Learning from Infomercials: How to describe your product

Well, well, the backman how you doing? Doing great sick is all get out and we're gonna see if I survive this this Pod guys might be the the straw that broke the camel's back on this one. Yeah, you're wearing apparently like 47 layers right now So I'm wearing 47 layers. I have the heat on and that's not enough I have a my own personal space heater and I'm wearing a ton of layers Let's go. Oh man and right in the middle PMF camp two Well, sorry. You're not not feeling well. Thanks for hanging in there. I'm excited for Today's conversation we're jumping into the world of Infomercials infomercials we are locked and loaded ready to over-analyze Something that is simple and beautiful and does not need to harbor to be aids to opine about it Yeah, did you did you ever think that after Bane after HBS? You would be freaking podcasting about Infomercials is that you know, there's this question at HBS, which is like how do you want to spend your one precious life or What's something like that? This is it. Yeah, it is like This is this is the this is the pinnacle we made So this was a new addition to this This roundabout in the in the PMF camp like you refresh the materials reach one and This one this is the my favorite part so far, but why don't we I mean to start with Setting the context for why this is relevant and the the short of it is there is zero making fun of it and a hundred Like trying to learn from exactly the way that they've honed their art But base this is what you write and I I'm pulling from the end of your sub stack the sub stack is called How to describe your product A Harvard MBA over things infomercials So this is what you write our pitches talking about not about infomercials talking about You know B2B sass founders or in general founders our pitches are massive broad future oriented and deeply technical All things that sound impressive to us, but confused the crap out of would be customers who are trying to accomplish something right now Instead the art of describing our product is to define the thing that fits their pull right now with the fewest words concepts and visuals So that they understand that it fits and I don't have to think very hard in order to say yes and by Rob why don't you give context on like Why is this top of mind who's it for and what are you seeing from founders? Yeah, I just think this is like One is just the challenge that every founder has is how do I or every founder thinks we have is how do I convey how awesome my product is To this person so that they will want it and buy it right that's the core problem and so we Massively over rotate on what is our sales deck look like? What is our product positioning? What is our website? What are the words that go on our website? And these things come from the supply side starting from our product how it works how we see the world And in doing that We basically guarantee that people will not buy it I have watched so many sales calls demos whatever and like the default sales call sales demo is so bad In that the customer usually shows up saying like hey, here's what I'm trying to accomplish and The response to that could be roughly 30 seconds of Both explanation of product and demo of product yeah, right it could be 30 60 seconds and Be way more effective Then what we currently do which is usually Five minute description Plus 10 minute initial demo plus booking a second longer demo Be so they can get all of it so they can understand it and so um It's been interesting watching that and then just going super deep on Info-murshals specifically We can talk about why infomercials that flip this They just flip it entirely like entirely on its head on how we tend to think about things and they kind of like have Evolved to work they evolved a pattern for doing this that actually fits It's kind of luck it fits the pull frame work insanely well I'm I'm not sure it's actually luck um, you know the the There's a pattern here that uh works and you know what we observed with cybers starts what we're observing from the opposite direction With infomercials and with we're gonna get into the turbo pump and the breathe easy humidifier And then like what you're writing about like they're converging on something similar so I'm actually I'm I'm not sure it's it's like it's just there's a different approach to it Let me let me also clarify why I picked infomercials versus just any other kind of commercial type So you could think right if you watch like a car commercial Right, there are so many different car commercials and they're all so weird um and so Like my sense is that those kinds of commercials are created by people who are too smart for their own good And they it there's like some sort of logic that happens in the creation room in like the in the marketer suite or whatever and like Most of us look at those and are just like what the heck are they thinking right and it doesn't really have to Does it doesn't have to do anything necessarily and so the reason I picked Infomercials and like as seen on TV commercials specifically is because we kind of are were free from the Overly intellectualized People they're not trying to win any awards. They're literally just trying to sell a product you haven't heard of as quickly as possible And they're free from the MBAs who are telling them like well actually Clay Christianson said that And so therefore done it right like and so this is just an art that has developed By like grinding against reality. It's actually it's interesting like like fast companies, you know best marketing campaign or whatever might actually have a negative impact on the usefulness of Of how marketing works or how communicating and selling works It's the same thing as like how architectural digest right is probably bad for architecture Generally, right like you you are doing things For not to like sell and deliver something that is awesome to the end user You're doing it for some like third party award. Yeah, it is usually some sort of naval gazing nonsense Yeah Yeah Well, I have to get into awards on another time as we've we've applied for and and gotten a couple of words and I think of them as It's like okay, how do I do this in the least amount of time possible and only so that I can Put this in front of people that care about awards not about the award itself But I don't even know if that's if that's a useful approach. Okay, so I'm gonna share my screen here if you're listening on Apple podcaster something like that or you're just not watching Then well, we'll put the links so that you can check these out separately or you can find them in Rob's sub stack Um, and we'll just play the first 10 seconds of the turbo pump commercial Oh, that heavy gas can it never works for filling because it's always filling not anymore Introducing turbo pump the automatic cordless powered liquid transfer pump watch just Okay, Rob 10 10 seconds in what's your analysis on this? Yeah, so 10 seconds in so what The question here they're there They didn't have to do this they started from zero Why did they start where they started and why did they say the exact words they said in the exact sequence they said them right This is this is the like zero to one problem for how do you how do you go zero to one and somebody's mind they start with The oh this heavy gas can it never works for filling because it's always spilling It's just you Poetry in motion But the the interesting thing here is you might look like what is that what exactly is that you might hear that and say oh That sounds like a problem or that sounds like a pain point, but that's not what it is That is pull they are very concisely first five seconds articulating pull which is like a pain pull would be a gas cans hurt your back because they're heavy, right? This, that, okay, that's an interesting fact. It's probably true, but that has no motion in it. So what we're hearing here is like the project on the to-do list, and when it's unavoidable, urgent, plus why the existing option isn't good enough. So what am I trying to accomplish? Well, I'm trying to fill something with a gas can, right? In this case, in the visual, it's a lawn mower. But I'm trying to fill it because, I don't know, it needs gas or whatever. And my existing supply, which is just like lifting and pouring the my existing gas can, that is not good enough because it's heavy and it spills everywhere, right? We get that in the first five seconds. That pull frames the entire rest of the commercial. That sets the context because what happens next is they describe their supply. They describe the turbo pump. It is a thing that fits that it, it, you know, they say it's introducing turbo pump, the automatic cordless powered liquid transfer pump. What that does there is it says, okay, here is Poli. You're trying to accomplish this thing, but your existing option isn't good enough. We offer this supply that fits that demand. The words they choose there, it's like seven words or whatever, we tend words. They describe what the product is. It's called the turbo pump. It is a liquid transfer pump that is automatic, cordless and powered. AKA it, it fits Poli. It helps you transfer liquid without the limitations of your existing supply. If they had just started without framing Poli at the beginning, without just those first five seconds on Poli, and they had just said, revolution in liquid transfer pumps is here. You're going to be like, wait, what? What it like, I can't even, I can't even process this. Like, is this for, like, where is it for? Why would I use it? And that's how most startups pitches will start, right? Like, oh, it's the new era of AI agencies here. Whoa, what, what does that mean? And so starting with Poli and then describing supply, very briefly, kind of like fits these two together perfectly, and makes it so that you go zero to one in your mind in those first ten seconds. Yeah. I find I'm glad you hit on that. That's that second part on this is the equivalent of doing that in. For our listener who's pitching, pitching, you know, their customers, if you reflect on your sales pitch, and I found myself doing this, it's like, okay, where? We've iterated on it to a certain extent, but the way that this looked for me was start with, okay, and previously this product did not exist or like, English speaking fan in my case, it was English speaking families of access to the type of media and Spanish speaking families don't. Like, I started out with the Y on educational impact, rather than, I mean, we've totally flipped it, but rather than like, here is, okay, the, in my case, reaching 300,000, or 300,000 unique downloads, reaching, you know, followed by 200,000 families like getting your brand in front of them. Like, it's, you're trying to do this thing that's pull related rather than the technical background. In my case, it's not technical, but it's like, it's about the product, it's about the Y, it's about the impact, which is totally flipped. Yep, totally. Yeah. So it's, yeah. You can say things that like, at this day, at the beginning, you can say things that are interesting to them, that are facts, but unless it's like about their pull, they're not going to do anything about it. It's, it's just information that's hitting them that's not going to kind of like fit the action, the progress they're trying to make in their lives. They'll say, oh, that's really cool that there is this place in the market that is underserved. Congratulations to you and they're going to get back to their jobs. They're going to get back to their day. Yeah. Why don't we jump forward to how they describe the technology. And we can talk about some of the other stuff that's, that's going on. Here, we're going to jump up to its second 30, right? Yeah. I've watched this like 50 times. All right. Easily and fast. The secret is the turbo siphon technology that pumps almost any liquid right down to the last drop. And look, turbo pumpkin drain over a gown. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so here, I found this observation really interesting and technical founders before you are, before you listen to Rob's analysis on this, think about the way that you describe your product and the technical elements of it. Now Rob, get that, you know, what are you observing from the turbo pump? Yeah. So like, how does the turbo siphon technology work? Do we know? Do we know the nuances of it? No, we have no idea. We have literally no clue. All we understand is that it makes sure that it's some sort of unique technology that makes sure it pumps all the liquid out. Yeah. That's literally like there's a there's an image of like a little spinny turbine. And it's like, do I have any idea? Like I don't even know if that thing is in there. Like I've literally, I don't know if maybe that's decorative. It's like they they spend zero seconds talking about it. And the contrast here is that we usually like I think of it as kind of like pull down versus like product up. And the way that we use or technology up even what we're watching here with the information is a pull down way of describing which starts with pull and only describes what is relevant to pull working its way down to the technology but just like tickling the technology not really actually talking about it and only talking about it in terms of how it refers to pull how it fits pull. In contrast, the way that we typically do it is we're like listen, we have this unique multi agent architecture that we've developed in conjunction with that it has actually done it right and it and what we're doing there is we're starting with the technology and explaining the technology in it's kind of like from from the technology's perspective in a complete way. And then trying to work our way up to the customer. And what that does in practice is it confuses them. It is in when we go with a kind of pull down way of describing our product. We're only describing the things that fit their pull the relevant pieces to what they are trying to accomplish and why their existing options are not good enough when we do the technology up we are describing everything about our technology or what we think is interesting or what we think is complete about our technology. Which doesn't fit their pull by default it's just about the technology and so the thing this does for customers is it causes them to think they need to understand all of this and it's a lot of concepts for them to understand and a lot of dots for them to connect to make it to something that is relevant to them. And so most of these concepts are not helpful for them. I don't need to know if turbo siphon technology is literally a siphon. I don't need to know what a siphon is. I don't even know like as I say these words out loud. I probably couldn't define a siphon to you at this moment. Probably all this is going to be embarrassing. I probably can't define a turbine versus a siphon siphon and understand the difference between those but that isn't irrelevant that doesn't matter. I don't need to understand those things all I need to understand is that this has some unique way of making sure that I can transfer liquids in a way that won't spill or be too heavy. And these are all the like these are the relevant mechanics of that to me to understand. I don't need to understand anything else. There's two quick reactions one is that it doesn't mean that never in the sales process are you ever going to talk about the technology. Like they're they're made come a point where in order to get past procurement or something like that you know for security it may I imagine it may be. come up that they, but in that case, they are asking you to get into, you know, to pull back the curtain and to show it to the people that it is most relevant for what, you know, who are probably on the IT or, or, you know, security side of things or something. Yeah. Yeah, maybe, right? And what I'd say is that happens less than you might guess. And then, you know, one other quick reaction, you're, you're storing the way you talk to it makes me think of your first startup where, which you were running out of Google sheets. And like it, you addressed demand with, you know, early, you identified demand and pull without, without a technical product. And so if you would have, if you would have been like, here's how it works, you know, like they just, it was irrelevant. Like it, nothing about the solution or very little about the solution was about the technical part of it, but that didn't make it a less valuable product for the, for the customer. Yeah. Exactly. So what they cared about was that they got new candidates to hire or that they found out when an employee was about to quit. That's what they cared about. That was the project on there to do list. And they didn't care if I had a part of trained one bats who were in the background, phone calling all their employees to see how they're doing today. Like they didn't care. They didn't care if it was me and a spreadsheet, they didn't care if it was an automated agent, they did it. Right. Like that wasn't the thing that mattered to them. They all they cared was that it was as little work for them as humanly possible and they got the result. And so I would actually like go into calls, sales calls, not demoing anything because I didn't have anything to demo and apologizing for not having a product that they could log into until someone was like, and this kind of, this beat this lesson into me, one of the restaurant owners was like, listen, I don't care. I don't want to have to log into anything. I don't want to have to learn a new system. And I was like, oh, light bulb clicked for me. Then this is kind of the process of realizing what demand is and what kind of going from pull down is. It's a, it's a lens of seeing the world. We then started just saying, hey, you know, one of the best parts of this product is you don't have to learn a new product. You don't have to learn a new software. And people were like, oh, my God, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Yeah, that's fascinating. I think I still probably have the how it works too early. I was getting that, I was getting that question, like, okay, what does it mean to produce with y'all? What's the process? And so I pulled it forward, but I actually think I'd probably pulled it forward too early. I should just allow that when it is a question to come up naturally, you know, farther in the call, if it's relevant to them at that one time, otherwise, you know, you actually, reflecting on it inadvertently, I'm introducing questions around like, okay, who are the guys going to be? How are, you know, what are the topics that, what's the sequencing of this that we don't actually need to get into until we are much further along in the, you know, purchase process? Yeah, what are we, what we're doing here in the, the first part of us where we're saying, here's your demand, here's our supply. In the fewest words and concepts possible with supply kind of like designed to fit their demand. What we're doing is we're saying, like, does this concept fit your poll? If it doesn't fit their poll, the rest, like, nothing else is going to change that, like, nothing downstream that they're going to see is going to be relevant. So we have to, that's why these start with poll and then supply description and then kind of like a how it fits piece that we didn't quite go into where they're in the terminal pump commercial, they, they show, right, like, here's how you transfer liquid from this thing to this thing. And it's like a six second or seven second piece that comes right after the description of supply. And what this is doing is it's going from poll down, it says, okay, here's your poll. Here's the supply concept. Here's what it is. Here's how it fits your poll. Here's, here's how it actually kind of, you, I could say like how it works, but I like how it fits your poll better because how it works, we could come to that from the supply side and just say, you know, oh, well, here's all the different components of it. And here's how you put them together and like that's not the right thing here. It's just here's how this thing enables you to accomplish your, your project, unlike the, the, the, to overcome the limitations of the other options, right? And it's just, it's that. And at that point, basically 16 seconds in, 10 seconds in, you like, you've got five seconds in, you know, you, you're at that context moment where it's like, yep, okay, I know where this thing is going to fit into my life. And I think, right, like, I think it might fit into my life. Yeah. At 10 seconds in, you're like, okay, cool. I know what the thing is roughly. I have a sense of what it is. 16 seconds in, you are basically like, okay, cool. I know where it fits into my life and exactly how it fits into my life. And 17 seconds in your, your phone in the operator. No, it's actually a fairly good litmus test. Like how long does it take you to get to that light bulb moment or when do you think you hit that? And if it's 30 minutes, it's, you know, you're, it's far too long. Yeah. Again, we're just coming back to this. The more concepts you introduce for them to understand, the less likely they are going to be to understand it and buy it. The arc here is in compressing the information only to what matters. And what matters is their pull and the thing that fits it. Yeah. Rob, are there before we move on into maybe breathe easy? What is similar and what is different? Like what do what do founders take away from like in a, this is a, for example, and this is an infomercial, it's a one way thing. Yes. Like you can't interact with the info, it's just going to play another is like it's a, you know, pre program. It's, you know, you're, there's a visual day entire time. What, what is the same that we take away from this and what is different from, you know, what founders should take away from, like their approach to sales? Yeah. So the same is the sequence of things. There is a sequence of things that help customers go from not understanding what they need to understand or understanding anything to understanding what our product is and how it fits in their life and when, what, what they would do with it and if they wanted or not, right? Like if it fits as a concept, right? And the principle here is the sequence of things. Pull, supply, how it fits is basically mandatory. The second piece is that we are compressing the amount of information to only what they need to know, not too little because then right like they, they won't understand it, not too much because then they definitely won't understand it and more info, we tend to think more information is better. It isn't. That's the right amount of information given the context of their pull here. And so though that's what's the same. What's different is one, you should not be rhyming in your sales calls. That's just, that's just weird. Two, and if you do, please leave a comment and let us know what your rhyme is. Like if there's lemma eggs or something like that, we would love the examples. Yeah, I love it. Do a do a poem or a lemma or in the, you know, with pull and your product. And, yeah, we will read that out and lose our last subscriber. I was doing that first and last. First and last. So what's actually different is this is treated as a presentation, right? It is a, I am beaming this information to you just because I can't have this conversation with you. And so which you'll see throughout the rest of, so basically the first 16 seconds of this two-minute and commercial cover everything you need to know. The rest is just randomly trying to overcome objections you might have or probably have. And also giving you additional use cases for the turbo pump that you might not have considered. And then like showing additional features. And then, and then trying to create urgency, trying to create enough interest by putting an offer in front of you that you can't refuse. And like these, you know, it's like the kind of classic. But wait, there's more by now and you get a second turbo pump. It's like, yes, seven seven turbo pumps in my house. One for the milk and my cereal bowl. It's an interesting point on the one way. Like what you would do, what they're doing by introducing these other, you know, use cases or other instances of potential pull is like early on what they would do if this were a conversation is, you know, identify that pull. Like what are you trying to accomplish? And then you wouldn't have to hit all all these other-- because you already know what the person is trying to accomplish, whether it's, you know, they work on their car a lot, or they're, I think, you know, some of the examples are like they're trying to clean a fish tank. Like, there are these other things that you would know based on our outbound and based on like the first three questions that you ask in discovery. Yeah, and like, what you might do in this, right, yeah, they have the fish tank, they have clogged the drains, they have a boat, they're just swinging here. And they're just like, listen, something here, I'm going to get you on something here. But, but like what you would, what you might do in a sales call is like, show a slide up front that's like, hey, like I might have a boat on it. Might have a, like, what, what are you transferring? Like, what, what are you like pouring liquid? What are you doing? Dedded it like, what, which, which of these scenarios? Okay. And then, you know, how was the experience of your existing gas can like pouring that? Is it heavy and spills a lot? Okay, cool. Then we've got kind of pull there. Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to go ahead and jump into the breatheasy humidifier? Well, actually, like, I think people can just watch that themselves. I think the difference there is only in the, the kind of like, how they describe pull. Or sorry, sorry, how they, how they describe how their product fits pull. So basically in the breatheasy humidifier commercial, turbo pump is kind of a new thing. Right? Like, I didn't know, I don't know what a liquid transfer pump is before. And after I do. And so the way they describe, here's how it fits your pull is they actually show the mechanics of using the product. Like, you know, here's, here's how you transfer liquids with this. With the breatheasy humidifier, it's just another, it's a great one. What, what they're basically saying is like, you already have an existing humidifier. This is just replacing your existing humidifier. They don't actually have to teach you how to use a humidifier. They don't have to show you how to use a humidifier there because you've already got one based on the way that they've. So we are just swapping out one humidifier for another. What's the case they have to make? They just have to say basically, here's here are the pieces of this that are better than your existing humidifier that overcome the limitations that you're already running into. In your existing humidifier. And so they just talk about like, see it's unlike your existing humidifier. This one's actually easy to clean, unlike your existing humidifier. And like, and so they're not actually showing like, here's how you turn a humidifier on because that's not relevant. That's not pulled down that is product or technology up. Yeah, this one you could imagine them having developed the product after asking buyers like what supplier do you hate with the supplier being like a household appliance. And then like this is targeted squarely at like the options that you know they've looked at it or what they're using right now they're totally dissatisfied with and they have no idea that there's another way that's better than this. And so it's, you know, there's a slightly different entry point there. I think the creative thing they do too, which I'll just call out is like one of the parts of poll is say, okay, right, like here's why existing options are not good enough. And here's what we are and and it basically creating the contrast between your existing options and us. But it's like, hey, you already have a humidifier. We are a humidifier. How do you do that? How do you create that contrast and the way that they do that and I've seen other like start up to do this well is saying, yeah, these are like legacy outdated humidifiers. These are old models and we are a next generation humidifier right and what that does is that allows the buyer in their mind to create two separate categories for these things that in their mind just a second ago, we're one category. How do you, how does that type of pull, like the, sometimes it's like, you know, we talk about, all right, this is next next, then what AI, you know, I applied like when does it, when does it work to use that language and when does it not work to use that language. I think it's basically when the options they currently consider include something like what you are or that is basically the same kind of thing that you are. So another example of this is jump for AI note taker like an I know takeer for financial advisors. What they did in their pitch was be like there are a bunch of other AI note takers that were around before jump was so what they had to and their financial advisor customers had considered or tried the existing AI note takers on the market. They just weren't a fit for them for certain reasons. And so jump could have said yet we're a better we're a different a better AI note taker which puts us all in the same grouping. And the buyer doesn't understand that they're like I've tried note takers before your tell me you're better or you're just a better note. No, they have to create the contrast there by saying all of these other note takers are generic note takers. We are an AI note taker that is specific to financial advisors. And so they've created this where it was kind of like all lumped in together in the buyer's mind as a thing that didn't fit what they needed. We've kind of we've separated it out. We've done a cell division on this thing that was once one thing but now we've said, oh actually it's actually two things. And the category of things you've already tried. Yes, obviously we're going to call that a sort we're going to give that a name. We're going to give ourselves a different name that seems like it fits what you are looking for. And I think that's interesting maybe would be super interesting in the future maybe at some point to get into differentiating supply and how you communicate around that in greater detail. How about for the for the infomercials what what are the takeaways like what should our listener like go and do as a result of this. Yes, the question is as you watch your own sales calls or as you're on these sales calls, what is the minimum that you can show and tell to convey to the person on the other end that you fit their poll. That's the question here. And how do you do it from their perspective, which is basically my my poll, the thing I'm trying to accomplish, but my existing options I am coping with or blocked by right that's from there, what are the fewest concepts that I can say. And so what you should be doing is looking at your sales calls and realizing that probably 85% 90% plus of the words you say post discovery or shooting yourself in the foot. They're confusing the potential customer and in fact in most of these cases what they are doing is they are convincing somebody who has pull that they should not buy from you. I've seen that where it's like a two minute description that is not fitting poll and the potential customer who shows up saying seems like you're the exact fit we tried this other thing it wasn't good enough. Two minute founder description person at the end of that says. Well, that okay, that makes sense. Maybe this isn't for us right now right and so it functionally dissuades them from by. And I say, okay, what's the what is the least amount of words and concepts that I can say based on their poll and the least number of things I can show based on their poll so that they get that this fits their poll. That's the activity. It is a hard activity to do because by default you're going to approach this from the supply side. So you're going to focus technology up what you want to be true up the art is saying who's who has pull right now. And using that assuming that that is fixed you can't mess with that and then just say, okay, based on that what do I say is what all these kinds of like people who do kind of like on the marketing side of things they always come at it from the supply side. And that's why this stuff is that's why we spend so much time on our websites and like that because we're coming at it from the supply side versus from the demand side. Yeah, that's super interesting. And actually, you know, that's a pretty good case for why it's helpful to get another founder to watch your stuff because you. If you're building product you're you spend so much time speaking firsthand since so much time thinking about your product that it's hard to get your brain out of that mode. And you know for in my case like it's super helpful to have you look at my stuff because you're like hey, Robert you're saying all this like nonsense that nobody cares about like this is the thing that they need you to say. And so getting another perspective can be a really helpful way to do that. Yeah, the demand side is like the cool thing about demand is that it's just a claim about objective reality. The buyers objective reality, which is an. And so it often helps to have somebody who just like, who doesn't care that much, like who's who's not. It doesn't care as much as you. Look at what a buyer is saying. And so, okay, are they actually trying to accomplish something and they are blocked? Or are we like trying to convince them that they should want to accomplish something in our block, right? Like there's a subtle difference there, but demand is a statement about objective reality. Not what we want to be true. And we can see it by watching how, what customers talk about in sales schools. Love it, love it. Rob, anything else to add before we wrap today? Nothing, we need to go curl up in a ball. Yeah, gets a feeling better. If anybody wants to work with Rob, when he's healthy, we'll leave the notes or leave the links in the show notes. One of the things Rob does is, he'll watch a couple of your calls in over a month or over a three month period. Help kind of do that diagnostic on like where's demand and stuff like that. So if it sounds like an extra set of eyes would be helpful, that's something that he does. If I survive the sickness. Yeah, that's right. Time may be limited. Supply is limited based on Rob's immune systems ability to fight this off. Awesome. All right, we'll catch everybody next week.