to the customer and list the outcomes they care about. You need to understand their pain points.
  • You can use your pitch page to make sure your product actually does what you promise, and stay focused.
  • Stop chasing the "Wouldn't it be great if ..." ideas. Don't believe that "If you build it, they will come."
  • Sales Safari: Look at a community, spend time researching, empthasizing and embedding in the community. Learn the language the community members. This helps you craft an empathetic message that will show you identify with their pain points. Show them that you know how you can help.
  • PDF = Pain. Dream. Fix.
 

1.4 Questions You Need to Answer

  • Questions
  • What do they need?
  • What do they want?
  • What do they buy?
  • When in panic mode you are trying to do everything possible, use any advantage to not fail.
  • Drop everything in your backpack (when running from a bear). Don't create new markets or learn new skills to make your product. Leverage existing skills and markets.
  • How do I make a product that I know I can sell?
  • Focus on "people" (what they want, and are ready to buy) not the "something" you want to make.
  • Don't get lost in the weeds with the "something" - developers like to go down this path as quickly as possble. It feels good to make something. Take a step back first.