Hooked
Each chapter had homework at the end, which I did here.
Chapter 1
What habits does your business model require?
Agents must be in a regular habit of reaching out to their contacts in order to win business.
What problems are users turning to your product to solve?
- I don’t know who to talk to in my network in order to win more business.
- I have no idea where my next deal is going to come from.
- I can’t sleep at night because I don’t know if I’m on plan for the year.
- I don’t have visibility into my funnel of possible incoming business?
- I don’t have a plan for how to spend my time this week.
- I don’t have a system or approach for reliably growing my business.
- I don’t have enough hours in the day to both manage my active business and hunt for new business.
- I don’t know how to hunt for new business effectively.
- I need to stay ahead of my competition in how I generate new business.
- I don’t have any accountability to do the necessary things to grow my business.
How do users currently solve that problem and why does it need a solution?
- Adopt a work-via-referral system.
- Buy leads from Zillow.
- Buy a set-it-and-forget-it solution like Adwerx and just hope that it works for them.
- Maintain a spreadsheet with active clients and soon-to-be active clients.
- Hire an assistant, read a book, hire a coach, use a plan from their broker.
- Hire a coach.
- Hire an assistant or marketing coordinator. Send automated outreach to their network.
- Hire a coach.
- Read books, blogs, Facebook groups and talk to other agents outside of my market for ideas. Try new things.
- Hire a coach. Join a team. Get a buddy.
How frequently do you expect users to engage with your product?
3-5 days a week, 2-3 times per day
What user behavior do you want to make into a habit?
- Checking on things to do today
- Adding a few people to your appointment queue
- Connecting with people that we are recommending
Chapter 2: Trigger
Who is your product’s user?
...
What is the user doing right before your intended habit?
- Waiting
- Sitting down at their desk
Come up with three internal triggers that could cue your user to action.
- Boredom.
- Uncertainty - how am I doing?
- Fear of running out of business/money
- Feeling successful (coming out of a closing or from getting an active client)
Which internal trigger does your user experience most frequently?
Uncertainty?
- Every time the user is feeling uncertain, she connects with a few people we are recommending.
What might be the places and times to send an external trigger?
How can you couple an external trigger as closely as possible to when the user’s internal trigger fires?
3 conventional triggers:
3 crazy triggers:
Chapter 3: Action
The path your users would take to use your product or service, beginning from the time they feel their internal trigger to the point they’ve received the expected outcome.
Internal Trigger: Uncertainty, Fear, Successful, Boredom
Expected Outcome: Found someone to reach out to AND reached out OR had us reach out.
- Open the app
- Swipe through some cards (two choices on each swipe)
- Add to shortlist or Appt queue
How many steps does it take before users obtain the reward they came for?
Too many!
Variable - 5-50 or infinite (never find anyone)
How does this process compare with the simplicity of some of the examples described in this chapter?
Not as simple as it could be...
Hard to find “who” I should be reaching out to.
How does it compare with competing products and services?
Much better!
Main competing service is their phone’s contacts or Excel spreadsheet
Don’t really use a CRM for this
Which resources are limiting your users’ ability to accomplish the tasks that will become habits?
- Time - they don’t have a lot of time to devote to the task
- Brain cycles (too confusing) - the mental energy expended to pick out who they should be reaching out to and then what they should say
- Money - nope
- Social deviance (outside the norm) - not really - they talk to people all the time
- Physical effort - does making a phone call count? Not really a blocker.
- Non-routine (too new) - for some, this is definitely not a routine they have built into their day. Let me find someone and reach out. But others have a ton of discipline about this already.
Brainstorm three testable ways to make intended tasks easier to complete.
- Recommend “5 packs” of people to reach out to
Consider how you might apply heuristics to make habit-forming actions more likely.