Those who draw on the pies can only be willing to share the same.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Notesman” (ID: Notesman ), author Tang Xingtong.
Content Source: On October 23, 2019, at the conference “Let Innovation Be Controlled and New Products Are Popular” sponsored by Yingchuang College, Tang Xingtong, the innovative change consultant, conducted the theme of “Seed User Methodology”. Wonderful sharing. As a partner, Note Man is reviewed and authorized by the organizer and speaker.
Before you invite me to read, think about it:
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What are the characteristics of a seed user customer?
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What is the value of seed user thinking?
Hello everyone, today I want to talk to you about my new book, Seed User Methodology. I firmly believe that the thinking and methodology in this book can still be instructive after 50 years.
The initial intention of writing “Seed User Methodology” originated from six years ago, when I was teaching in Tsinghua, I found that many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs have such questions:
Our product guarantees will be very good after commercialization, but how can you connect your innovative products to seed users effectively? Or, how can I get the first wave of users?
So I thought, maybe I can combine the experience of doing Internet products, operations, and market work many years ago to help you solve this problem.
In the past six years, I have contacted a group of CEOs who have passed the A and B rounds from the Angel Wheel. They also have similar questions: How can they go from 0 to 1? Where do seed users come from? How can we achieve low cost and high efficiency?
In the past six years, I have been thinking about this problem every day, and studying and studying at the same time, so I have this “Seed User Methodology.” Next, I will share my research experience.
First, the seed user methodology, solve the problem from 0 to 1
Many people will mistakenly think thatThe sub-user methodology is only a response to Internet products, or the digital transformation of traditional enterprises, or the second curve of life; in fact, the seed user methodology is a thinking model that accompanies your life.
Every time you want to drive change, whether it’s new ideas, new products, new projects, or a new transformation of the company, you need to think about how you can effectively use seed user thinking to solve problems.
At the same time, today we are faced with such environmental characteristics: first, chaos; second, uncertain; third, the life cycle of products is getting shorter and shorter. These all require seed user thinking to guide.
Seed user thinking, all disciplines and fields will be involved. For example, if you are the director of a provincial education department and want to implement education reform in the era of artificial intelligence, how would you choose a pilot kindergarten? Many people will choose the top ten kindergartens in the province, or the kindergartens with the best feelings.
This is a wrong choice. Because when promoting transformation and change, although the above two types of people really get along well, they don’t necessarily embrace innovation, and they don’t necessarily take your innovative ideas seriously, and even cooperate with you.
If they are dealing with many of your innovative ideas, new products, and new ideas, then they will not use their energy to make more innovations and advance your reform goals.
Includes a lot of friends who are doing Internet products, and how to do B2B solutions that are bothering the era of artificial intelligence. They used to look for the heads of various industries, one by one, and the seed user’s thinking is to find seed user customers who embrace new technologies in each industry. The typical characteristics of these customers are to actively embrace new things and lead the trend. First.
There is no need to find 100 people. It is necessary to spend 100 people visiting the seed users in the B2B industry, so that you don’t have to be like pepper, but more focused. Then, make your plan a benchmark.
Second, why should you be a “manager”?
Be smart to push the same thing, not monotonously changing from the current A to B. Things that change the world start from the edge and inconspicuous places.
A person, or a company, how to treat and treat change determines its future destiny.
Seed user thinking sees human nature – away from risk.
Assuming you stay in one place or stay in the same group as you, using the same knowledge and methods as you do, doing things—including digital transformation, opening a store, innovating products, etc.—will make us feel very safe.
But when you want to drive innovation, people around you will use social language to seduce, refuse to swear, or deliberately say “I will wait and see.”
However, those who truly advance human and social progress are always strange.Different and more stubborn people. Just like the fashions that are popular today, they are mostly played by non-mainstream people – the new product and the popular rules are so simple.
When driving innovation, everyone feels risky and uncertain. At this time, you should spend your energy and time on the seed users and grow the nodes with the seed users.
I especially like these three words – the bureaucrats.
Your upstream and downstream partners, your brothers, your users, their habitual impulses are all refusing to change; but you have a dream, you want to promote innovation, you have to become a “manager.”
If you can’t do this, you can only live in the rules of others, follow the thoughts of those who refuse to change, and accept what they do for you.
Similarly, there are also a group of people who have different ways of coping with risks and innovations in your target customers.
——The word risk has its objectivity and its subjectivity: there are some objective risks that we can analyze through algorithms, but there are still some risks, called “subjective perceived risk”.
Different personality, the perceived risk of innovation and new products is not the same. So how do you find the seed user? From the perspective of an innovation promoter or a bureaucrat, the answer is simple:
In the crowd, find people who are perceived to be weak and agree with your new product’s mission and vision. In the early stages, let them connect effectively with your product.
After connecting this energy, when everyone sees your new product, I think in my head: Do I accept this new product? At this time, their thinking has two words – perceived risk, or perceived benefit.
Mr. Drucker said: Entrepreneurs don’t like risk, they see future benefits, but entrepreneurs can manage and manage the perceived risks.
In other words, entrepreneurs have a vision, can see and recognize the value of products, and can assess risks. But most people are amplifying the risk and narrowing the income.
I also found in the research that the difference between seed users and mainstream users is more reflected in personality differences.
A person’s personality is his worldview and it is difficult to change. So, if you want to lead the trend, find someone who can give you strength and are willing to follow you to promote innovation as a seed user, they give you a sense of control.
In the early days of innovation, I found 100 people, and more than 90 people are giving you pressure. Can you still agree? You can still stick to your own independenceIs there an opinion? Can you still doubt life? Those who lack the mind of the seed user often give up.
Three, the logic of the seed user methodology
The essential issue for seed users is:
A person who is a bureaucrat, or a person who has the heart to change the world, how to effectively screen out the people who match your new product at different stages according to the objective laws of things and risks. It works with us to effectively manage risk, manage risk and manage risk?
Seed users are the quality soil for us to advance new things. When a group of mainstream users are still hindering the perception of new products, the seed users have given you warmth and care.
It is this power that leads you like a beam of light, giving the initial team and core products great confidence support; but if you don’t have a seed user thinking, then the team will be anxious.
In the seed user methodology, there are three issues that need to be addressed, as follows:
First, how do you identify seed users?
To find out who is the seed user of your new product among the 7 billion people.
Second, after identifying seed users, how to connect and condense them from 7 billion people in a more efficient way?
If you send them a message about your new product, then the user probably won’t have time to understand. In this day and age, you need to pass it on to your seed users in a more efficient way and unite them.
Third, after you have condensed the seed users, after you have polished your business model, product value, and market, can you create a “social infection”?
Social contagion, which is to create scenes for seed users, let them spread to affect more people.
The above three points are the logic of the entire seed user methodology. The logic of the seed user methodology can be applied to various fields and various things.
For example, Ping An Group has more than 30,000 financial account managers, but their business capabilities are offline, digital capabilities are weak, and many Internet tools are not used to open up new customers and maintain old customers. Decided to promote digital transformation.
The digital transformation of the organization, implemented to the end, is actually the transformation of employee capabilities. However, the vast number of account managers don’t understand, and feel that they have to do everything. They think that they are also very good at visiting customers every day, so they don’t cooperate.
So I helped to do peace.One project is to screen a part of the seed-type employees from within the whole organization, give priority to this group of people to pass new ideas, let them embrace change, train and empower them, let them go back and infect their colleagues in the branch, and finally lead The entire organization has completed a digital transformation. This is a question of resources and input and output.
The seed user’s thinking model, you will use it in your life, and the number of times you use it will increase. As long as you encounter change, encounter change, and encounter someone blocking you, you can use it.
Fourth, seed user thinking practice
1. 4 portraits of seed users
Portrait 1 has a certain industry base
To push a new product to a user, first make sure that the other party has a certain industry base.
For example, Jinshan Games has made a shooting game and found that the cost of obtaining customers is very high.
I will guide them. The first action of the seed user portrait should be to find the relevant people who have played the shooting game first, because it can reduce communication costs and transaction costs.
Portrait 2 has clear or potential needs
You want to unite others to make innovative products, provided that the other party has a clear need, accepting the mission you advocate, the core value of the product, or potential needs.
If you can’t meet these two points, the other party is definitely not a seed user.
Portrait 3 Actively try new things
In a particular field, the group that actively embraces change, is willing to try new things, and is adventurous is the soul of the seed user.
In people who come and go, judging whether this person is brave enough to innovate and embrace new things, the core method is to see how he matches the vertical direction of your product.
Portrait 4 has strong communication power
To meet the above conditions, if the user is still KOL and has strong communication power, then you should stay with this person every day.
2. How do I find a seed user?
When I was a coach, I found that after I told the students about the established product concept model, the students felt that the seed user portrait was very easy to draw, but when it was their turn to do the project, the students found that they could not find the seed user.
Next, let’s look at the case and answer the question of how to find the seed user.
Case 1 Recruit seed workers
If you want to lead a group of members to sail to the South Pole, how to recruit people, to ensure that they believe in you, and will not retreat halfway?
If you use traditional methods to convince others, you will fail. For example, there is a person named Ainister Shackleton who uses content marketing to sell values and writes in the copy:
WeI want to find a group of people to go to the South Pole. The salary is not high. The road is very dangerous. In all likelihood, I will die on the road. However, once things are done, it is a rare miracle in human history.
After such a copy was sent out, it was all those who had enough to eat and have nothing to do, or strange people. In the short term, or when the funds are sufficient, they will not leave, but in difficult times, they will leave you.
The team I saw in entrepreneurship counseling, eight of the ten companies are like this, because they don’t use the seed user thinking, so they lack the initial heart and vision.
People who draw by pies, whether you are relatives, friends or classmates, are not trying to work hard and challenge you with you from the beginning, they just want to share the benefits with you. Therefore, in the face of difficulties, such a team will inevitably have to disband.
Case 2 Sell 5G
If you are the leader of a certain prefecture-level city in China, from 1G to 3G, 3G to 4G, 4G to 5G, how do you effectively promote your services to users?
If you can’t use the seed user’s thinking to accurately image the user, then you may pull banners on each bus, promote promotions, new products, and finally have little effect, physically and mentally.
When ordinary people think that mobile Internet is very expensive, you and the people say that mobile Internet is not expensive, and want to change 90% of people’s deep-rooted ideas, this is asking for trouble. In a short time, you can’t change the fear of risk and new things at the bottom of human nature.
All you need to do is find the seed user. Remember, don’t differentiate by occupation or age, there are a small number of your seed users in the elderly, and most of the young people are not your seed users.
For example, 3G is more expensive than 2G networks, so first you have to choose some places with economic foundation to engage in activities through the venue.
At the same time, the customers you want to develop must also be people with an economic base, and then through them for secondary transmission.
When I was a coach, I found that in this case, the most common mistake students made was to choose a user with a large amount of business and promote it.
For example, if a user has almost no traffic at 2G, and traffic increases at 3G, this only indicates that he may have traffic demand, which does not mean that he can lead the trend.
As ordinary users have a hard time getting rid of the habit of fearing new things, it is difficult for seed users to get rid of the habit of leading the trend and being innovative. So one of my suggestions is that from the user to the similar categoryIn the past, they pushed back whether they were seed users.
For example, the 3,000 people who originally had mobile phones in your city, the 3,000 people who first played Weibo, or the 3,000 people who took the initiative to participate in innovative product activities every time, these people are always leading the trend, playing with new products and new tricks. Habits are hard to change.
Case 3 skates
If the first pair of skates is airborne, how do you draw a portrait of the seed user? The key point is to detonate the trend and find the target users for the characteristics of the likes of sports.
But be careful, it’s painful to learn skates, and it’s not elegant. People who don’t like slippery, even if they are school flowers, you give money to ask them to try new skates. They often have high learning costs and refuse to endorse. Promoting new products, such people are certainly not seed users.
The only kind of person who is very elegant in slipping and who is not happy with money is the seed user.
You should find the latter, let them play on campus, and continue to figure out how to improve your skates to make new products.
Case 4 Electric Vehicle
If you want to sell an electric car and hope to find a seed user through mass communication, suddenly 50,000 people signed up, how quickly can you identify 100 seed users from 50,000 people?
Some people say who has money for it; some say that who has a column and who the fans are, is not correct.
There are a lot of fans, which seem to make electric cars increase exposure, but in reality he is just a greedy channel. Just like the current network red, you give him money and he uses your product, but he is not your seed user.
The real seed user is able to play tricks, is willing to experience it for himself, is widely publicized, will work with us to polish new products, and make products become popular people.
You can use the questionnaire. The questionnaire only needs 4-10 questions around four angles to remove most people. For example, the first question can be, is there a driver’s license? How many years have you been driving? Is there a demand? If even the basic requirements are not met, then it will not work.
More importantly, I found in my research that seed users have active information acquisition of innovative things.
So, if you ask “the acceleration time of an electric car from 0 to 100 kilometers, how many seconds is the industry standard?” If you can’t answer it, please leave.
Why? Because he did not take the initiative to obtain information on innovative things based on the industry, he proved that he does not have the criteria for seed users.
Investigating whether the other party has the ability to spread, you can use the WeChat screen capture, display the number of Weibo fans and other methods to filter, and finally effectively screen out the seed users from 50,000 people.
Case 5 Hybrid Rice
This case is typical. Suppose there is a hybrid rice product, its selling point is to increase 200 kg per mu, the disadvantage is that the next year needs to spend 8-12 yuan to buy seeds, how do you use the seed user thinking to promote in the village, as soon as possible to complete seed user screening, identification, persuasion and innovation diffusion?
If a village is pushed by a village, the village will not be infected, so you will be tired of vomiting blood. To do it with the seed user’s thinking, it is to give a handful of peasants a hundred pounds of rice according to the portrait of the seed user.
These people are often the first batch of behavioral farmers in the village to embrace the cultivation of new technology, the first batch of mechanical irrigation, the earliest batch of broadband, and the earliest batches of cable TV.
Under the premise of satisfying the seed user group, they also meet the conditions of opinion leaders and have a broader dissemination role. This is a quality seed user, such as a village chief, a village doctor or a rich model.
The first person in the village who planted hybrid rice, some people around him will hear that his harvest is a lot, so it will form a social infection, accelerate the penetration of innovative business, and let your products be promoted next year. .
3. How do I get a seed user?
The above case is just how to draw a portrait of the seed user. What’s more important is how to get the seed user to deny the problem. The most difficult thing is, what do you do when you don’t have the database and the perspective of God? This book is not as simple as imagined.
For example, in 2003, the offline business was particularly good, and the offline sellers opened the store in a short time. However, the difficulty lies in the need to install the network cable, buy a computer, and learn to use Wangwang. If you think about it simply, you may not be able to convince a merchant to open a store in Taobao, let alone let him try his best every day. .
If there is no seed user thinking, it is tantamount to moving a stone to Mount Everest. Taobao had several paths, such as:
In Yiwu Small Commodity Market, according to the portrait of the seed user, find out the first wave of people using the pos machine in the local area, the first wave of people who use the business concept of credit, the first wave of people who choose to shop on the phone, etc., and introduce them to them. Taobao’s new ideas and new tricks. In this way, Taobao took the node.
5. Summary
The system of seed user methodology is to first identify the seed user and then connect to them. I summed up in 5 sentences, read these 5 sentences, and I am familiar with the soul of the seed user thinking.
1. Seed user thinking is more about a different personality attitude towards risk
Seed user thinking, notWhen the new product starts, the product manager tells you something. You need a better explanation from psychology, behavioral psychology, the user’s three views and his past experiences.
Even if you do B2B, you can think from this perspective, which reflects a relatively stable personality.
2. Seed users and mainstream users, the innovation perspective and content selling point are different
Seed users like to hear novelty, the future and the selling points that can change the world, and more about mission and vision. The most important thing in the early days was the impact of concept marketing and product traits on seed users.
For the waiters who ride the wall, we must give a good service; for those who do not accept new products, we must talk about brand service. The content you want to deliver is different at different stages of product launch.
3. The difference between seed users and mainstream users is that they have different interval patterns from knowing innovative products to behavioral decisions
For example, more than 99% of the students in my class know the blockchain, but there are no more than five people with digital currency. In the entire procurement model, seed users are at the intersection of innovators and early adopters.
At the same time, after learning about innovative products, seed users and early users may use it immediately, but other users may not hear it after a long time.
The interval between the seed user and the behavioral decision is relatively short, which is the node that sees the new market.
4. Scale companies are also inseparable from seed user methodology
Do not understand the seed user methodology as a product that no one can use. The problem encountered in the scale of enterprises to do products is that the vested interests and related parties say that the wind is cool, and finally the new products are consumed.
Because the surgeon did not use the low-cost, high-efficiency method to find the soil of the seed users, to protect the growth of innovative products, the probability of death has greatly increased.
5. Poor user handling will affect the team atmosphere
The seed user methodology seems to be a process of developing products from 0 to 1, but if not handled well, it will affect the team’s leadership, defeat the team’s confidence, and bring a skeptical atmosphere to the team.
If you have made many innovations in succession, every time you are aggressively ALL IN, but every time you do it, the team will definitely be separated from the German.
The digital transformation strategy has not yet landed, and there is no way to rush to toss.
Regardless of whether you have sufficient funds, as long as you are promoting new things, you can use the seed user thinking to accompany you through the storm. Thank you.