Actionable Takeaways from the Business of Software Conference, Boston 2012

Guest blog post from Alex Czartoryski, the co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Fresh Air Educators who attended last week’s Business of Software Conference that we ran in Boston and got one of the first write ups in…

To encourage your customers to spread your product via word-of-mouth, your product should make your customers “badass”.  Don’t focus on making your product awesome, focus instead on making your customers awesome.  This may seem like a small semantic difference, but what triggers the word-of-mouth snowball is when your customer can impress his/her friends because of something you did.

This is one of the powers of Instagram — it allows average people with no photography skills to start taking awesome pictures that can impress friends and family.  Spend some time thinking about what your customers are doing AFTER using your product, because that’s when the word-of-mouth happens.

Gamification

Although “gamification” is hot right now, it is generally NOT the type of behaviour you want to encourage.  It is a behaviour that triggers similar brain functions to those experienced during slot machine use and is not something that promotes long-term loyalty in your customers.  Gamification works only in very narrow verticals and in general will not produce sustainable or desired results.

A/B Testing

When running an A/B Test, ALWAYS start with a theory and then use the A/B test to try and prove or disprove that theory.  Don’t just run random A/B tests that show and hide various elements, hoping to stumble upon a magical winning combination.

To find out if your test results are statistically significant, don’t trust your A/B Tool.  Instead use this formula:Don’t trust your A/B testing tool to determine if your test is statistically significant.  Instead use the following formula:

1. Define N as the total # conversions in A + B
2. Define D as the difference in # conversions between A and B divided in half
3. The test result is statistically significant if D squared is bigger than N.

Thanks to Jason Cohen at WP Engine for this formula

The Idea Factory:
Nurture Entrepreneurship in your Organization

Company Culture

As an owner, if you don’t “design” your company culture, your employees will do it for you.  You shouldn’t let  your employees do this, because they usually suck at it.To design your own company culture:

1. Decide what you care about
2. Hire people that care about the same thing
3. Remember the things you care about.

In terms of scaling company culture during rapid growth, “transparency” is a big help.  A by product of transparency is that it is very difficult to do stupid things because everyone will call you out on it.

Profit Sharing

Here is the profit sharing strategy that is implemented at Balsamiq.com

How our jobs are killing us

Salesmen and the Art of Selling

Interesting Sales Pitches

The Question Pitch: If you ask your customer a question, and you know what answer they will come up with in their head (and it’s a favorable answer), then this is much more compelling than just telling them in the first place. (Should landing page headlines be questions to our customers?)

The Rhyming Pitch: Rhyming messages trigger a cognitive part of the brain that makes them more memorable and seem MORE TRUE.  ”If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit”

The Pixar Pitch: All pixar stories are fundamentally structured like this:

Once upon a time __________________
every day ________________
until _______________
because of that ____________ and because of that _______________
until ___________________

(think of Saving Nemo or any other Pixar movie).  Apparently a sales pitch like this is very effective.  Should you consider a story like this on your About Us pages?  Or perhaps below the fold on your landing pages?