The Scale Series Challenge #1: Always Be Testing

Just after graduating, and before moving to the UK, I spent almost a year working with a great team at an IT services consultancy

This IT services consultancy was called Allyance (Hi Quy!). There I had my first two proper business mentors who showed me the ropes of making a sale.

They had me reading books including “How to win friends and influence people” by Carnegie and “Influence” by Cialdini and they had me practicing my pitch over and over again.

While it wasn’t UX in the common sense, we would analyze every meeting we went on, discuss what went well, what we could adjust, and what we should try during the next one. And, at the end of the day the motto was, Always Be Closing or ABC.

Well, scaling a business is effectively all about closing, though we often now think of closing as converting. Converting browsers to engagers, engagers to buyers, and buyers to loyal customers.

In this digital market we live and work we think in funnels with the sales funnel being the most important. And, the best way to continual improve conversion rates in these funnels is to always be testing, ABT.

While a lot of Scale-ups are focused on hiring data scientists, looking for patterns, and optimising funnels using A/B or Multivariate Testing, they often lose site of the more important type of test, talking to customers about what they want.

Putting the effort in early to get this direct feedback will pay off incredibly well down the road and

If you don’t believe me on this, give a listen to Reid Hoffman’s Scale Up Podcast featuring the founders of AirBnB (you can listen to it here: https://overcast.fm/+I6DDHHECQ or find it on itunes).

If this type of question sounds familiar it is, it’s effectively a direct form of the net promoter score (NPS) but instead of simply seeing how satisfied people are, i.e. how likely they are to recommend you, you are asking them what it would take to get them to recommend you not just to a few people, but to everyone.

Use your early adopters responses to this question to help prioritize your product timeline and then deliver the items that will get them to really spread the word. Some ideas may just be crazy, but some will make you kick yourself that you didn’t think about it before.

Only when you know what they want can you build it and then optimise it.

So, the first challenge in the scale series is to go out and speak directly with 10 customers. Pick a mix of first time customers, repeat customers, and even those who have not yet purchased but have browsed a lot.

Sometime during that conversation ask them “what would it take to get you to tell everyone about us?” Write down their answers, group the ones that are similar together, prioritize them, and get them onto your product roadmap.

I’ll be doing this with you so if you’d like to compare notes / results, leave a comment and we’ll continue to develop this process together.