Let's dive deep.
How do you do a full life cycle use case?
Full life cycle use case starts with the pre-acquisition.
How do they know they have a problem?
And will they acknowledge that problem, and then
will they look for solutions for that problem?
That's very, very important, because the best product
doesn't always win, it's the best product
that the customer knows about.
So then we get to the pre-acquisition.
The acquisition is they get the product, they use it,
they get some value.
Then the post-acquisition is OK now how do they pay for it?
How do they buy more?
How do they tell other people about it?
So we're trying to get this full loop going
in here on the full life cycle, because that's
what's going to generate a great business.
We want to get into that virtuous cycle,
because remember with our target customers,
they have a similar product.
It's a similar sales cycle and they have word of mouth.
We want to recognize the importance of word of mouth
and we want to accelerate that, we
want to promote that amongst our customers.
And that's why a full life cycle use case with those three parts
are so important.
Pre-acquisition, use, and then post-acquisition.
So the goal, once you've produced your full life cycle
use case you then go and take it to your persona?
Yes. Absolutely.
You don't do this life cycle by yourself sitting in a room.
You might think a first draft of it,
you might not even make a first draft.
You might just go ask those fundamental questions
to your persona and then you iterate with your persona
as much as possible.
That will be your first draft of the use case.
And then you're going to go and ask other people
to make sure that that's not a one off.
I'd like to anticipate a problem that
might happen in this process.
By this time, you will have developed a relationship
with your persona.
Presumably the persona likes you, it is mutual,
and the persona begins to develop a commitment bias.
Yes, I mean one of worst people you could go out
to get primary market research is your parents because they're
not going to give you honest feedback,
they're too emotionally connected to you.
On the other hand, you can't go out and ask someone
off the street because they're not
going to be honest with you.
So there's this balance in your persona
when you're getting feedback on the full life cycle use case,
or other things.
You want them to be objective, but you
want them to be open and honest with you.
And sometimes a persona will be good for a set period of time
and then they might not be good because they become
more emotionally attached to you.
What should you do if you present your full life cycle
use case to your persona and the persona reacts negatively?
If the persona just agrees with everything
you say, then I would worry about
whether you're getting good feedback because you're not
going get it right the first time.
So the persona gives you negative feedback,
then you must listen to that.
In the search for truth, consistency
must come in second.
You can't be too prideful about what it is that you've done.
We're in inquiry mode.
That's very, very important.
The final arbiter of what's correct and what's not
is the customer.
You teach about full life cycle use
case in the campus version of--
Yes.
--this course.
I took the course, loved it, that's why I'm here.
And I wonder what are the common pitfalls that you
see among students who carry out their full life cycle use case?
The biggest problem is that pre-acquisition stage,
that's where people fall down.
They don't realize that you have to get the attention of the end
user.
The biggest competitor that you face as an entrepreneur
is the do-nothing option.
That is, they don't do anything because people generally
don't like to change.
So you have to get out there and find out
how can we activate our end user to want to buy a product
and then make that product be our product.
The second part is they forget the back end of it.
Now the question is how do they pay you for it,
it's very important to know.
Do they pay me right away?
Do I get paid later?
Do I get paid through somebody else?
Because if you don't have that cash flow and the cash flow
is 60 days later than you thought,
that can be very, very dangerous for a startup.
It can be fatal, in fact.
And then the question is stay with it.
As you say in sports, run through the tape.
Once they've used it and they're happy,
then figure out how they're going to buy more.
And then how they're going to tell
other people about your product.
Because the best customer, the cheapest customer for you,
is the customer you already have.
If you can sell them more systems, or more
software, more features, whatever it is,
that's the best customer for you.
And if you could make them very happy
and they tell seven other people, 10 other people,
those are the best leads you can get.
Because your best salesperson is not someone that you hire,
your best salesperson is a happy customer
that will tell other people about it.
Bill, as an entrepreneur you are often
blazing completely new trails so you can't really
compare yourself to others.
At the same time, how do you know
that you've done a good job on your full life cycle use case?
Well you've got to do the best you can
and if you've completed the step, you've done a good job.
You can't worry whether you've got it all right the first time
because I've seen this done hundreds of time, thousands
of time, and it's never right the first time.
But what you do is you get started in the journey,
you start with the best possible use
case you can working with your persona.
But much like your persona and your product,
it's an iterative process that will get better over time.
Look, we just figured out who our customer is, now
we're starting to work on why our customer's going to get it.
And so in this case, it's just important we
do a first pass at this and get started.
We'll get better over time.
As Amelia Earhart said, "The hardest part is getting
started.
After that, it's just perseverance."