Enhancing Efficiency in Traveling Format Billing for Product Management

Traveling format billing for Product Management

okay hello everyone and welcome to my talk about storytelling for product managers my name is Florian I'm the head of product for the right experience at tier mobility and I would like to share a very simple technique today with you on how to create this one or two sentence elevator pitch for the product or feature that you're working on because let's be real the question of what are you working on these days is looming around and can be asked by anyone friends family and it's always nice to have a good and and precise answer to that it might also be your boss on the literal elevator asking this wanting to know uh what you're up to and of course being that very informed and in-depth product manager that you are of course you have the answer to it right so well you're working on a neat feature that will increase monthly retention by 5.7 for a customer segment of occasional users with an estimated return of investment of 350k in customer lifetime value amazing or is it a problem with this while being an accurate answer in a couple of uh circumstances um it's not kind of the case for for every situation that you might be in and this is where storytelling comes in in a nutshell the idea of Storytelling is to simplify information um and convey it in a way that is more memorable because people can relate to it personally the way it works is like if you hear a story your brain creates pictures out of that and these triggers emotion and are usually to recall um and that's at the core of it if I would ask you now like what the uplift is that I mentioned on the slide before might be very hard to remember uh what that person's answer was um so here storytelling can really help I can kick that off with a question where you're accustomed Frodo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings have in common uh just to get into a couple of techniques from the storytelling area and the answer to that question is they are both on the hero's journey so the hero's journey is a tool or a technique from storytelling it dates back to ancient Greece and it's a framework for telling a compelling story and you can use it to talk about your product or feature um and it will help you because it uses like kind of similar patterns that everyone faces in their and their daily lives so this makes it like really really relatable and you can of course use it uh for um to inform your customers or potential customers about why they should adopt your your product um or basically also use it internally or for everyone is asking um what you're working on to get like a very precise and relatable answer so some of the biggest Hollywood Productions use the hero's journey to their to tell their story and if you um would go and revisit them or or would review them I'm pretty sure that you will definitely be able to identify all these elements after this talk so why should you uh use the hero's journey and there's absolutely no reason the answer is you should so what is the hero's journey uh it all starts with a character obviously that lives in a Known World um there's also the unknown we'll get to that but it is known world uh there's business as usual but there's occasions where something new happens a call to Adventure usually in stories it's some sort of um Crazy Event that's happening but in terms of our product World it might be you introduce a new product or a feature that you would like people to adopt they might be a bit hesitant so there's a refusal of the call at first um until the moment where they actually meet a guide and this is where a transformation begins because uh in order to there might be something that that people uh want to achieve in their own world even though they do business as usual new problems might arise or something like this um but they need to transform in order to kind of overcome any any problems that they might have right this is kind of venturing into the unknown world and here the guide helps um crossing the threshold and then there's a lot of kind of tests or things to be learned things that our character needs to overcome to ultimately face this so primordial and and kind of overcome all the hurdles and all the problems that they might be facing all the challenges um so this is where the guide helps uh and of course there is a reward for that that is happening afterwards um and then you can see like going back to the to the known world but having like all these new tools and new knowledge uh that was kind of acquired in the unknown world might ultimately help um you in the known world as well so basically yes you return with the Elixir um and leaving the character or your potential user as a new and improved version of themselves um this is kind of happening in in all these big Hollywood stories and it can also be driver for telling the story about your product or feature what I mean by that is if you introduce a new product to the known world of a pause person ideally it results in an opportunity to become a better version of of oneself or themselves so um no one would use your product just because it's there right they want to get something out of it there's something new or there's a problem that they intend to basically resolve with that and then you have like a new and improved me there can be like a million different drivers um could be social ones could be like very practical ones but there's always um this kind of thing that you need to balance out and it's very very likely that if you do something uh if you introduce something that in many cases you will be replacing an existing solution so in order to make it compelling for the users or for your potential users the well them and also the audience that you're telling the story about your product need to understand like why they should bother dealing with you at all or with your product that you're offering them and How It ultimately can help them getting the job done whatever they need to they need to get done and what the product actually is and why it might be worth the trouble of firing another product for it so a couple of questions we need to answer and to get that done in a very very brief and precise way um we can use the hero's journey so there's a couple of elements and I didn't come up with that but it's actually developed by Donald Miller he used this for Branding it's a it's an amazing book called building a story brand to tell your story but you can also use it not just for marketing purposes obviously but like to every hero's journey there's a there's a couple of elements that you should be addressing in your pitch and this is it starts with the character obviously this would be your user or your potential user uh they start out with a problem obviously there needs to be like some sort of friction or maybe an opportunity that meets a guide who gives them a plan uh very important uh we need to highlight what we can what we can basically offer and calls them to action because everyone ultimately needs a little nudge right to try things out to uh before we reach like a certain level of stickiness that helps them to avoid failure uh and ends in success and yes also failure can be like a very very strong driver for people adopting uh products or features and ultimately you want success so if you try to kind of create this one or two sentence pitch from what you're working on or what the product feature is using these steps and training answers them can give you the outline um for this sentence so to give you an example um oh and maybe before first it's very important that you are the guide very easy to overlook this is not you it's very easy to put yourself in there or your product in the shoes of the of the um how the hero but it's not the hero is the potential customer or the person you want to transform into the hero so you are the guide your product is the guide your product will help um ultimately to give you an example always focus on helping the hero um in a previous uh in a previous job I did we have been building up a cooking platform called miklasa and basically providing uh video live courses for for cooking and it was very easy for us to say hey you know what we're doing miklasa is the best cooking platform in the world uh while it might be true it's also very likely uh that there's also a million other cooking Platforms in the world so it's not a very compelling thing to say right it's starting with with us and saying like yes we are basically the hero we are the best right but running this through the uh through the heroes Journey framework we came up with something better because of course we had a character or a certain user segment in mind and we knew what we were offering and we knew why we were offering it right so ultimately we scratched all that and um and transformed it in something more compelling we help single parents putting a fresh meal in front of their kids every day by providing simple recipes and easy to follow live video classes so that addresses like whom is this for it's for single parents yeah uh they have a problem because obviously the kids they they care very much about and they want the best for them uh so including of course giving them all the um the dietary needs or kind of the best nutrition they can get with a fresh meal maybe home cooked you know and but it's but of course they are very busy so it's not um very easy to to deliver that so there's also a certain fear in there right something that where they might face failure by getting another ready-made meal or something like this um and the way we we're doing this is by providing simple recipes that everyone can do and easy to follow live video classes so we completely transformed this kind of uh inner perspective or perspective on our product and how great it is to make it more compelling uh for and and easy to identifiable for a certain customer group to give you another example from my current work at tier we're offering scooter rights and we have a feature that allows you to reserve a scooter so um we have been building this but not just because we can but because it does something right and we could easily answer like hey what are we doing hey we have a reservation feature and allows you to reserve a scooter for 10 minutes and it's true right however we also have been doing this for a certain customer segment and they can get something out of it so again by running it through the framework of the hero's journey we arrived at something better our reservation feature ensures right over the commitments of people that need to be somewhere at a certain time that a distance scooter will still be available when they get there so there's a fear that they might have that they might not be on time that we address here it will still be available when I get there we ensure that by this feature reservation lasts for 10 minutes and it's free right like very very relatable so this can help you really to kind of get the essence of what you're building and what you're doing and put it into um let's say a short story right so next time when someone asks this what are you working on these days you might have like a a better answer to it on a reservation feature ensuring writer's commitment distance cooler and also the reply uh might be a very different one right because immediately the the audience and whoever you're telling this kind of tries to relate that to themselves right and you might get a different answer sweet can tell you how often I run into the exact same problem uh so I'll check it out for sure right and then you have like a very very different connection um which is kind of more relatable um just by running it through this framework and just to reiterate and then we're also at the end already is always ask yourself or run you what you're doing and you probably already have answered the questions beforehand like through the elements of the hero's journey whom is it for uh what's the problem you're trying to address uh how can you basically help what kind of plan can you give this character um and to to basically avoid failure and help them to be successful in whatever they want to achieve and by doing so uh you can get to like a very condensed and precise description of what you're working on so with that uh I already closed this top thanks for listening uh if you would like to know more or just get in touch you can finally find me easily on LinkedIn um hope this helped I hope you have in the future a very good answer to the question what you're working on and which always also includes the question of why you're working on this uh and um and yeah see you soon have a nice day [Music] thank you