The Overview #42

? Hey there. This is The Overview, a weekly roundup of noteworthy B2B SaaS stuff. You’ll find interesting thoughts, articles, and more from around the internet.

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The product perception issue you don’t focus on

Regardless of the work you’ve put in to understand your customers, carefully frame your positioning, build a slick buyer experience, and deliver an excellent customer success partnership… If your product has a shitty experience, you’re not gonna make it.

And the product experience doesn’t just have to look good. It has to be usable. Are things in the right place? Do the concepts make sense, and are they consistent? Are there bugs, errors, and weird alerts? And what about uptime: is it available when customers want to use it?

Here’s a tip that not many marketers have done recently: sign up for your product in an incognito window, and then go through the onboarding experience as if you were a fresh customer.

You’ll be surprised, shocked, and even horrified at what you discover.

Related: Share real user experiences with the wider team

I have 100% done this, and it was so powerful. FullStory (or other session recording tools) show you exactly what your customers are doing, so you don’t just build superficial empathy, but can experience their pain yourself. That’s a huge opportunity to drive more customer-centricity in your business.

Website copy or design first?

In this reply to a question on whether copy or design should come first in a website redesign project, Marc says something that stuck with me.

Teams should be pragmatic to get good messaging to market, as fast as possible.

There’s no point in great messaging kept from the touchpoints where it can have the most impact. Once you know, you know. Put it into action. Get it in front of customers.

This is also why I think it’s so crucial for marketing teams to have instant, unfettered access to create and edit webpages without design and engineering involvement. Build the workflow so marketers can iterate and adapt with speed, while allowing design/engineering to add value to build beautiful and engaging experiences as a fast-follow.

Improve your interviewing skills

I was am an introvert, at heart. Six years ago, I was nervous to call anyone over the phone, let alone run customer interviews by myself.

Then, I got thrown into the deep end. Within a few years, I’d ran about 500 interviews with customers, prospects, and other friendly folks in the market.

What helped me get over my fear of holding interviews was a combination of:

• Being prepared, with an intro script, questions I’d written and practiced asking, and a list of prompts
• Recognising and understanding that nobody wanted the call to be awkward or embarrassing
• Plus, practice: do five interviews in quick succession and you’ll get into the groove in no time

Am I great at them? Nope.

Do I know how to steer the conversation, get the insight I need, and come away with energy? Absolutely.

Swipe File: PLG and Sales – A Powerful, One-Two Punch

???? When you become a free Building Momentum subscriber, you get access to my exclusive product marketing swipe file! Click here to find out more.

Brianne Kimmel writes on the OpenView blog about how some of the fastest-growing companies have one thing in common: They started with no sales team.

Product-led growth is seen somewhat as a savant for SaaS, but really is repackaged free trial and freemium tactics dressed up with a smarter and more thoughtful self-service sales experience. And when combined with inside sales, becomes a really powerful proposition to service prospects across the spectrum.

The opportunity some product led companies miss, however, is integrating a sales team to get the most out of their PLG strategy. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but PLG and Sales are not mutually exclusive. In fact, together, they make a very powerful combination.

Brianne kimmel

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