25A - What's Next?

What’s Next

Existing Market

The next component of my product is going to be focused on the breadth of the service I provide. With the initial application being distributed for free to obtain users I need to come up with revenue drivers. The options that I plan to test in my interviews will be:

1. Free – An application that allows you to create your business contact information and share it with others. This will include the ability to record a 30 sec video of introducing yourself.

2. Basic – The basic plan will be an upgrade and cost $3.99/mth with a discount for those who pay annually. The basic plan will allow users to customize the introductory message, so it can be personalized to the individual they are sharing their contact information with.

3. Premium – The premium plan will have all the features from the Free and Basic plans above but also include a re-contact feature that can be automated to reach out to prospects with a custom message. This upgrade will cost $5.99/mth.

Interviews

· Janice, Senior Director of Trade Sales

· Chris, Regional Sales Manager, Outbound Sales

· Lisa, VP of Online Sales

Reflection

When I interviewed Janice, I expected this to be my home run. It was not. She has been attending Trade Shows for over 15 years and her first reaction was “not another app”. That took me back a little, so I asked her how well her business cards performed. When she told me, “the goal is not necessarily for her to make the sale but to generate interest, so the prospect is driven to the website” this was a new angle I didn’t even think about. I asked her to explain a little more about how they track this, and she mentioned they typically setup special web pages for Trade Show individuals, so they can monitor progress via Google Analytics or some other tracking software. OK, so this means I may have multiple segments in the Trade Show area that I need to investigate.

Chris was more receptive from the very beginning. He explained to me that todays sales process needs to incorporate a more personalized and consultative based approach. He liked the idea of being able to customize the message to a customer but told me he would not have much need for the free version of the product based on this consultative approach. He didn’t think the price point was too high, which was great feedback, but he was very persistent on the metrics. He explained Sales are very much data centric. They live and breathe data at the management level so anything that shows strength or weakness through the process would be a big reason for him to use the application.

Lisa has managed all sorts of Sales teams throughout her 25-year career. She gave me great insight into how the role of Sales is evolving in small/medium sized companies. The focus is now shifting from focus on the initial sale to more of a customer centric/building relationship role, so those relationships can grow in the future with the customer expanding their purchases in the future. To do this they need good data and an understanding of the customer journey. Providing the customer with a digital contact card she thought was a good idea to create the relationship. Pricing seemed low to her due to the high-end products her teams are selling. She suggested I investigate a model that would provide all the features for free and the end user only pays a % when they make a sale. This sounds like a good idea, but I can’t wrap my head around how I would connect my app to their sales tools.



New Market

Since I am going after the B2B market I have decided the most logical choice for my new market would be B2C. Logical because this market will have to use my product to communicate with the Sales person that shared their business contact information with them. If I could limit the product to work in a B2B to B2B environment that would be ideal for the initial launch, but I am realistic and know that will not happen. Sales people will inevitably distribute contact cards to individual consumer prospects. Therefore, it is necessary for me to keep this in mind anyway.


Interviews

Wife, Medical Professional, loves to shop online

Brother, Engineer, dislikes sales people in general


Reflection
When I described my product to my wife the first thing she said was “I have no need to buy that, if the sales person is good, he/she will know when I need their service”. Okay, now I must build a mind reading application I thought to myself. Once we got around to a serious conversation it was clear that she would not pay for such an app. She did agree that she would download the app but only if it was a seamless experience and she didn’t have to do anything. She liked the idea about having a recorded conversation of the sales pitch, so she could go back and have record of the deal she was pitched. One other area that I didn’t think of is when she mentioned the app being able to reduce robo calls. Aha! This may be another area worth pursuing.

My brother gave me the agreed upon time of 15 minutes. In his mind he doesn’t want to speak to sales people in person – only if it’s necessary. He certainly wouldn’t pay money for the application and would only use it if the sales person he was communicating with had to use the application.


When I reflect upon these interviews, I still believe B2B is where the market is. However, I need to be aware that the end user the Sales person is speaking to may be the direct consumer.

This will cause me to review my feature set to make sure I have the right options available for each end user.

What surprised me the most and something worth looking into is the possibility of eliminating robo calls. If I can change the culture of sales and my application becomes the new “contact” norm then that is a game changer.