As Blaise Pascal (sort of) said: it takes longer to write a long post than a short one; ‘Writing is rewriting’ is so true.
Today I’m looking back on Story Complete’s first month. This is the 17th consecutive day I’ve posted. While at first I found the daily schedule difficult, I’m hoping practice makes perfect.
Written preparation is often the path to success, whereby the writing part is essential. My daily schedule forces me to click that scary WordPress publish button. On the other hand, sharing my thoughts in writing helps me clarify what I’m trying to say.
Identify returning users as VIPs: those most likely to spread your story. Treating everyone the same is easy, but they deserve better.
Existing users are more likely to recommend you than new one, so don’t treat everyone the same. Existing and new users have different expectations, even though they share a common worldview.
A chainsaw cannot change itself depending on whether a newbie or an experienced lumberjack picks it up. Your software is not a physical product. It’s easy to support multiple expectations from a single code base, just as you do with i18n and L10n.
The German tax system is complex (it’s said 80% of the world’s tax laws are in German). As a result, a large vertical niche of tax return software exists.
Forcing our code generation worldview on prospects just lead to heated arguments and late nights cranking out emergency fixes.
For many years I built, sold and supported application generators that generated platform-specific code from abstract problem statements. We generated Java, C++, C, SQL, HTML, COBOL, PL/I and many other languages.
Our worldview: generated code is efficient and works. Our ideal prospects shared our worldview. While they were often experts, they had no expectations about how the generated code should look. Just that it worked and that they were more productive.
Not all prospects shared this worldview. If someone said “I would not have written the (generated) code like that” we knew there would be trouble.
You can’t spread your own story, just create a fertile environment, weave your story, give it its freedom and wish it a world of luck.
Stories are your best chance of getting your message to the people you need to hear it. Even so, the right story told to the right people is no guarantee your story will spread. You need 5 ducks in a row to have a chance of spreading:
Physical products are tactile, but software is intangible, so how do you think your audience expects it should look, feel or even smell?
Your target audience has a story about how they expect your product will make them feel. Marketers and developers must work together and meet this expectation with consistent and genuine stories woven into your software.
Physical products are tactile; you can feel them in your hands, how they move, smell and taste. Software is intangible. Even so, how do you think your audience expects your software to feel? To look? To smell? How should it look on opening the box (installing)?
Software is easier to change than physical products. Good design splits function and presentation; weaving your story into your software will be easy. Or not.
The waterfall model for content creation is too slow. You need an agile process to create and ship your storytelling content.
To sell a product you must know what your target audience wants, not just what they need. Wants changes; worldviews are not static. Every message and conversation with peers has an impact, moving the story along.
The software business is quickly picking up qualities of the fashion industry. Both satisfy wants, not needs. Does anyone need designer sneakers? No. Do they want them? Yes!
Worrying about the slippery slope of fashion isn’t new. Windows 3.0 lead business users to want GUIs for their apps. They didn’t need a GUI for their B2B apps, but it was obvious they wanted one. They got what they wanted.
Future employers won’t need you, but they might want you. Your product is now your skills and the stories to go with them.
Many B2B developers are anonymous workers in a software factory, with little or no connection to customers. Perhaps they get a customer visit here, or a user conference there; but typically not much more.
As products become software and the stories to go with them, previously backstage developers have a new role. Your target audience cares who produces your software, where they are and how they do it. These all contribute to the stories customers tell themselves about how they expect your product to make them feel.
Audiences want to go backstage, meet developers and see how they work. But watch out: if you don’t live your story you’ll get caught.
Packaging and labelling carry much of the load for physical goods storytelling. You have it easier: your marketers and software developers can work together and weave your stories right into your software.
Who those developers are, where and how they work is part of your story. Your audience wants to peek backstage, just like developers love to watch insider videos of Google’s fancy offices.
Going backstage used to be expensive. Developers visited customers on-site, or prospects visited the labs. Both were one-offs and not reusable.
Epic stories don’t grow on trees; you must design, build and ship them. Success depends on shipping these spreadable software stories.
Software that meets a need (horizontal or vertical) is a commodity. There’s always a cheaper or quicker supplier out there somewhere. Being just a little cheaper, or just a little quicker, cannot work for you long-term.
Focus on your target audience’s wants, not needs. While companies have needs and wants, talking about wants means talking about people and their emotions.
We decide on what we want based on how we think we’ll feel. And not just B2C; B2B buyers are also telling themselves stories about how your product will make them feel.
We don’t see that facts are holding us back. Facts can come later; start with stories. Facts are forgettable but stories are spreadable.
I’ll bet you clearly remember stories first heard as a child. Our minds are storytelling machines, helping us remember information with exquisite fidelity.
In stark contrast: how many bullets can you remember from the most recent presentation you sat through? I’ll hazard a guess that it’s not many. Or any?
Stories are easy to remember and good stories survive by spreading. Epic stories have survived for thousands of years, and are going strong today.
Target people sharing a worldview, already paying attention to your domain. They notice newcomers; are you sure they’ll notice you?
We view the world differently based on our biases, assumptions, values and experience. Our worldview filters what we pay attention to; what we believe.
Our worldview underlies the story we tell ourselves about what’s happening. It drives the guessing machine we use to predict future events.
Your target audience is a cluster of people who share a worldview and who are paying attention to your domain. But, while they notice newcomers, will they notice you?
Talking with people paying attention and seeking you out is a lot more fun than continuously interrupting people who’ll ignore you!
Don’t waste your time interrupting people not paying attention. Instead, focus on those few special people who are paying attention.
Those few special people are discussing your domain on forums, blogs and newsgroups. Your first job is to find and join these continuing conversations.
Don’t barge in, interrupt and start selling; that’s the best way of ensuring they’ll ignore you. Instead, start by listening for a while before contributing.
Selling to developers who hate tools is a quick way to waste lots of money. We targeted the few whose worldview embraced tools.
As application tool vendors we convinced prospects with metrics and ROI. Adopting tools, we thought, was a no-brainer. Even so, selling to developers who didn’t want to use tools was difficult. Time and again developers successfully blocked tool adoption.
Our problem: their worldview didn’t include the idea tools are useful. Our solution: we focused on the 1 or 2 developers whose existing worldview did include a positive attitude towards tools.
Whether or not these developers had formal authority, we got our tool into their hands so they could reach their own conclusions. If they thought our tools worthy, they’d start spreading the word internally. Having someone who developers trust spread our story for us made all the difference.
Prospects pay attention if they hear about you from someone they already trust. The bad news: that person can never be you.
Prospects won’t hear your advertising message; they simply are not listening. However, if a miracle occurs and they stumble across your product, you have a credibility problem: you don’t have any!
Website cutting-edge? Brochures tip-top? 30-day free trial awesome? Great, but it doesn’t change the fact we simply don’t believe what vendors say. Don’t take this personally. It’s not you specifically; we’ve all learned the hard way not to trust what vendors say.
So, prospects ignore your advertising and assume what you say is untrue. How, then, can you reach out to prospects and win new customers? Simple: personal recommendation.
Doesn’t matter how clever your advertising is nobody will see it. Spending more money just isn’t going to help.
How many adverts do you recall from web sessions? What about magazines, newspapers and blogs? For most people the answer is: none at all.
Ignoring advertising is not some superpower unique to developers. We’ve all picked this up to avoid sensory overload as we make our way through life.
We’re exposed to thousands of advertising messages each day. Consciously ignoring each one would be too expensive. Instead, we’ve learned that subconsciously ignoring them is the only sane way to get through the day.
StoryComplete.com is a blog (now retired) for independent software vendors (ISVs) on marketing by storytelling. Andrew Biss wrote Story Complete to gain experience in blogging regularly.
The Story Complete blog is about helping ISVs sidelined by innovation and new players entering the game to acquire the new strategy and marketing skills they need to get back onto the field, re-enter the game and win.
This first post populates the RSS feed and allows the spiders from Google and other search engines to start indexing.
Hello and welcome to Story Complete, a blog to talk about storytelling as a way to help software companies build the skills they need to get off the sidelines, re-enter the game and win.
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