Products that SLIP

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We are toying with the phrase “product facilitation.” What we are really talking about is facilitating getting your products into people’s hands so that they purchase them. And the visual I want you to have is this: imagine everyone else is running on a track with shoes, and you suddenly get your own lane made of ice and can just skate along it. You are going to kill everybody. What if you could take all the cost associated with a customer seeing, trying, buying, implementing, deploying, and owning your technology and drive it toward zero, take all the friction out? What if you could literally slip into the lead in your minimum viable segment?

So we created a mnemonic: SLIP. It is a good framework for building a product that will be very easy to distribute:

• Simple to install and use
• Low to no initial cost
• Instant and ongoing value
• Plays well in the ecosystem

This is very similar to product-led growth, and you will see similarities; it is not meant to replace PLG, it is more of a mnemonic that helps you think about the different components. The fuller version, SLIPPERY, spells out even more dimensions (it should be simple, low to no initial cost, install easily, prove value quickly, play well with others, be easy to use, have an obvious ROI, and be sticky so your customers cannot live without it). I will guarantee you that if you figure out how to do these things, your product will sell far more cost-effectively, and that whole profit equation becomes much better for you.

Let us walk through the elements.