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The type of product you choose to build has implications on everything from the customer experience to the pricing model.Let's talk about the differences and why you might choose one or the other.If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/Episode TranscriptHey folks, Sean here and today what Iwant to talk to you about are thedifferent type of product companies you might build.When I say different type, what Imean is low touch versus high touch.There are some key differences between the type ofexperience that you might create for both your customerand the type of product company that you're goingto build for both yourself and your team.And I'm going to start by kind of categorizing eachin terms of what are some of the more importantor typical characteristics you might see in each of theseand then sharing some examples with you.I also want to talk about how you can becomemore of one or the other as and you don'thave to remain in either of those categories indefinitely.So when I say low touch productcompany, typically from a strategic perspective, whatthat means is you're creating a customerexperience that is typically product led.And when I say product led, whatI mean is your customer's first experiencewith your product is typically the product.As in they will go right into usingthe software and that's kind of their firstexperience with your product and your company.Also from a pricing model perspective, low touch products oftenleverage simpler models as in customers might pay the sameamount on a given month or year in order togain and maintain access to your product.Now, an example of a low touch product I wouldlike to use is Calendly, something I've used for years.I get a lot of value outof it and it's relatively simple.Calendly, if you're unfamiliar, helps you with essentially thatwhat can become a merry go round of tryingto figure out how to get everybody synced upso they can meet at a time that's mutuallyavailable for both of them.So it helps you with managing your calendar butthe use of the calendar product is rather simple.As such it fits well intothe low touch product category.Now, on the other hand, a high touchproduct from a strategic perspective, you're usually leveraginga model similar to being Sales lead asin your customers first experience with your productis actually through your team.So they will meet with sales team orsomeone to figure out what onboarding them mightlook like or qualifying them as a prospect.Because a high touch product is typicallymore complex, it's got more moving parts.The whole experience is difficult to kind ofjust dump a customer into and enable themto be able to figure it out.Also the product itself isn't theonly thing that's more complex.Almost everything is the pricing model as wellas in gaining and maintaining access to ahigh touch product typically involves multiple components.Maybe an implementation fee may be ongoing costs.There may be contracts with commitmentsthat may go beyond a year.So the contracts may berelatively inflexible and rigid.So those characteristics typically speak to what weconsider to be a high touch product.An example of a high touch product inthis instance might be something like Salesforce.If you've never used Salesforce before,it's a heavy duty CRM.But they as a company own aton of other products as well too.So navigating kind of theirenvironment gets complex fast.As such, some of your early contact with acompany like Salesforce, if you're interested in a productlike that, is usually with someone on their team.Now, like I said earlier, just because yourproduct is delivering one or the other ofthese type of experiences or falls into eithercategory, either low touch or high touch today,doesn't mean it necessarily needs to stay there.I've seen products make a successful transition fromone to the other and you'll often seeproducts trying to do that as they arekind of figuring out product market fit.So the most straightforward way to think aboutit, if you would like to be oneor the other that's why I described thosecharacteristics and some examples of each first, becausedepending upon your experience with those products oryour ability to familiarize yourself with them.That may or may not be.It might become clearer for you in terms ofthe type of product you'd prefer to build versusthe customer experience that you're looking for and theexperience that you'd like for yourself and your team.There are different implications depending upon which ofthese two paths that you choose and youdon't need to wait to choose this.I think more often than that makesthe most sense to think about thisalmost essentially right out of the gate.But let's assume you have some traction and you havean established product with paying customers as well too.Transitioning from one to the other or taking advantageof the respective strengths of each is also possible.Now, the easiest way that I typically think abouthow to do that really is the core componentof that is the product experience, as in howcomplex is it to use your product.In order for a high touch product tobecome more of a low touch product, you'regoing to have to simplify the experience.So you might need to do things like cut way backon in terms of what your product is capable of.That might mean removing features or buildinga new version of your product that'sactually dramatically simpler than it was before.This isn't necessarily a bad strategy.There's obviously some engineering involved here.But what you can do is if you kindof got out of the gate with more functionalitythan you were expecting to and you have someearly traction, what I'd recommend you take a closerlook at is where are you having that traction?As in where are your customers the most active withusing your product and what are they getting the mostvalue out of soft, circle those features and essentially doa quick mental calculation in terms of what percentage ofwhat your product is capable of.Are those features where they're getting themost value and using the most frequently?And can you create a simplerproduct experience around just those features?If you can, that's where you havegreat potential to convert essentially a hightouch product into a low touch product. I know that.On the other hand, if you have a low touchproduct and you kind of want to go beyond whereyou are, some often may want to do that.Depending upon if they want to raise their pricesor they want to scale their product company, thingslike that, low touch products are less likely togo further in that direction, so to speak.If that's the case, then you wantto have a better understanding for howyou want to contin...