Sharing success: How applying our product-led framework helped us to become more user-centric and deliver faster and better.
A couple of weeks ago, we published an article about the fact we decided to shift the organization from a sales-led model to a product-led model. We are just about delivering a new page within the app. This time, the process was enjoyable, that we wanted to share it with you.
A couple of weeks ago, Jordan — one of our oldest clients, thank you so much — contacted me regarding a wish he had.
Jordan already knew that some of its accounts in a portfolio made up the 80 first percent of his sales. He was able to feel if his business was at the mercy of a few clients. For companies having less than 20% of their clients, generating more than 80% of their sales, it might be hazardous. Losing one of those few primary sources of income generally bells the starting point of troubles.
Jordan wanted more than that. To better evaluate the risk sensibility, Jordan also wanted to know the percentage of revenue that could be tagged as recurring.
We chatted for a couple of hours. I was trying to dig the “why” that information matters, and challenging the fact that other business leaders would require it.
We concluded. I wrote down a short analysis and posted it on our feature voting module. Jordan did his part of the job. Quickly, people started to vote for that idea. And it quickly became the most requested one.
Undoubtedly, the voting process is questionable, as anyone (including people having no interest in kopilot) may vote. The same person can vote twice. We can improve it. But having a user showing the motivation to find people to promote his idea, we had to do something. And fast.
Then came the time to, as a team, get it real.
As a product manager, I’ve drawn a lot of sketches. I multiplied the features, trying to anticipate the user’s requests. I was seeking to reach that point beyond expectations.
The whole team challenged me. “What’s the purpose?”. “Is it indispensable?”. “Do data sustain that feature, or is it a pure gut feeling?”. “Are you sure the analysis makes sense in such a case?” The team pushed me to talk to other users, to confront our (Jordan’s and myself’s) idea to other users, behind what the publicly available analysis contained.
We fought for the definition of “recurring revenue.” We discover that recurrence has different levels: from the repetition of business operations to subscription, which is the repetition of the same transaction over time.
We deliver our first attempt. It was counting the invoices, and grouping clients by the numbers of invoices they have. In most of our test cases, the funnel was visually quite okay. Of course, we thought of a company invoicing its clients more than once in a month. But, we never thought that it might be possible that a company generates more than 80 invoices for the same client over a year!
It looks like hell. We were missing something, and at the same time, we had something sounding exciting and valuable for our users. Frustrating!
We went for a walk in the neighborhood of our Brussels office, when it popped! It was so obvious. The part we were missing was the time. The number of transactions between a company and its clients has no value in this context. The exact question was: how regularly do I invoice my clients?
Does it matter to know how many transactions you’re involved with someone? Knowing that I have one — and only — invoice for a client was telling me that that revenue is a one-off. But the rest??? Once again, we used the approach we were used to when we delivered analytics. Old habits never die. Asking the right business question was the answer.
If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” A. Einstein
That question puts us on the rail. The mindset immediately shifted from analytical to what are the business questions you might ask when I interrogate myself about the sustainability of my business.
Boom, let’s go back to the code, let’s modify the query to reorganize the puzzle. It was obvious. Because the question was obvious, the solution was crystal clear.
Two days later, we released the page.
The first one we informed was Jordan. I was a bit anxious about his reaction since we have modified his definition of the concept and his request. Here it is:
And, finally, here is the summary of the retrospective we did over the creation process. Pierre-Luc (our CTO) summarized by a simple: “I took a lot a pleasure building this page. Instead of working isolated, one after the other, we really worked as a team. Everyone gave its idea. It comes from our users, and they remained involved during the whole process. The result is far more beyond what we expected, and there is plenty of possible improvements. Changing our habits worth it. Keep going, guys”.
Let’s hope that we will keep that mindset and discipline. 🤞
Have a great day!
Laurent.
In conclusion
- Do not forget to look at the context through the reality of your clients.
- Confront, confront, confront.
- Play with data, and note every question you are asking. Those need to be solved.
- Descope the feature to retain the one thing to start. Descope again.
- Release that first version and submit it to your users to capture feedback and additional ideas.
- Build incrementally.
kopilot allows CEO, founders, and entrepreneurs to predict sales and review performances easily. kopilot could become a single source of truth. And, it comes with unlimited users.
Give kopilot a shot. Connect your invoice data system and get more efficient performance meetings.
Stay tuned and don’t forget to follow us on Medium, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn; or keep an eye on our changelog. Interested in taking the trial, it is here: www.kopilot.io!
