Jake Hower from FuzedApp joins us today to tell his interesting story of how he went from a travel agency to a software company. Â He shares a few insights he’s learned along the way from these two drastically different businesses.
One big difference is the high amount of personal touch with customers in the travel industry and Jake details how he’s replicated that with two separate tactics in his software company.
Jake also tells us how he’s been able to get on stage at high profile events despite the fact that he’s still very new to the space.
Getting on Stage
OK! It’s two side of story. Getting on stage is really just getting in front of the people who are holding events. That was a necessity in some instances. It was out of necessity to really build a strong relationship. I think one of the things we’ve used is that, it’s really valuable to top 5% of the InfusionSoft user based. That top 5% are the influences. They are the super users. It’s a fit of these guys naturally talking about Fuzed and how amazing it is. As a result, Fuzed seem as sort of like really sexy product. The reality is that it’s useful for that top 5%. It gets everybody because they’re such community influence. Everybody in the community talking about it. That’s how I guess, one of the reasons for being on stage. It’s just really enhanced. Once I knew they’re going over there, I think there is some strategy that comes in to making sure to get the maximum value add of the ages but also out of the stage. What I generally what I’m trying to get people talking about a product or influences talking about a product is again, I’ll sit down and understand who I think needs to be talking. If there’s no direct relationship then I’ll target the influences. Just the people which maybe a little bit easier for me to actually build a relationship with. Again it’s still a long term process but over time, more people start talking about me or a product that I’m selling around that circles. It’s like a wide numbers I approach them or we run into each other then it’s really easy conversation for us to have because we know each other.
Free “Credit Card’ Trial
Not really. We have a free 7 day free credit card trial. One of the main reasons, it’s almost like a paid barrier to entry. That has affected different people that has sign up the product. In the early days, we’re a small company. We’re 4 or 5 people in the company. We don’t have a dedicated support person. I think free layer really increases the demand of support we have to offer. Putting that paid barrier, that’s how we’re able to focus on paid users and not to worry about supporting freebies which might be turning to paid users. We just don’t have the infrastructures at this point to able to support a layer for users.
Hand Written Letters and Personal Videos
Yes, we have hand written cards. We’d sit down and everyone who signed up and send them a little note saying “thanks for signing up. Looking forward to having you onboard. If you have any questions, you know where to reach us.” It’s added layer, something that’s out of the norm but actually help. They’re likelihood of converting from a trial to a paid customer. That was working quite a while. Now, with videos. We’ve got a system that allows me to shoot with this webcam here and just record a quick 30 seconds message and send them through the new user relatively quickly. That’s what I’m using now. I try to get as many of our customers as possible. That seems to work quite well. 5 minutes to write a card, take 30 seconds to record a quick video and another 30 seconds to send to them.
