HOW TO GET CUSTOMERS TO KEEP LOVING YOUR PRODUCTLarry Kim - Francis Madojemu slides https://medium.com/the-mission/how-to-get-customers-to-keep-loving-your-product-8966700968c2#.qnklqpe4s

REINVENT YOURSELF

START

IT’S A PROBLEM YOU SEE IN BUSINESS ALL THE TIME.

◼ Your product becomes successful.

◼ You’re growing!

◼ You go gangbusters and all is right with the world.

◼ Eventually, it peaks.

REINVENT YOURSELF

PROBLEMS

IT’S A PROBLEM YOU SEE IN BUSINESS ALL THE TIME.

◼ Then sales begin to decline.

◼ You ask customers what you can do to make your product better.

◼ You add those things.

REINVENT YOURSELF

YOU TRY

BUT PEOPLE CONTINUE ABANDONING YOUR PRODUCT.

◼ You go back to your customers again and they tell you to add more features.

◼ You add more features!

◼ But people continue abandoning your product.

REINVENT YOURSELF

NOTHING WORKS

BUT PEOPLE CONTINUE ABANDONING YOUR PRODUCT.

◼ It’s like you’re living in a hellish version of “Groundhog Day,” where things are getting worse and worse and worse.

◼ It’s called the product death cycle.

◼ David Bland illustrated it perfectly on Twitter: <img class="progressiveMedia-noscript js-progressiveMedia-inner" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*PCellmiFrZ7hYeho.png">

FLAVOR OF THE MONTH◼ You can see this

flavor-of-the-month problem in numerous industries, but one example is restaurants.

REINVENT YOURSELF

RESTAURANTS

◼ A new restaurant opens, gets amazingly positive word of mouth, and becomes so popular there are lines out the door and you need to wait months for a reservation.

REINVENT YOURSELF

RESTAURANTS

◼ Just a few years later, though, people start flocking to other, newer restaurants.

◼ That first restaurant, losing its sheen as the shiny new thing, sees its revenue slowly dry up.

◼ They start to panic.

REINVENT YOURSELF

RESTAURANTS

◼ They renovate the restaurant, radically change the menu, and change the outfits the staff wears.

◼ But nothing really works.

◼ Eventually they’re forced to go out of business.

REINVENT YOURSELF

IN TECHNOLOGY

◼ We see this all the time in technology where product life cycles are much, much faster here.

YOUR SLOGAN HERE

COMPANY

◼ Some tech gadget or tool becomes incredibly popular because it’s new and awesome,

◼ but later is rendered obsolete, or even dies, because of even newer and more awesome technologies.

FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL◼ Tons of companies

get to this point. The end of a product life cycle is getting closer and closer

REINVENT YOURSELF

SURVIVAL

◼ Obviously, you don’t want your business to die, but you realize nobody is using your product anymore.

◼ So what do you do?

REINVENT YOURSELF

SURVIVAL

◼ The absolute worst mistake you could make at this point is ask what your customer want to do to improve the product and then spend six months to a year retooling and investing precious resources into creating whatever your customer has asked for.

SURVIVAL

REINVENT YOURSELF

◼ This only fuels the death spiral!

WHY?◼ Because after

you’ve added your new features, even fewer people will use your product.

REINVENT YOURSELF

WHY?

◼ All you’ll get out of this process is window dressing. Your existing customers are just going to keep asking you for little add-on features and functions around your existing dying core product.

WHY?

REINVENT YOURSELF

◼ And around and around you’ll circle until your company finally goes down the drain.

SOLUTION

REINVENT YOURSELF

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO ONCE YOU’RE IN THE DEATH SPIRAL?

REINVENT YOURSELF

SOLUTION

◼ If you really want to survive these kind of downturns in your product life cycle, then you need to think back to what you made your product so great in the first place.

REINVENT YOURSELF

SOLUTION

◼ Think back to the beginning of your business.

◼ What made your company so special at the start?

REINVENT YOURSELF

COMPANY

◼ Were you offering something that was unique, novel, and completely different from anything else than your competitors had at the time?

◼ Being so radically different is probably what made you so successful.

REINVENT YOURSELF

SOLUTION

◼ Perhaps your product simply has become too watered down over the years.

◼ Can you recapture the innovative spirit of your early days?

EMBRACE CHANGE OR FACE DISASTER

REINVENT YOURSELF

CHANGE

EMBRACE CHANGE OR FACE DISASTER

◼ While it’s tempting to not want to upset your existing customer base, as small as it is, you really need to change your thinking if you want to escape the death spiral.

CHANGE

REINVENT YOURSELF

ASK YOURSELF: WHAT WOULD WE MAKE IF WE DIDN’T HAVE THE CUSTOMERS WE HAVE?

REINVENT YOURSELF

CHANGE

◼ You need to think about how you can start a new life cycle, rather than thinking only about how you keep your existing product on life support for a couple more years.

REINVENT YOURSELF

CHANGE

◼ After you’ve reached this point, you must decide to change the DNA or your organization.

REINVENT YOURSELF

CHANGE

◼ As Elon Musk has wisely said: “You need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”

GOD'S MODEL

REINVENT YOURSELF

◼ The Greatest example of this concept is from God himself.

◼ He didn't fix man or repair man, he didn't patch us up

◼ His answer to our fall was death and out of death He brought resurrection life

◼ We GOT BORN AGAIN - old things passed

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH OFFERS THIS ABILITY TO REINVENT YOURSELF.

◼ In the Bible it says, “those who become Christians become new persons.

◼ They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone.

◼ A new life has begun!”

◼ It is really like being born again.http://websites.sportstg.com/assoc_page.cgi?c=1-7984-0-0-0&sID=185041&news_task=DETAIL&articleID=23700834

◼ But no need to change your name. No need to change your musical preference. No need even to disown your past.

◼ It’s just that your past no longer defines you.

◼ It’s forgiven.

◼ It’s well and truly behind you.

◼ Because followers of Jesus believe that whatever they’ve done wrong in the past, whoever they’ve hurt, whatever mistakes they’ve made – they’ve all been wiped off the slate.

◼ God has forgiven all of them and doesn’t hold them against us anymore. It brings freedom from guilt, freedom from shame. It’s a total release.

◼ New life. New meaning. New purpose.

◼ So reinvent yourself today.

◼ Follow Jesus. You’ll discover a new you.