Goldpan

Goldpan is a managed win-loss service. We blend technology and services to help businesses understand why their deals aren’t closing. 

You get precise reasons you win and lose deals, ranked by their impact, so you can start making changes and accelerating growth in the shortest possible time. 

As operators, we founded Goldpan to help other operators grow faster.

Co-Founder

Paycor

Managed the post-acquisition integration of 7Geese

Director Business Operations - 7Geese by Paycor

7Geese

Director of Strategy and Operations

Including Director of Marketing maternity leave cover (2019-2020)

Director Revenue Operations

Director of Marketing

NuData Security

Product Marketing Manager

Ntegra

Ntegra is a business focused IT consultancy & services provider. We believe in putting our clients’ success at the heart of everything we do and making a positive difference through helping our clients transform their business and maximise their investments in information and communications technologies.

Consultant

I’m the co-founder of Goldpan - a buyer research company.  🎤 We specialize in conducting win-loss, churn, and buyer experience interviews. 🎙️ I've interviewed hundreds of buyers to find out why they buy from tech firms (and why they don't). 💬 Basically, I help product marketers figure out what’s being said behind their backs. 🏆 I talk about how to incorporate buyer research into Product Marketing.

Happy Juicero Day, Everyone! It failed seven years ago - almost to the day. 

Instead of asking why, I want to know how you'd have made this launch work.

Also, here's why the usual takes are asking the wrong questions...

---

📆 WHAT HAPPENED - A RECAP

- A San Francisco company made a cold-pressed juice-squeezing machine. 
- It pressed pouches of fresh raw fruit and veg into juices.
- It was $400 (down from $700).
- It looked great; they hired renowned industrial designers to design it.
- You bought pouches for it - each lasting 5-10 days in your fridge.
- They had big celebrity endorsements: Oprah and Kobe Bryant all did ads for it.

But then Bloomberg did a test. 
They got a pouch and squeezed it by hand. They found they could do the same work as the machine at the same time. 

It created a media frenzy, and an onslaught of similar think pieces killed off its progress.

---

"WHY IT FAILED" IS NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION

❌ I’m *really* unsatisfied with the answer “It didn’t solve a problem,” and that's why it failed.

Because it's *very* easy to explain the past. 

Telling me what the weather was like two weeks ago is a lot easier than accurately predicting what it will be like in the future. 

But, at work, we're in the forward-looking business.

When we toddle into our offices, we’re in the forward-looking business. 
- What projects *will* work
- What investments *should* we make
- How can I de-risk the bet

We have some models for that. Looking at TAMs and existing problems. But here's the thing. I think Juicero did that.

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✅ WHY IT LOOKED GOOD

It was backed by Google Ventures and other smart people. I can see how, on paper, it’s looked like it could work:

- Juice/Smoothie market is a 12bn a year market. That’s a decent TAM.
- There’s a general trend to healthier lifestyles
- There are expensive machines for simple things already, like coffee making (Nespresso makes a $700 machine)
- People spend over the odds for nice-looking things all the time
- Juicing blending is a process people already do
- Juicing is messy, manual, loud
- People are busy, lazy, stressed - especially in the morning

---

🙋‍♀️ A BETTER QUESTION

So my question is not: why did it fail

My questions *are*:

1️⃣. If you had become the product or marketing lead of Juicero 8 years ago, how would you have changed the launch and GTM? 
2️⃣. Could it have been launched differently, or would you have changed the product?
3️⃣. How would you have predicted those?

#marketing #productmarketing

Matthew Reeves

Co-founder of Goldpan -- win/loss and buyer research company

Marketers, here's a simple way to see demand. (And solve the demand creation argument once and for all)

I'm using the language of Economics because it's the root cause of the demand creationist and demand creation-isn't-possible debate.

---

Annoyingly, nobody really is wrong about how the world works. They just use different language to express it.

Here's demand-for-marketers-made-simple (Matthew's version)

--

Demand is simply

A person's desire for a product/service
+
Their ability to buy it
+
Willingness to pay

---

Because we're using Economist's leather elbow-patched jargon, it can create confusing scenarios for us marketers to get our heads around, like this one...

---

Have you ever looked at a menu and thought, "I'd get the filet mignon, but not for the $120 it's listed?" 

Some marketers would say they created demand for the steak, but others would say no. 

Using my model, I’d say *technically* there’s no demand. Theres:

Desire = ✅ (want it) 
Ability = ✅ (could afford it, it’s legal to buy, it’s in stock)
Willingness = ❌ (too expensive for me, today)


I used a restaurant example, but this is what we see all the time in SaaS. 

Buyers like a product and believe in what it does but can't sign off on that price for whatever reason. 

People are often unwilling to ask their boss for some money because of the hassle, not because they don’t like the idea of the product. 

A marketer would say they "created demand" for the SaaS product but an economist would say "you created desire, but there's no demand".

---

IMO, this is why the Demand Creation argument is largely semantics. 

Marketers say they can "Create Demand" are usually talking about creating desire.  

Economist-minded commentators (like Dale W. Harrison) would say something more akin to "Buyers bring demand”.

He's got a valid point. 

Ultimately, a buyer has to decide if they are willing to buy a thing. For the pun-lovers: Demand is in the eye of a buy-holder 

—

So Demand Creation is BS, right? 

Well, maybe? 

I think marketers can create desire, which in turn creates demand. In some circumstances, marketers can impact ability to buy (lower prices, lobby for legal changes). 

It all adds up the same thing.

We’re all just out here trying to sell stuff. 

---

I'll leave us with a great take by Liam Moroney. He made a great post on Latent Demand - it's worth a watch.

Latent demand is when theres:
✅ Desire
✅ Willingness
❌ Ability

Wanting the $120 steak but finding it's sold out.

Or being fine with spending $150k on an Tesla-like EV, but it needs to drive eight hours in sub-freezing temps.

---

As marketers, we need to drive revenue and fast. So we have to ask ourselves where to invest our efforts?

Demand/desire creation or unlocking blocked 'ability' - latent demand. 

So there we go.

---

I'm glad to have solved this debate on demand creation. 

Thank you,

Goodnight 😘

#marketing #productmarketing #demandcreation

How can marketers unlock blocked ability to create demand?

What are some key strategies for creating demand?

Hey marketers. Just a reminder that you can create demand

That's all.

Happy Friday!

#marketing #demandcreation

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