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I Slept Through Class :: About Us

I Slept Through Class :: About Us.

ISleptThroughClass.com is an innovative and dynamically driven Web 2.0 business that allows all U.S. college students to solve the problem of missed classroom notes. We do this by enhancing their academic experience through an educationally oriented social network.

Huh? This thing is actually cool. Students post notes for those who missed class and get credits toward other purchases.

Find a problem. Solve it. Tell people. Simple.

Video: Seth on Marketing

Seth Godin's inspiring talk on "Why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department". Thanks to Neil Davidson for sharing it.

Cooper | Stratus Air concept project

Check out this brilliant Stratus Air concept project from Cooper Interaction Design. As a frequent flier, I want it now!

Product managers and designers should pay attention to the research aspects of the video, particularly the development of personas and their goals.

Visiting customers "in the wild"

Too many product managers use opinions when data is required; they are in the office more than they should be. Market facts are found in customer environments, not in company meetings. NIHITO, baby!

It seems reasonable to be able to visit customers in their place of work but my friend Dave wonders about visiting people in their homes.

I think this gets into a tricky area. How do you set up a home visit? And should you?

I don't know about you but I'd be cautious of being alone with people in their homes. Lots of opportunity for misunderstanding. So be sure to do home visits with a colleague. And this may be inappropriate to say but I suggest that men should always do home visits with a female co-worker. Maybe I'm just a victim of the sexual harassment police but I'm uncomfortable being alone with any woman who isn't my wife.

If you sell products for home use, you really should understand the customer environment. Sitting in a person's home reveals much about the person and about the way the product will be used. You can see how the product does or could integrate with the rest of the household. With customers, you can see misuse of the product or whether it's under a bed or table without adequate ventilation, for instance.

Years ago, we had a pilot project for PC use in truck stops. Neither the engineers nor the product managers anticipated how much dirt was found in a truck stop! We found a thick layer of dust covering the motherboard, the fan could barely move from the accumulation of grime, and the PC was running much hotter than designed--there was no way for it to cool down. After only one month, the PC was choking! Poor thing! While not a home-use example, the truck stop was an environment that we couldn't duplicate in a lab. After all, we all work in air-conditioned cubicles.

One product manager specializing in home-school products set up three home visits with home school parents and learned much about the way the home school area was set up (or wasn't) and how the parents integrating learning into the family structure (or didn't). Could you see that in a coffee shop?

But if a home visit isn't possible, an interview at a coffee shop is a nice alternative. In fact, in most cases I would suggest that you start with an interview in a public place. If the interview progresses well and you create trust (both ways), then a home visit is a nice follow-up.

In a coffee shop interview, ask the client to walk you through a typical day. How does paper move around? What approval steps are necessary? When do they use the computer and when do they use Post-It notes? A coffee shop interview is better than a phone interview but an in-home interview is best of all.

In the old days, family doctors made house calls an integral part of their practices. How can you understand a family's health without seeing the family's environment? The same is true for product managers of products used in the home.

Focus on personas and problems

Here's a success story on personas and their problems. Skullcandy makes headphones designed for snow boarders. Because they involve their personas in the product design, they get products that snow boarders want to buy and they tell their friends. To the tune of $85M in revenues.

Watch the video on MSN.

Lessons: Immerse yourself in your personas and their problems and you'll design a remarkable product. But it's not just about design, it's about careful marketing through the right distribution channels.

Thanks to Alain for sharing this video with me.

It's always about the problem

In our training classes, we emphasize the importance of solving market problems. Describing problems encountered by our target personas. It's the problem that drives product requirements. Yet we've become an industry of feature-speakers. "I want this and this and this and this!" Wait! What is the problem??

My friend Luke Hohmann wrote about this in his post "Market problems are still THE problem — even when you’re Agile!"

As teams embrace agile methods, some seem to have jumped backwards a decade, getting back to the thinking that opinions drive feature decisions; this is just wrong. Use market facts to uncover problems that customers are willing to pay to solve. Perhaps it's the pace of agile development, needing new items for the backlog every other week. Or perhaps it's a shift in the power of the "team" over the power of market facts.

If you're a product manager, you need to be delivering quantified market data to your product team; if you're a developer, you should demand it. Otherwise, the team will use their opinions of what they think people want. After all, in the absence of market facts, he who owns the compiler wins.

Effective Product Managers Know Their Market on ChangeThis.org

Product managers need to intimately understand their markets in order to be effective. They must know the customer better than they know themselves. Yet meetings and administrivia fill their schedules. What's needed is a challenge for product managers to visit customers with specific tasks and tips to get started.

Now that you've attended a Pragmatic Marketing seminar, you know the value of having market knowledge. What are you waiting for? Barb Nelson and I wrote an ebook, Effective Product Managers Know Their Market, to help you get started in your visits to the market. Download it now. 

don't forget the accessories

The PLATFORM strategy is one of the five strategies recommended in The Marketing Playbook by Zagula and Tong. Rather than assuming customers want one-stop shopping, the platform strategy encourages third-parties to extend your product with accessories.

The famous case of dBase III shows how an extensible solution led to an industry full of thousands of VARs actually adding value to the basic dBase III platform. Then, as explained by Rick Chapman in his book In Search of Stupidity, the execs at Ashton-Tate decided to kill the third-party market but instead destroyed the dBase product. The dBase platform created the third-party community but the third-party community ultimately created the success of the platform.

People spend much more on the accessories than for their iPods and Blackberries. Didn't you buy the better headset, the bluetooth, the car mount?

I have a Toyota Camry. It has a nice little cubby with a line-in jack for my iPod. Uh, how do I select songs? Oh yes, open the cubby, remove the iPod, choose your playlist, put it all back in the cubby, and enjoy! Hmmm, sounds like the dashboard designers didn't want anything to interfere with the elegance of their design. It seems that Toyota (and all car manufacturers) would rather sell me rims and sports apparel than a phone or iPod mount that integrates with the dashboard.

Thankfully, the team at ProClipUSA has the solution. They have figured out clever ways to shove a mount into the joints and openings of most car models. First, tell them what car you have and they'll tell you what mounts work; then tell them what device you have and voila! you have a holder for your iPod, your Blackberry, your GPS, your whatever.

You'd think that the car designers would offer these dashboard "extensions" for the most popular third-party devices or perhaps they should set up a partnership with ProClipUSA. Instead they assume a "closed" posture and miss an opportunity.

Should you pursue a platform strategy? You could. You can create a better customer fit without using your own resources. To do so, provide APIs and partnering programs to extend your product without doing everything yourself.

Product, category or need?

You gotta worry about products where you have to create the need. Ugh. You can do it, but it's hard and takes too long. In "What are you selling? Product, category or need?", Gopal Shenoy puts it this way,

A product sell is basically where a prospect walks in and says “Give me this product” - the customer knows that the product solves a well known problem.

Which type of product is yours?

PS. Gopal, congratulations on becoming a US citizen!

do you like it enough to buy it?

We discuss the idea of buying and using criteria in Practical Product Management. 

My friend Gopal takes the idea further, asking "will customers like it enough to buy it?" He explains that you want to build products that customers will BUY and not JUST LIKE.

on win/loss analysis

Win/Loss analysis is an extremely important activity yet is performed by fewer than 20% of product managers. Sales people either don't do win/loss or don't do it well. Companies who invest in win/loss find more process problems than product problems. Which is easier to fix? And who better to tell what we do right and wrong than someone who recently tried to buy?

Barbara Nelson explores win/loss analysis in her free webinar Why Are We Winning? Why Are We Losing? this Friday, February 8, 2008 at 10:00a PST.

iPhone, Harry Potter, and customer service

I got an Apple iPhone for my birthday--that is, I bought one myself but my wife said, "Hey, guess what? That's now your birthday present, mister! And I'm returning the BOSE computer speakers that I already bought you."

So anyway, I bought it while traveling, hooked it up to my PC in the hotel room, connected to the internet, and the phone activated immediately. I was actually amazed at how wonderful the experience was since I'd heard  that many people had bad experiences. Happily I didn't.

This weekend, I took my daughter and her friend to see Harry Potter at the IMAX theater. [Man! That's a big screen! And that fight scene in the room with all the prophesies! Sweet. And did anyone else question their filing system?] But despite a sold-out show and over-the-top buzz, the theater seemed surprised that all these people were showing up. They were completely unprepared--so much so that the patrons took the law into their own hands and policed the queue. [How bad is it to jump a line for a kids' movie! Yeesh.]

But my experience is nothing compared to the story from James Stoup about buying a fan from Honeywell. (Don't drink anything while you're reading it!)

What's the difference between a product-driven and a market-driven company?

Product managers in the market-driven company look at the entire buying and using experience... beyond just the device or service itself. Apple did it right. The iPhone is indeed gorgeous! Activation was elegant and easy. Alas, for those who had problems, AT&T dropped the ball on customer service (no surprise). IMAX was thinking ticket sales instead of managing the thundering herd. The Honeywell fan? 'nuff said.

Some companies seem to say, "Once we have your money, who cares?" Market-driven companies say, "I want you to tell your friends!" And people do either way. Happy customers tell some people. Unhappy customers tell everybody!

It's five times cheaper to keep a customer than it is to get a customer. What portion of your marketing plan contains strategies for keeping customers? 

How do your customers make decisions?

Looking on a typical vendor web site, one finds varying levels of product information. Ideally, your potential customers will find the information they need to make a decision—or at least start making a decision. The best web sites combine business results with supporting technical detail to meet the learning needs of different buyer personas. Often those sites also include customer testimonials and quotes but of course, everyone realizes that only the best quotes have been picked. I mean, really, what vendor would include lousy quotes in their web site?

However, those negative impressions generally exist somewhere on the web. Contrast the typical enterprise technology vendor with those for consumer products. A primary difference is that consumer products are more often sold through distribution—and not exclusively. Therefore the seller is more inclined to encourage unbiased commentary than the product vendor. Check out the product information on Amazon or Musicians Friend. These sites are for product distributors rather than product developers. They offer third-party comments from respectable sources and from regular people. I generally find the recommendations helpful—if 9 out of 10 are favorable, I’m inclined to buy. I can quickly dismiss the statistically irrelevant, either pro or con.

On Amazon, you’ll find book blurbs from the publisher followed by commentary and recommendations from customers. Check out the discussion on David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing including my favorable review plus a few others.

On Musicians Friend, hundreds of people report that they have bought and loved the Shure SM58 vocal microphone. Hmm, maybe I’ll get that one since people seem to like it.

Since it’s unlikely you’ll have this unbiased information on your website, where will your customers go to find it? Where are your products being discussed online. And what are they saying about your company and your product? Do a web search for your company and product name and you’ll find out.

More features or fewer?

In a time when people are advocating simplicity, mobile phones are becoming pocket computers. A year ago, Seth Godin wrote, “I think we're going to discover a whole new universe of cell phone services that people want to pay for, things that we won't be able to live without. Like ringtones....”

And I’m fairly sure that I want to buy the new Apple phone as soon as it becomes available. I don’t care about ringtones but I very much care about elegant design and ease-of-use. But that’s me. There are a great many people who want a mobile phone to just be a phone. You know... a good phone.

This week I stumbled across the Jitterbug phone. They offer two phones: one with 10 numbers and Yes and No buttons and the other with only three buttons: Emergency, a number that you choose, and Operator for everything else. Have a question? Just call the operator.

As vendors, we always have a customer who wants one more feature or a developer with a great idea or a sales person who can close a custom deal. And so, our products get more features, and more, and MORE! But the more we add, the more our customers complain that the product is hard to use.

Which of the following phone features do you frequently use?

• ring tones
  
• syncing contact with your computer
  
• calendar
  
• camera
  
• screen saver
  
• any of the side buttons
  
• Google mail
  
• shopping
  
• web surfing
  
• messaging via SMS or IM
  
• games
  
• conference calling
  
• wireless headset (ie Bluetooth)
  
• calculator
  
• alarm clock
  
• voice recording
  
• voice dialing

Or put differently, which of these would you actually miss if they were removed? By the same token, how many features in your product are used by fewer than 20% of your clients? Would those 20% really miss the features if they were gone? And would the 80% benefit from their absence?

Partnering for Partnering's sake

WeaKnees Blog reports that TiVo and Earthlink Announce Partnership: "Here's one that seems to be a bit out of left field: Earthlink will bundle TiVo services with its DSL lines. If you opt for the package, you'll get access to Amazon Unbox."

Partnerships should extend our reach in technology, promotion, or sales channel. Both partners should benefit. And most important, the customer should get a better solution from the combined offering that can be achieved independently.

Is this a partnership of desperation between two companies fearful of the big tumble? Or does this make sense? TiVo needs to cement their relationships with the media providers, not internet providers. What's the benefit of this partnership to clients? None that I can see.

moving to the "new & improved" platform

I tend to install new versions of software as soon as they're available. Sometimes I regret being an early-adopter, like when Microsoft's IE7 or Media Player 10 took control of my system but I can usually back out if I need to. Thanks go out to Norton Ghost for restoring my system more than once.

I bought and installed Office 2007 and I'm pretty much digging it. The new interaction is generally much easier. Most of my annoyance with Windows comes from spending more time figuring out how to do what I want than I spend actually doing what I want. In Office 07, there's a consistent way of doing things in each program; each toolbar or ribbon works the same way everywhere. More important, chart objects in PowerPoint use Excel instead of the horrific MS Chart program in Office 2003. Because everything I used to know I have to learn anew, I'm revising presentation graphs from fresh data instead of trying to manipulate them from the old Office 2003 documents.

But here's the rub: my headquarters has decided to NOT upgrade. The new features don't warrant the additional cost of licenses, installation, and training, not to mention the hassles of incompatibilities between the 2003 data and the 2007 data. You can save in 2007 format but you lose compatibility with 2003 or you can save in 2003 format but lose the ability to modify most charts again.

It's really a common product management problem, isn't it? How do you get your customer base to move to the new platform?

What if the incremental value of improved user interaction (and accumulated bug fixes) doesn't offset the cost of conversion? How do you convince customers to move to the new & improved platform?

There are two aspects to consider: 1) make it easy to move, and 2) make it affordable to move. To make it easy, you have to convert their data, either programmatically or with services, and you'll need to offer training in some form. To make it cheap, you can offer upgrade pricing incentives or explain why using the new version saves money in other ways. One company couldn't convince its customers to upgrade so they decided to give the new version away; the reduction in technical support costs offset the incremental revenue so the company was ahead.

It's best to do both--make it easy and make it affordable--and be able to explain in user and buyer language how to make the change and why the change is valuable.

"It just worked."

My daughter bought a new printer, plugged it in, turned it on, and it... worked. She was so surprised that she called to tell me. Now, granted she has a Mac which explains much but why is it such a surprise that a computing device just works? Shouldn't things work by default? Are your customers surprised when their experience isn't painful?

Likewise customer service. I've become an incredible procrastinator; I avoid interacting with any vendor in any form other than on the web. Calling their support or visiting the store is just too painful--it's just too time-consuming. I had a billing problem with my phone service for 18 months. It was only $5 a month and I figured I was ahead. Even now they have no idea why I canceled nor have they attempted to find out. No follow-up call; no email inquiry.

And then there's my son's Volkswagon GTI. The windows fell off when he was driving. The windows... fell... off. The dealer said, "Yeh, that happens sometimes." That happens sometimes?!?!? Good grief. While they fixed the VW they loaned us a Toyota; we liked it so much that we bought a Camry.

The contract isn't the end of the deal. The deal isn't done until the customer is satisfied. A loyal customer is our ultimate objective. Jim Foxworthy will be exploring this idea in more depth in his webinar on January 31.

What does it mean to be market-driven?

The DC Metro (subway) runs til midnight, even on game days. "Oh, the game ran long? Too bad. The metro closed at 12:00." Most people would be glad to relieve the congestion and save a little on parking by taking the metro--but not if they have to miss the end of the game.

On United, the young flight attendants try to be funny; the old ones gave up long ago. You can tell those who have been flying for a while. They are just sick of the job and it's obvious to all of us. Yet this weekend I was surprised and delighted to use my miles to get a free flight to Nashville. I booked online for the following day! Amazing. On one leg, they upgraded me to first class (if there can be first class on an Embraer puddle-jumper)--still, it was a nice treat courtesy of the gate agent. But once on the plane, I discovered that all four of the overhead bins were filled with the flight attendants' luggage.

I guess that's it in a nutshell. Being market-driven is realizing who the customer is (hint: it's not the flight attendants) and seeing the business and its products from the customer's point of view.

How many customer-facing people don't know or care who the customer is? Most fast-food servers don't care... except those at Starbucks and often at Subway. Most airline workers don't seem to know or care who the customer is... altho maybe JetBlue does. Teachers and professors? Do they know that the students are customers? (Your favorite teacher does!). Doctors and nurses know... and HMOs don't.

Companies and marketing departments who think that sales people are the customer don't know who the customer is.

Who is your customer?

Lights, Camera, Distraction!

Allan discusses the conundrum of buying versus using criteria in Lights, Camera, Distraction!

"That's when it hit me. I had fallen victim to one of the classic product management blunders. I focused so heavily on comparing specs, performance indicators and review data that I forgot to take into account one of the most important factors of all: How will customers use the technology?"

Always looking for a large unmet need

Intuit does many things right including seeing problems that others have missed. They introduced Quicken and Quickbooks despite dozens of competitors and became the dominate player by focusing on the problems that regular people were having. And now they're entering health care billing to help people get their arms around the ridiculous morass of bills and past due notices.

In Less Insult From Injury, BusinessWeek Online's Susan Berfield writes,

They visited dozens of people in their homes to see how they handled all of the bills and statements generated by the health-care system. Their conclusions were that people would spend hours to get even a few dollars out of their insurance companies, and that they wanted some way to assert control at a time when their lives had been upended by health concerns.

As Chief Executive Steve Bennett says: "We are always looking for a large unmet need that we can solve."