The latest video released by 37signals shows the build-out of their new office space is coming along nicely.
Carrying on from the previous episode, the latest video from 37signals shows the build-out of the new office. From 3:3:30 onwards we get a first look at the theatre. The raised seating base looks a good distance from the front of the room. Mayban odd perspective effect from the camera? We’ll see.
Success in today’s software industry means building the skills to tell stories that will resonate with your audience’s existing worldview.
Bruce Nussbaum’s article Facebook’s Culture Problem May Be Fatal shows what went wrong when Facebook chose to tell a new story inconsistent with the worldview of their core users.
Watch out if a prospect asks you to prove your story’s true. Instead, seek out an audience inclined to believe your story.
I developed applications for CICS on IBM mainframes in the 1980s. At that time IBM had a project to reimplement CICS using formal methods. Reading about the Verification Grand Challenge reminded me of that project.
An ambitious 15-year international research project, its goal is to create a large repository of useful code, verified to the highest standards of rigour and accuracy. An early case study applied automated verification tools to prove CICS is formally correct. For this they used the CICS Z notation specifications from the 1980s.
There’s no time to think when you’re surrounded by fire. You need to put it out for good by starving it of fuel: customers who don’t fit.
Fire-fighting often becomes a core competency at software companies. The usual cause? Our dread of no revenue forces us to accept customers who are not consistent with our worldview. Unique customers cause trouble.
You’re doing the best you can to deliver great software. You pull all nighters and work weekends to satisfy each hard-won customer. Been there. Done that. But, while it’s great to play the hero fire-fighter occasionally, in the end something’s got to give.
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:
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.
