Tools are something that a business finds familiar. There is a category and a known list of things it should do. There are good tools and bad tools to buy and it’s usually obvious which ones are the good ones.
Transformations require the business buyer to do something different. They need to adopt a new idea and change how they do things. These transformations need to be sold (as in, with a sales team) to them. If successful, they define an entire category with the largest market share.
Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder of Hubspot, talks about the difference between tools and transformations in this video.
See also:
- Similarly, consumers buy products, enterprises buy platforms. Platforms are a common idea to businesses (think of the number of times you’ve heard the ‘Operating system for X’ pitch)
- Passion for ones tools is part of what makes product-led growth successful. Would this work for grass root transformations?
Links to this note
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The energy spent making a decision should be proportional to the consequences. The larger the consequences, the more energy should go into making the decision. The smaller the consequences, the less energy should go into them.
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Passion for One’s Tools Is Part of What Makes Product-Led Growth Successful
Driving word of mouth needed for product-led growth comes from a passion for one’s tools. This can be hard to attain for categories of products that aren’t all that interesting. Someone might brag about how one email client is better than another, but what about an ERP?
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Don’t Try to Sell Doctors to Healthy People
Sales is difficult enough, but selling a good solution to the wrong people makes it worse.