🆓 How to master free offers, Your personal data scientist, ...
Hello!
Adam Thornhill here.
‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a week.
Ready for the 58th edition of Podup?
Enjoy the best bits from SaaStr, This Week In Startups, and The Game:
✈️ Have you been on a city tour?
🔬 Your personal data scientist
🆓 How to master free offers
Thanks to Lucas Wickens for making this post possible…
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Do your customers have a deep connection with your brand? Find out how Lucas Wickens can help with expert branding on a budget.
P.S. All Podup readers save $500 if you sign up with Lucas Wickens before 31st May!
✈️ Have you been on a city tour?
🥉 SaaStr (4 min read vs 32 mins listening)
Zig when others zag. Engage with your customers and prospects in person to strengthen relationships, accelerate the sales process, and solicit valuable insights.
Join Jason Lemkin, founder and CEO of SaaStr, as he delves into 3 techniques you can use to foster deeper connections with your customers and prospects.
What they say
Build an army of sales reps
A customer conference is magical because when you get customers and prospects together they sell each other.
Only 2 types of folks come: (1) Folks who are interested in your product (2) Customers that already love you.
Customers will tell each other why they chose your product. Prospects will get more excited, move through the funnel faster, and interact with you and your team in person.
There are lots of ancillary benefits. You'll generate great content if you have a few sessions and record it.
If you can get even 15 customers together with 15 prospects, that's enough. Get them in a hotel room for an afternoon for $2,000 to $5,000.
Plan it 90 days ahead of time. Make it a bit fun. Have 2 or 3 presentations and host a little cocktail party after.
Jason Lemkin
Why city tours are magical
This is not 2020 folks. Do a city tour. This is like a mini event. Visit a city where you have a group of customers.
Dinners work. You get your prospects and your customers together again. They share with each other. They get to meet and do the selling for you.
All you need to do is call a restaurant and find out which one has a private room. It does not have to be the world's fanciest restaurant.
I don't care if you don't have a marketer. I don't care if you don't have a team. You can do this. But the hack is to do this once a month.
Jason Lemkin
Focus on your roadmap
Your customers are investing in you getting better and better over time so they can benefit. They want to know the future of your product.
They love a roadmap presentation on what's coming in the next 12 months.
You're not asking them to buy something. You're asking for their input. Be prepared for some tough feedback. They're going to take it seriously.
I've almost never seen a top customer not want to take this meeting to get their feedback on the roadmap.
You can easily do this once or twice a year. This always works.
Jason Lemkin
What I say
Why it matters
Authentic, face-to-face interactions build trust and turn customers into ambassadors. Jason’s customer engagement techniques are now more important than ever. Here’s why:
The less you have, the more you value it. Most of us are hybrid or remote, so we value in person interactions more.
With inflation, we prefer quality over quantity when it comes to nights out. When we do go out, our mentality is to ‘make the most of it’.
It’s now faster and easier to get mindshare and leave a lasting impact because customers really value these interactions.
Between the lines
Give your customers a memorable experience and they’ll pay you back thanks to the rule of reciprocity. Take Tesla. Their test drive events not only close sales, but they encourage customers to shout about their experience.
https://twitter.com/opengreenseas/status/1148315825360687104?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Try organizing regular city tours and hosting intimate, engaging experiences. Worst case, you’ll have fun and learn along the way!
🔬 Your personal data scientist
🥈 This Week In Startups (3 min read vs 1 hour 11 mins listening)
What’s new in ChatGPT world? Code interpreter. It’s heralded as the answer to all of your data science needs. This powerful tool is poised to transform the workplace by enhancing efficiency across departments. Tune in to Jason Calacanis and Sunny Madra as they spill the beans.
What they say
What is code interpreter?
ChatGPT has enabled the ability to input data via an upload feature.
One of the best examples is to upload a spreadsheet and have ChatGPT do some basic data science for you.
Code interpreter is only available to folks in a very limited alpha group.
Sunny Madra
Democratizing data science
Let’s say you need to analyze a Google Sheet or an export from Salesforce or whatever tool you use.
Currently, your team has to go to your data science department or find somebody who happens to be good at hacking this stuff together.
Data science is something that civilians - the other 80% of people who work at your company - just don't know how to do. It's too hard for them.
Massive efficiency will come to the companies that get on this early.
Jason Calacanis
Jason's polarizing proposal
If you're running a company you should give everybody ChatGPT and ask them to show you what they did with it.
Let's say you have 10 people in your department. If 7 people use the tool and 3 people don't, you should fire the 3 people who don't use the tool.
I know this sounds crazy but this is what happened in the early 90s.
We put PCs on people's desks. Some people wanted their secretary to have the PC. Those people lasted less than a decade in corporate America.
If you're not using ChatGPT every day you're literally a dinosaur.
Jason Calacanis
What I say
Why it matters
ChatGPT offers a unique opportunity to level the playing field, giving employees the power to access and interpret data without relying on specialized support. By fostering a data-literate workforce, you can unlock new insights and decentralize decision making.
https://twitter.com/aaditsh/status/1653794823424339969?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Between the lines
By prioritizing the adoption and integration of Code interpreter into daily operations, you can create a data-driven culture that:
Accelerates insights. ChatGPT expedites analysis so you can make data-driven decisions faster.
Fosters collaboration. ChatGPT's accessibility makes it easier for ideas to be both exchanged and understood.
Embraces early adoption. The more your teams use ChatGPT, the faster they’ll adopt new tools and features.
So, what now? Jason’s firing proposal is clearly too extreme, but the right sentiment is there. You need to prioritize the roll out of ChatGPT and identify laggards within your organization. Give them coaching and support to improve their utilization, but if they resist and don’t embrace change, you then have permission to let them go.
🆓 How to master free offers
🥇 The Game w/ Alex Hormozi (3 min read vs 14 mins listening)
Your offer is king. An irresistible incentive brings in new customers and boosts your bottom line. By understanding and implementing Alex Hormozi’s strategies, you can create promotions that drive growth and enhance brand loyalty.
What they say
The Dominoes case study
An irresistible offer has to be believable, valuable, and free.
If you have a good enough offer, you don’t need to sell hard and you don’t need amazing copy or creative.
Free offers give you the highest volume of leads for the lowest cost. They can spread through word of mouth and are easy for other people to comprehend.
One of the greatest offers of all time was Dominoes. If they didn’t deliver to your door in 30 minutes it was free.
It had gamification. It became a challenge. You thought ‘If it’s not here in 30 minutes I get it for free.’
It was incredibly compelling and was fundamental to their growth.
Alex Hormozi
The 7 types of free offers
(1) The free bribe offer. You offer a program for free as a benefit for singing up to something else.
(2) The limited free offer. The free thing is basic. You upsell enhanced versions.
(3) The free trial plus penalty. If someone doesn’t attend part of the program then you charge them.
They have a huge motivator to consume your product or service. The likelihood that they convert on the backend is significantly higher.
(4) The free with deposit. If someone hits a goal they can get their money back or get it credited toward something. It’s free with stipulations.
(5) The free forever. If you have multiple ways to monetize a customer, you can offer something for free and bolt on a different revenue stream.
(6) The free giveaway. Give your service away for a month. Tons of people raise their hand to say they need your service. You can then give those who are interested a discount.
(7) The free with commitment. You say ‘Your first month is free as long as you commit to an X month contract.’
Alex Hormozi
What I say
Why it matters
Alex has made it clear why you need to harness the power of free offers. I’m here to help you make that a reality. To create a successful free offer, consider the following:
Design offers that are simple to communicate. If it can’t be explained in one sentence, it’s not clear enough.
Encourage word of mouth to amplify your promotion. Make your offer so good that your customers feel guilty for not letting their friends in on the secret.
Incorporate gamification elements like ‘X guarantee or your money back’ or a tiered referral program to increase engagement and excitement.
https://twitter.com/alexhormozi/status/1494339965966118924?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Between the lines
Crafting the perfect free offer can lower acquisition costs and increase your customer lifetime value. However, perfect must mean profitable. It’s easy to get carried away with top-line growth and burry costs elsewhere.
Be honest with the costs to fulfil your promotion. Measure your conversion rate, average revenue per customer, and retention rate. Then, and only then, can you pour fuel on the fire and market your product with reckless abandonment.
Note, these quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Some sentences were left out to make the narrative more concise. I am not associated or affiliated with any podcast (unless otherwise stated). All roundups are independently written and do not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the podcast.
Enjoying the new branding Adam
this one was rad! liked all of them.