Focusing On The Right Customer Segment

    I’ve seen the tech world make such buzz about early adopters and how good they are for your startup and it’s initial growth. I’ve read one too many articles and books, seen one too many tweets, and seen a bus load of Youtube videos; if something gets repeated often enough it begins to sound like the truth. It worries me. I run a startup with our product still in alpha and like any startup founder, I obsess about how to get customers. Startup founders want a profitable business and so we hunt for “best practices” to lure customers in and locked in. Very much from observation, the prevalent advice is ” KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS!!!” if you can get that right, everything else will fall magically in place. It doesn’t. If it did, the articles on customer acquisition and retention would have stopped flooding the internet. Everyone would be running in the street nude to show the world how happy they are. I’ve done a lot of thinking and what I’m about to suggest may seem like common knowledge but I’d rather utilize my mind fart and share it with the world. I have come to the realization that there are three kinds of customers in this world categorized as;

1. Go Go Go

2. Go Wait Go

3. Wait Wait Wait

  The Go Go Go category are the early adopters and early leavers. They’re always looking for the next thing. They’re fickle. They’re like teenagers waiting for the next pop sensation. They don’t last. Worst case, they have broken most companies with these words “X company or product isn’t cool anymore”. Stocks plummet, CEO gets fired, more money is thrown at dreadful ads to get noticed. Everyone is in tears. A lot of investors fall in this category actually. They’re always looking for the next x.

   The Go Wait Go category includes people who don’t hang their wallets in the air until they’re significantly impressed by the company or it’s product offerings. This group is a lot more loyal. Even when the company fails catastrophically, they live in hope that the company will return to its former glory and delight them with something. Picture a lover waiting for the better half to return whilst refusing to court no one. They are in love. The customers in this group actually take a long time to deliberate before committing and that is where the loyalty comes in. They think it will be too much work to commit to another company or product or heck they simply love the company.

   The Wait Wait Wait category are the ones that have no interest whatsoever in what you’re doing. They simply don’t care. You might hear them say ” My windows 3.1 machine still works great! What do I need a new computer for?” These are the people that companies spend most of their waking life trying to attract and they fail most of the time.

 Now why do I think it’s important to bear these categories in mind? They make up the customer base. After finding your customers you run into these categories these are categories inherent in us all. So how do you sell to these people? I’ll suggest marketing to the category that seems more like you. Are you a Go Go Go type of person, a GO Wait Go type, or are you a Wait Wait Wait person? Knowing which one you are will ultimately provide you with tools to sell to your target group since you already know what will make you buy, what will make you stay, and what will make you leave. It sort of fits in with the maxim of solving a problem you have yourself then turning it into a product. I have also realized that the people whom we glorify as marketing/ product geniuses managed to understand one group really well or focused on just two groups. Focusing all three is extreme and will reap no benefits. Picture the titanic attempting to sail in a puddle. The good thing about knowing your category is this can also help in product development in this area I’ll paraphrase Steve Martin ” Be so good they can’t ignore you”. Weaving knowledge of this category into your product development will help generate and cancel out features that will work or not. Saves you time cause you already have a focus group. I dare say Steve Jobs’ genius was focusing on a group that just wanted something simple enough and looked gorgeous. Apple made products for those people. Everyone else joined in. Apple catered to the Go Wait Go group and in turn they got loyal evangelists. This group brought in the Go Go Go category and the Wait Wait Wait. Am I saying the Go Wait Go category is the best? The best category is dependent on you and your product category. Every category has their own evangelist it is just depends on hitting the sweet spot. Let’s look at SnapChat. A perfect fit for the Go Go Go category. The ephemerality is the attraction but they have one foot on the gas the other on the brake. The moment SnapChat does anything that affects the products ephemerality they’re gone. SnapChat stops being cool. So to keep this group, SnapChat has to keep producing features that will make it more ephemeral. The people in the Go Go Go category will love SnapChat and will preach SnapChat to their friends and family as long as it ups the ephemeral game. The Wait Wait Wait category won’t budge until whatever they’re using goes to shreds or the company goes out of business. These are not tech people but they transition to the Go Wait Go class once hooked. They can only be sold to by a Go Wait Go person. They scorn at the Go Go Go group because of their indecisiveness. Very valuable once acquired. Their conversion will be inspiration enough for other Wait Wait Wait people to convert.

    I think it is important to note that we actually have traces of all three groups within us. One dominates most of the time which dictates our consumption habits. It is also important to note that this little difference is the reason why many many companies find lasting success with a few products while others have thousands of offerings hoping one will stick.

     

On Hiring…

People are smart. Everyone wants to do something amazing with the little they’ve been given. Everyone is the hypothetical woman or man for the job. I’ve seen them and so have you. What do they have to offer? Nothing the next person can’t offer. The job market is becoming saturated with “me too” experts; everyone clamouring for the same loaf of bread. I know this cause I do the occasional job search to keep TreeJump afloat but with mixed results. Never gotten hired. Littering the internet with my lousy resume has taught me a valuable lesson albeit not searched for. Teaching. Watching people closely, I have found that the people who make the best employees are those who find what they do so fascinating, they want to teach it to anyone that will lend them an ear plus they keep an open mind towards others. These people will go to large ends to simplify complex concepts and workflow making it comprehensive to the layman. They find joy in tearing the fabric of the universe apart to help you understand how each thread weaves into such complexity. These are the people I want in TreeJump. There will be always something new to learn. The company will remain young and vibrant because everybody wants to learn from their colleague and in turn it will transfer to the product and to solving customer problems. 

Warm, Friendly, and Fast Customer Service Wins You Happy Customers Quicker than Anything

I’m one of those people who prefers not to meddle in Customer Service Affairs. Sometimes it could be pleasant, other times I think people would prefer to get a hickey from Jabba the hut.When I do, it’s because I haven’t gotten whatever that was supposed to be shipped to me. Not seeing my package is akin to losing my luggage at the airport. All that comes to my mind is ” Nooooo!! I’ll never get my ROI (return on investment)” Usually bad customer service comes with the big companies. Their badge of honour. You have some rep at the other end of the phone sounding so depressed your phone decides to hang up on its own.Terrible. They leave you hanging for minutes or the rep is just having a total shitty day they decide to take it out on you. When the good ones come along you notice. Bought a pair of shoes from Antione and Stanley (they have really nice shoes by the way) mailing service screwed up the delivery schedule. I panicked. I tried contacting them all to no avail. I was livid. I wanted their heads. One day, I got to speak to a rep. He took his time to explain why they were unreachable for a while – website was undergoing some kind of  overhaul. He took his time to track my package and tried to calm the critters of worry jumping around in my head. Anytime I contacted them henceforth, he had details regarding my package’s whereabout. He just bought his company a customer by being nice and attentive. I’ll be wearing them as long as they remain in business. The incident that really got me writing this is the one by a company I’ve applied to work for 2 times I think but haven’t gotten the chance to give back instead I try to implement their advice/ experiences in my own startup. Hell being called a “Happiness Hero” makes you feel like you can slay any problem. Buffer. Amazing people . The stories of their customer care are legendary already but this one is all about me. The just launched a feature that enables one to schedule retweets so I took the opportunity to ask about a feature which would be of utmost benefit to me. I asked if they would ever include tagging either via facebook or twitter. Email sent. Ten seconds later, notification pops up. I was taken aback. Hell I thought it would be one of those ” Your message has been queued…” type of email. It wasn’t. Lightning fast response. I was so satisfied with the speed I had to I just had to say “Thank you!!” to Alyssa.

As companies grow big, their customer care becomes sloppy. They outsource. They put the customers in the hands of people who have no first hand experience with the products. Those Service centres focus on the volume of calls that come in but not the happiness of customers. You cannot blame Suthir all the way in bangalore when he’s unable to help you. He’ll get queried if he spends more than four minutes with you. The company begins to bleed customers. Do they solve their customer service problems? No, they spend more on marketing. They forget ads are just words and customer service is action. The face of the company. The CEO is just a big banner ad. Remember when Steve Jobs was being particularly rude to people but people overlooked it because the service from the Apple store was great? Word of mouth at work. Great customer service will always drown out bad press as I’ve come to observe. People love being taken care of and hey Buffer can have my dollar as soon as Treejump goes into the black cause I know I’ll be taken care of.

The Gideon Principle: Finding Your “A Players”

   The world of business is teeming with articles, podcast, tweets, videos, etc. on hiring “A players”. How does this help the new entrepreneur? It doesn’t. For a fact it makes life harder for beginner and intermediate level entrepreneurs trying not to make mistakes that could tank the business. Enter the “A player”. The “A player” has been billed as someone fantastic at their job. That’s all I’ve got! There seems to be an inordinate focus on recruiting from the outside. I think that’s a death knell. Recruit those whom you’ve already hired. I came across this short story while doing some research to string together methods for hiring used biblically. Let’s face it the bible has more stories about recruitment than any other book. Here’s Gideon’s recruitment story. To give a little bit of context, Gideon had thirty-two thousand men.

 “Send home any of your men who are timid and afraid”

     It does you as a business owner a lot better to list out your company’s goal and vision to the smallest detail in a comprehensive language. You can’t have the leisure of being vague. Constantly hammering it into the ear drums of your team will help them make the decision to stay or leave. It will also help them visualize better the herculean tasks ahead.

“Divide them into two groups decided by the way they drink. Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set apart by himself; likewise everyone who gets down on his knees to drink.”

    After the first test, twenty-two thousand men were sent home and the number still had to be reduced. We have those who will work long hours but are not passionate about your company’s goals and ambitions. Working for you is just a means of survival. There’s no personal stake in it. These two groups become apparent as the journey progresses. There are those who are company centred and there are those who are self-centred. You want the company centred people. Great work ethic coupled with a bad attitude is a big NO.

 

“I’ll conquer the Midianites with these three hundred”

   The soldiers got whittled from ten thousand to just three hundred. This proves that the best work is done with small teams; that’s why big corporations are constantly scared of kids from the garage. Second, congratulations if anyone has survived the axe this far. You have found those as passionate about the mission as yourself. Constantly being on the lookout in your company to retain the most passionate brings other passionate people to your business after all like attracts like. You’ll feel the energy in the office yourself and your customers will notice.

Real Problems: If Entrepreneurs Ain’t Doing It, VCs It’s Your Fault.

Everyone has them. VCs want you to solve them. But just what are real problems? World hunger? Meteor showers? World peace? The Harlem Shake(youtube trend)? Real problems are the things you deem them to be. I understand why a lot of VCs are beginning to make this proclamation but they must also remember that this trend of unreal problem solving is part of the pie they have brought to the table. Take for instance a service released becomes so successful beyond measure it begins a trend. Everybody wants to become the “next …” and VCs too only want to fund the “next …”. When these investments fail, they begin to call on entrepreneurs to solve real problems and the cycle continues.

Real problems are what you’d like them to be. If my cereal can’t stay crunchy for longer than a minute and gets all soggy, that’s a real problem for me.I’ll be glad if someone invented cereal that would stay crunch for hours. Problems might be real to some and those problems nonexistent to another.Take my cereal problem for example. The inventions that we use to this present day were problems the inventors knew they had and they knew no one would probably be as passionate about solving it. It’s pretty easy to look at a person’s idea, throw your hands in the air, say it’s not a real problem, and dismiss it. If everyone did that, we would still be using carriages, candles, there would be no electronic devices, people would still be hired to paddle ships, and slavery will be rampant. So how will investors help real problems get solved? Here’s what I propose.

Don’t have a predefined scope of what real problems are: Investors seem to have gridlocked their minds on what real problems are so much as when real investment opportunities come, they pass them up. Bad bad for business. This way, more entrpreneurs will settle for “me too” products. You’re out fishing for trouts and refuse to accept the sardines that come your way(I’m getting awesome at fish analogy 🙂 ).

Look past the trends: get off the next carbon copy bandwagon and keep your ears to the ground. Many people are solving loads of problems they have and are not on the radar but are enjoying the fruits of invention. Seek them out. Crowd funding is your smoke signal.

Demand entrepreneurs solve the problem 50% better than what’s on the market: Hell if you don’t want to get off the “next…” bandwagon, demand the people you’re funding do the job 50 percent better than their competitors. When you have just another copycat product company in your portfolio, you get a bunch of stressed out employees who are constantly made to copy. We all know how grumpy employees are bad for business.

Make sure these problems make the entrepreneurs want to take over the galaxy just to solve it:  If it’s not personal then you’re going to get something half arsed. Yeah the entrepreneur can be hardworking but if it’s not personal affair, innovation will not come. If he/ she wants a computer on every desk, better make sure it’s because he/she is disgusted with the amount of work involved with paper so much that when he speaks about it Darth Vader gets cold feet. It just has to be personal.

Easy on the greed: We’re past the Gordon Gekko era. Many entrepreneurs want to have you on board but that Eau de Greed scent is really off putting. The problems you fund require time. That luxury car you’re driving didn’t come in 2 years. It took years of fine tuning. Don’t haggle people into going public or a sale when they’re not ready cause you want to pad your net worth. You were brought on board to help. Bloody help or leave. Whoever comes up with a system to curate the venture capitalist greed would have solved a problem many entrepreneurs face.

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The Renaissance, Thanksgiving, and Startups

My new article on entrepreneursunpluggd.com . I talk about how businesses can benefit from using a theme to sharpen their focus. Give a read and let me know what you think.

The Barnum Method: Pull Your Customers

      What is your magic sauce? What is that “thing” that will make your customers curious about you? What keeps people intrigued about your company? These are amongst the many questions people ask themselves but never quite possibly come up with an answer. There’s this saying in Silicon Valley “build it and they will come.” but what will bring them to it? P. T Barnum, the most prominent showman ever in America’s history came up with an intriguing solution to get people to his museum.  While his museum was visited at the capacity he wished, he met a homeless man dressed him up, gave him 3 bricks and asked him to lay those bricks on the road changing their position as he moved along. This man had to have the sincerest look of focus on his face. He had to be lost in concentration. He was to lay these bricks from a certain point on the road and into the museum and starting over. People noticed this strange man on the street and word about him spread. Soon a crowd big enough to obstruct traffic was soon following this man curious about whatever hypothesis he was trying to refute or prove. This man led the crowd with only three bricks into the museum and out but something magical happened once they were in the museum, they didn’t care much for the man anymore but decided to explore the treasures of the museum. Barnum had figured out his pull. Barnum had figured a way to use word of mouth to his advantage all the while making his original goal of bringing people into the museum invisible.

    What is your pull? We take Apple and Google for example. Apple’s pull are design and ease of use. They craft their devices in ways you can’t imagine possible before them and lure you into their ecosystem where you discover their products are easier to use than the competition. This makes you want to see more of what Apple has to offer. In Google’s case, they give you speed and a clean interface. We dumped Yahoo and other search engines because of the speed. You got a Gmail account because it was faster than the competition, then you used Google Docs, and transitioned to the Android OS. Coca Cola’s pull is universal availability. Where ever you are, you are sure to find a bottle or can of Coke. Another offering from Coca Cola sounds like a good idea when you know you can find it anywhere. Your pull doesn’t even have to be a product alone. People appreciate fantastic customer service. That alone can make people establish trust with your brand knowing they’ll always be taken care of. It is amazing when you figure out your “pull” and capitalize on it. Your customers will be willing to stand by you even in tough times or ride higher with you with their wallets. Your “pull” is your word of mouth generator. Figure it out, and watch your company smile in the hearts of your customers. Barnum got his customers with three bricks, I think you can do a lot more.

Make Love To Pirates And Fans.

Over the years we have watched Hollywood and the music industry go after the throats of people for falling in love with their products. It has been bloody and senseless. Instead of love, people have come to resent Hollywood and the music industry (especially) as that predator that will wring every penny from a fan that got their product ” illegally”. Hell hath no fury like a maltreated fan. Such behaviour encourages more piracy. I’ll propose pretty simple suggestions that might curtail piracy and perhaps make hollywood and the music industry look like humans.

Make Content Universally Available: Grant access to these products so people can access them. People outside the U.S dread the message ” This content is restricted and may not be viewed in your area” or ” the content provider has blocked viewing in your area”. Lower the prices to an affordable level. People will watch a terrible cam than wait a month. That’s how bad they want to see the movie Let’s do the math, if an original DVD sells for $150 and some bootlegger sells the same movie of about the same quality for $5 where do you think the individual with a lower income will go? This is the case in my country.

Appeal To People With The Stars: Get the stars to go around appealing to the good nature people. People aren’t that difficult once a star can see the world through their eyes. Let them hold ordinary gatherings with fans. Even if you charge the fans a buck, they won’t mind as long as they get to speak to the stars for a few hours.

Let the DVDs Play Content Immediately: That infernal DVD menu, get rid of it. Only if the DVD has 2 movies above, we don’t want the bloody menu. When we push play, we want it to play.

Region Coding: A friend went to the United States and got a bunch of DVDs without knowing anything about region coding. These were rare DVDs according to him. He couldn’t watch them. He had a region 2 player and the DVDs were region 1. Disappointing. Don’t make us think we want it to just work. Take regional coding out.

Digital Rights Management: Here’s the argument “I bought this album for this amount, can’t I do whatever the hell I want with it?”. The answer, “why the hell not?”. When fans put up those songs on Youtube doing their best bit of a cover then it means the song / artist is loved. Take down notices are infuriating. Stop them. For an industry that mostly gets most of its acts from folks who cover other songs it seems like a contradictory move.

Get the Artist To Release Their Songs In Bits: People are impatient. The old way of releasing albums is OLD. No one wants to wait until a certain release date. Get the songs out. Sell them those songs. Let people rock them. Then you can sell an album later with something special. Makes it feel like a collection and makes owning it feel like a privilege.

Cinema And Online Simultaneously: Please don’t make me walk to the cinema. My couch/ bed is better. I can eat whatever I want plus I don’t have to hold my urine in cause I don’t want to miss a bit of the film. Cinema is torture. A place rife with any kind of distraction. From the dude who keeps farting to the couple doing unspeakable things right beside you. I use my computer most of the time. A week after the movie is released is fine. Then I still can make time to watch it instead of going ” Fuck this!! The bloody movie is probably not worth it!”. This way the movie remains fresh in the minds of people and hollywood will make more money when everyone can watch it. Don’t make me wait a bloody month or two.

Let Fans Become Involved In Production: From the ideas for the script to poster designs to every bit of marketing within a controlled environment of course. People spend their time coming up with parodies or fan made films for a reason. Some of them are really good. The best part is people will do it for free.People are bloody creative when it comes to something they love. Embrace the opportunity. The directors, producers,artistes, e.t.c should leave their ego at the door and listen. People defend stuff they help create.

Make Love NOT War: Play nice. Quit the SOPA or whatever agenda you have up your sleeves. Stop lobbying congress. Look human (at least pretend). When you maltreat people they’ll often put you in your place.

There Will Always Be Bad Eggs: Some people are naturally repellent to good behaviour. Let them be the good outnumber the evil. Focus on the good and the evil might just convert. Use the good ones as your evangelists.

Learn from Steam: Gamers love Steam (Valve)  for a darn good reason and hate E.A for a good reason too.

Game Based Movies Hurt Our Feelings: They suck!! No offence to the artist who slave over them but they suck. Take your time, plan out a game, make it and while you’re at it change the story. I think a lot of studios would be happy to pen a great story and come up with terrific game mechanics if they’re just given the time. Arkham Asylum / Arkham City make fan boys gush.

Make Fantastic Movies and Music: These days if you watch the trailer of a movie then you’ve probably seen the best bit of the movie. These days the music industry suffers from ” samesoundness”. If you hear this album then you’ve probably heard the other. Double down on creating great music and films. Originals are a killer. Leave the sequels and prequels alone. You could hurt an already healthy franchise. While we’re at it, not every book, video game, comic, or cartoon is motion picture adaptable. Let them be.

Culture = Living your own life.

In primary school, I remember my teacher trying to hammer into our heads as hard as she could what culture meant. It was defined as a way of life. Growing up, I’ve come to realize culture is actually a set of rules, often rigid, passed down from generation to generation to get a person to fit into society. The problem is culture divides us. In a world getting smaller and smaller it does put up a lot of barricades. People literally force themselves to live by rules set by some carcass hundreds of years ago. This is not how we do this. This is not how we do that. A common excuse for sticking to the status quo. History is littered with examples of people who broke out of these shackles of societal living only to be ostracized. He/ she is no more “one of us” they say. “You have soiled the family name” they shout. In old Japan, they’d even hand you a sword to end your own life. Some go to the extent of burying people alive with a dead king. There are a lot more examples that are ridiculous to say the least. Societal culture also brings with it loads of superstitions and preconceived notions. The king phrase: “that’s the way it has always been”. Societal culture comes with tremendous baggage so I’m advocating we drop it. Let us pick up a set of rules created for us by us. Rules that let us live our lives free from societal baggage. In essence, culture becomes living your own life. What has helped you adapt today will not necessary work tomorrow because the landscape of life changes. Don’t spend your life engaging in rituals you do not care for. Life is short. Shorter still when a great portion you might have lived has been dictated by someone else. By killing societal culture, collaborations happen. Borders are no more. Innovation flourishes. People of different races and walks of life mix and the creative train becomes unstoppable. Now let’s look at companies. A company with hundreds of staff is still seen as one person. The CEO. There’s a reason why company cultures can’t be adopted in other companies. They’re not individualized. They’re do not resonate with the core values of the CEO. Unfortunately for companies, they’re a reflection of the person leading. If the CEO has no thirst for looking for the next big thing, it reflects. If the CEO cares less about the customer, it reflects. I have found that the CEOs who are the most successful have always possessed the values the company is known for. CEO believes in excellent customer service; the company believes in excellent customer service. The CEO believes in moving fast; company believes in moving fast. Often great companies that fail never hire someone who possesses the same internal culture/ values as the leader who made it successful. The greatest companies have always found people who have helped the company culture evolve as new people take the helm. People that are willing to standout like sore thumbs from the status quo. People who know that the market is bored to the teeth with the likes that refuse evolution.These people often posses the same values or beliefs held by their predecessors. They drop what doesn’t work and go with what works for them cause they know that they are their company and their company is them. Live life by your own rules and life will reward you. Fortune always favours the bold.