DEV Community: Daniel Ndukwu

What Does it Take to go up Against Billion-Dollar Brands?

Daniel Ndukwu — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 22:57:10 +0000

I’m working on a project that has me more excited than I’ve been in a while. My team and I are building a tool that can power millions of businesses and even individual projects on a monthly basis.

With that kind of reach comes competition stiffer than anything I could’ve imagined. Venture capitalists have dropped hundreds of millions to capture the market. There are entrenched players that get tens of millions of visitors every month.

The interesting part is that the market is expanding every single day. It’s one of the industries that have been impacted positively by Covid-19. Since people can’t meet in person, they use these kinds of tools to continue working.

Even though we have a vaccine now, adoption won’t slow down because people finally realize how simple these tools make their life.

What am I talking about?

Document management. Specifically, eSigning and PDF document management. I know, I’m late to the party and I’m fine with that. My newest side project – UsefulPDF – isn’t designed to unlock a billion-dollar valuation in 4 years.

Our approach to dealing with rich competitors

Early on, we realized that we faced stiff competition. That was only corroborated when I dug into the market a bit deeper and understood what the competition was doing.

Two of our largest competitors in one area we tackle gets 100 million visitors a month and about 2X that in page views. Another one of our competitors was making $24 million a year and wasn’t even profitable.

Tools like DocuSign are revenue unicorns (making over a billion dollars a year), publicly traded, and have some of the brightest minds in the world. They have the resources to crush or out develop any competitor.

For some, I’m painting a dreary picture. This makes me smile.
Why?

In my mind, nothing could be more fun than duking it out against Goliath – right?

That was a joke.

On a more serious note, we’re unphased because we’re not starting out with the intention of building a unicorn. That would be a nice fringe benefit though.

We’re out to build a company that will make us personally successful and doesn’t force us to compromise with our moral compass.

It’s not growth at all costs.

It’s steady growth over the course of a decade. It’s the same approach our competitors with 100 million visitors a month took.
It was a slog at first then the flywheel started to kick in.

Each win built on the last one incrementally until there was nothing that could stop them (read the Slight Edge to get a better understanding of this process). Currently, they’re among the largest websites in the world and have translated their application into dozens of languages.

It took them over a decade.

Instead of failing fast and often, we’re building tools - like this one-that will stand up to the rigors of the real world. We don’t mind if it takes us multiple development cycles to push out our products.
The only way we can compete with our super rich competitors is through excellence.

Do you have a small store that you visit often? It may not have as many options as the local Walmart but you keep going back over and over. You tell your friends about it. If people are visiting from out of town, you recommend it.

Why do you think that is?

More than likely, it’s because they’re good at what they do. They don’t do everything – not by a long shot. But they take pride in everything they produce or sell and that pride shows in the presentation, the quality, and the commitment to service.
You simply don’t get that from a billion-dollar company.

Maybe, one day, we’ll be in the ranks of unicorns. If that happens cool. Today, right now, we’re focused on delivering excellence one step at a time.

I hope you’ll join us on this journey

Stop Creating – Start Selling

Daniel Ndukwu — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 12:07:35 +0000

I love to ideate, plan, and build. There’s nothing better to me than diving headfirst into a new project that has all the bells and whistles. The challenge of taking something from my head and translating it into a real product is what makes it exciting to wake up in the morning.

Can you relate?

This thrill, this focus on building and creating can make it difficult to do anything else. Many times, we get so attached to what we’re making that we skip the hard part of marketing and selling.

Instead of talking to prospects, we decide to build one more feature, write one more article, or tweak one more part of the design.

It can feel like progress. It’s not. At least, it’s not meaningful progress. It’s not the kind of progress that will pay the bills. You know what does pay the bills?

Understanding who your customers are/will be
Selling/marketing to those people 70% of the time

In this ultra-short post, I’ll share a few ways you can do both the first and the second one. Keep in mind that how you sell is contingent on the kind of product you’re building.

Understanding your market

Every market has different segments. For example, Slack caters to small teams, large teams, medium teams, communities, developers, content creators, marketers, designers, etc. Each one of these people, though using Slack in a similar way, use it for a different reason.

If you don’t understand the reason people use a product, then it’ll be difficult to market to and sell to them.

I know of two overarching ways to get a better understanding of your market. Both of them are qualitative research methods where you focus on the way people feel, the reasons for their actions, and their perspectives.

The easier method is to use surveys with open-ended questions (mixed with a few close-ended demographic questions) to find out how people feel about the problem. Though easier, it shouldn’t be the first method you use.

Why?

Because if you ask the wrong questions then the data won’t be useful. How do you know what the right questions are? You don't know until you do the more difficult method which is interactive customer interviews.

Customer interviews done in person or over the phone let you explore the problem in depth. You can react to their tone of voice, their facial expressions, ask clarifying questions, etc. This will give you a much deeper understanding of your market and help you create better survey questions.

After you’ve done your research and have a better understanding of who your customers/prospects are then you can start selling. Not before.

Two ways to sell (one scalable one unscalable)

We love scale. It’s all the startup world talks about. Is it scalable? What’s the TAM and our SAM? How much market share can we capture in 3 years? Sure, all of those are important considerations but before you get there, you’ll need to prove your hypothesis – by selling like a human being.

The unscalable way to sell is one you’re likely familiar with (because you’ve been on the receiving end). A sales rep (in this case you) emails or calls the prospect, asks for a few minutes of their time, and shoots their shot.

Most of these shots miss because the message/pitch isn’t refined and that’s why you’re doing it in the first place.

It’s one thing to know what people want and it’s another thing to convince them that you’re the right person to give them the solution. That’s sales. Bang your head against the wall for a few weeks. Your pitch will get better and you’ll close customers more regularly.

That’s when you can think about scaling it.

The scalable way is through webinars. This works whether you’re selling shoes, courses, software, and everything in between. The pitch you refined with the unscalable way will come in handy here. Of course, the nuances of building out a webinar are beyond the scope of this post.

Here is a list of 17 webinar software tools, check out Joel Elway (the webinar guy), and start practicing with cold traffic before you work with partners.

Conclusion

Selling, at first, can be daunting so we do busy work for a long time. That’s not the answer. If you want your idea to swim then you – not the marketing hire, not the agency, not your freelancer – will have to figure it out.

In this short post, I’ve given you the idea. I’m not here to spoon-feed you – I have my own children to attend to. Instead, follow the bread crumbs and figure this out.

I know you have the ability to. All it takes is a bit of effort.

Daniel “rooting for you” Ndukwu out

Stop Creating – Start Selling

Daniel Ndukwu — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 12:05:54 +0000

Can you relate?

This thrill, this focus on building and creating can make it difficult to do anything else. Many times, we get so attached to what we’re making that we skip the hard part of marketing and selling.

Instead of talking to prospects, we decide to build one more feature, write one more article, or tweak one more part of the design.

It can feel like progress. It’s not. At least, it’s not meaningful progress. It’s not the kind of progress that will pay the bills. You know what does pay the bills?

Understanding who your customers are/will be
Selling/marketing to those people 70% of the time

In this ultra-short post, I’ll share a few ways you can do both the first and the second one. Keep in mind that how you sell is contingent on the kind of product you’re building.

Understanding your market

I know. You know who you’re selling to because you have the problem yourself or you’ve been working in the industry for a billion years. While that may be beneficial, that doesn’t mean you understand the perspective of most people who will be using the solution.
Every market has different segments. For example, Slack caters to small teams, large teams, medium teams, communities, developers, content creators, marketers, designers, etc. Each one of these people, though using Slack in a similar way, use it for a different reason.
If you don’t understand the reason people use a product, then it’ll be difficult to market to and sell to them.
I know of two overarching ways to get a better understanding of your market. Both of them are qualitative research methods where you focus on the way people feel, the reasons for their actions, and perspectives.
The easier method is to use surveys with open ended questions (mixed with a few close ended demographic questions) to find out how people feel about the problem. Though easier, it shouldn’t be the first method you use.
Why?
Because if you ask the wrong questions then the data won’t be useful. How do you know what the right questions are? You don't know until you do the more difficult method which are interactive customer interviews.
Customer interviews done in person or over the phone let you explore the problem in depth. You can react to their tone of voice, their facial expressions, ask clarifying questions, etc. This will give you a much deeper understanding of your market and help you create better survey questions.
After you’ve done your research and have a better understanding of who your customers/prospects are then you can start selling. Not before.

Two ways to sell (one scalable one unscalable)

We love scale. It’s all the startup world talks about. Is it scalable? What’s the TAM and our SAM? How much market share can we capture in 3 years? Sure, all of those are important considerations but before you get there, you’ll need to prove your hypothesis – by selling like a human being.
The unscalable way to sell is one you’re likely familiar with (because you’ve been on the receiving end). A sales rep (in this case you) emails or calls the prospect, asks for a few minutes of their time, and shoots their shot. Most of these shots miss because the message/pitch isn’t refined and that’s why you’re doing it in the first place.
It’s one thing to know what people want and it’s another thing to convince them that you’re the right person to give them the solution. That’s sales. Bang your head against the wall for a few weeks. Your pitch will get better and you’ll close customers more regularly.
That’s when you can think about scaling it.
The scalable way is through webinars. This works whether you’re selling shoes, courses, software, and everything in between. The pitch you refined with the unscalable way will come in handy here. Of course, the nuances of building out a webinar are beyond the scope of this post.
Here is a list of 17 webinar software tools, check out Joel Erway (the webinar guy), and start practicing with cold traffic before you work with partners.
Conclusion
Selling, at first, can be daunting so we do busy work for a long time. That’s not the answer. If you want your idea to swim then you – not the marketing hire, not the agency, not your freelancer – will have to figure it out.
In this short post, I’ve given you the idea. I’m not here to spoon-feed you – I have my own children to attend to. Instead, follow the bread crumbs and figure this out.
I know you have the ability to. All it takes is a bit of effort.
Daniel “rooting for you” Ndukwu out