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Gather Feedback

Lesson 19 from: FAST CLASS: Turn Your Service Into A Product

Tara McMullin

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Lesson Info

19. Gather Feedback

Lesson Info

Gather Feedback

often during the product development process, people get, people start feeling like, wow, this is a lot of work and they will say to me, hey, I thought this was supposed to make me more money and leave me more time. Um yes, it can be intense, it can be a lot of work. Absolutely, But there are important next steps to follow to ensure that your products really do make you more money and really do save you more time. So step 12 is to gather feedback and this can be scary. I am especially scared of it and it's scary because we love our ideas, we love our products and it can be hard to ask people, hey, what did you think? But the good news is, hey, what did you think? Isn't actually the best question to ask? There are a lot of other questions that you that you can ask, that help you uh figure out what's coming up next, right? Testimonials and reviews aren't the only kind of feedback that we need. Gathering feedback isn't just about getting testimonials, although that's important and what's ...

the testimonial? It's someone saying, yeah, I love this product, here is what it did for me, here's how it helped, here's what it allowed me to change and the results that allowed me to get and that's fantastic. But people telling you how wonderful your product is, doesn't actually give you the information that you need to make your product better and so you have to ask different questions. Um and you know, product development is actually all about learning, it's learning what you need to know, it's learning what you need to know to succeed. And here's how Erik Reece talks about it in the lean startup, he says, I've come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated. As we've seen. It's easy to kid yourself about what you think your customers want. It's also easy to learn things that are completely irrelevant. What I think I love most about this idea is that any effort that doesn't, that isn't necessary for learning, that doesn't help you figure out what to do next can be eliminated. We spend so much time with extra, extra ideas, extra effort, extra developing this little feature, making the website just a little bit better. Again, been there, done that, you can eliminate that effort. You can give yourself a pass if the effort that you are embarking on doesn't help you learn more about how to make your product better, how to make it more effective, how to sell more. It's not necessary and you can get rid about rid of it. And here's why feedback is so important. Here's why asking these questions is so important, feedback changes the way you change your product, feedback changes the way you change your product. So what will your customers tell you that will help you change the way you change your product Well, customers will tell you how they actually use your product and this is hugely important because your customers very well may not use your product the way you think they will. It's all a guess until you put your product in someone's hands, it's a guess. So you've got to ask them, what did you actually do with this? What was that experience actually like? Did you fit it in in the morning? Did you incorporate it at lunchtime? Was it part of your daily routine? Or did you have to kind of find space for it? And that goes for an information product? It goes for a physical product. It goes for something that seems really utilitarian, it goes for something that seems really luxury. We need to know how customers are actually using our products. A big trend right now, actually in product development is bringing in anthropological teams of researchers into people's homes, into people's places of work and watching them use the products that the companies that hired these people have sold people so that they can see what does it actually look like to use this product? How are people actually incorporating it into their day? Now, you don't have to be an anthropologist to figure this out. You can just ask people tell me how you're using this or you can observe the way they use it. People will also tell you what the what the greatest value of it was to them. What is the greatest value. Like I mentioned with website kickstart? The greatest value was not building a website, It was looking at their business in a whole new way. They'll also tell you what worked for them and what didn't. The fact of the matter is not every feature you build into your products, not every curriculum of your, every module of your course is going to sit well with people and you want to know if there's a trend there, is there a module that you can eliminate? Is there extra explanation that you need to add in? Is there a different way that you need to structure everything so that it makes more sense and so that everything becomes usable. So people will tell you what's worked for them and what didn't they'll also tell you why they would recommend it to others. This is a great question. Why would you recommend this product product to someone else? Because they'll tell you what problem they think it solves. They'll tell you where they see their friends or their colleagues suffering or or getting frustrated or getting stuck. And then you can again pivot or iterate your product so that it more closely aligns with why someone recommended to somebody else so that you can get more referral traffic from that. I'm going to briefly introduce Brianne who's sitting over here on the left and kind of kind of taking the place of a couple of our case study panelists now brands gonna be teaching a few upcoming lessons, but first I want to get your take on some of this. So what else would you add to this? What else can your customers really tell you? one thing that I like to ask is for the customers to think about before you bought. What was the number one concern or objection that you had? And what did you find was actually the case? So what what was the concern you had that might have prevented you from making the buying decision? And what did you find was true? Because that gives you some really good information as to not only what the objection was, but how you can circumvent that and also strengthen your case. Um The other thing that I like to do is one of the questions we talk about is how they actually used your product. What's really useful with that is to not just ask people how they use their product. But if you have the opportunity as Terror was saying to observe them, you're doing an online product that can be something like which emails are they clicking on? How are they actually using it?

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

The Observation Engine - Multimedia Pack
cL-1510-GENTILEPRODUCT-S00L01-INTRO-MARKETER-HD.mp4
cL-1510-GENTILEPRODUCT-S00L02-THINK-WHO-HD.mp4
cL-1510-GENTILEPRODUCT-S00L03-THINK-WHAT-HD.mp4
cL-1510-GENTILEPRODUCT-S00L04-THINK-HOW-HD.mp4
Create a Product That Resonates Workbook
Turn Your Service Into a Product Workbook

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I'm in business a looong time and know a lot but... Tara is great, the course is great and it is a MUST SEE for every entrepreneur. I'm not a native speaker (from Germany) but I can follow Tara very easily and there is the transcript... just in case ;-) Well done!!!

Student Work

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