We Don't Sell Biomechanics Reports
We do not sell reports. We do not sell advice. We sell superior player development.
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Your customers do not care about you. They do not care about your product. They care about your ability to solve their problems.
That is the gist of Steward Butterfield’s 2014 post We Don’t Sell Saddles Here. The popular article from the Slack founder and CEO is one I have read multiple times, but it hit me different after starting Reboot Motion.
Previously, the essay made sense as an aspirational way to view business. Now, it is a how to guide on how to position Reboot.
Sell the Innovation, Not the Product
From Stewart Butterfield:
What we are selling is not the software product- the set of all the features, in their specific implementation- because there are just not many buyers for this software product. (People buy “software” to address a need they already know they have or perform some specific task they need to perform, whether that is tracking sales contacts or editing video.)
However, if we are selling “a reduction in the cost of communication” or “zero effort knowledge management” or “making better decisions, faster” or “all your team communication, instantly searchable, available where you go” or “75% less email” or some other valuable result of adopting Slack, we will find many more buyers.
For Reboot:
We do not sell reports. We do not sell advice. We sell superior player development.
More specifically:
For MLB teams, we sell:
Stronger farm systems
More accurate drafting
More targeted player acquisition
For academies, we sell:
A better experience for your athletes
An increased likelihood for your athletes to compete in college and beyond
A better business
And through our partnership with Diamond Kinetics, we sell:
Better youth player development
Fun, through continuous improvement
This distinction is vital for business development…but more importantly for design. While we- a science company- may find a lot of data points interesting, we need to focus on what our customers are actually buying. If a piece of software does not help them with a their specific goals, it is useless.
Selling Biomechanics
From Stewart Butterfield:
To see why, consider the hypothetical Acme Saddle Company. They could just sell saddles, and if so, they’d probably be selling on the basis of things like the quality of the leather they use or the fancy adornments their saddles include; they could be selling on the range of styles and sizes available, or on durability, or on price.
Or, they could sell horseback riding. Being successful and selling horseback riding means they grow the market for their product while giving the perfect context for talking about their saddles. It lets them position themselves as the leader and affords them different kinds of marketing and promotion opportunities (e.g., sponsoring school programs to promote riding to kids, working on land conservation or trail maps). It lets them think big and potentially be big.
For Reboot:
While we do sell a better farm system to MLB teams, a better business to Academies, and better player development for youth athletes, in all cases we are selling biomechanics.
For anyone to want to work with Reboot Motion, they must first believe biomechanics is an important to tool to unlock superior performance.
They must believe the goal of the pitching delivery is to deliver as much momentum as possible to the ball. They must believe the best swings are the most efficient swings. And they must believe these things lead to faster fastballs, increased exit velocities, and less injuries.
The more we show the value of biomechanics, the more we grow the market for our product, and the more we position ourselves as a leader in the space.
We firmly believe every team, academy, and beyond will rely deeply on biomechanics in the future. We can either wait as the market slowly grows and compete with everyone else, or do what we can to build the market faster, with Reboot leading the charge.
Forget Selling, What are We Asking?
From Stewart Butterfield:
We are asking a lot from our customers. We are asking them to spend hours a day in a new and unfamiliar application, to give up on years or even decades of experience using email for work communication (and abandon all kind of ad hoc workflows that have developed around their use of email). We are asking them to switch a model of communication which defaults to public; it is an almost impossibly large ask. Almost.
To get people to say yes to a request that large, we need to (1) offer them a reward big enough to justify their effort and (2) do an exceptional, near-perfect job of execution.
For Reboot:
We expect a lot from our customers. We are asking our MLB clients to rethink what they prioritize. And we are asking private coaches to develop their understanding of baseball mechanics…and do it so well they can use it to train, teach, and develop their athletes.
These are big asks…so we must offer tremendous upside. The ask must seem small in comparison.
For MLB teams, the upside has to be championships. And for private coaches it has to be materially better outcomes for their athletes (increased velocity, better performance, college scholarships) and their business.
Thinking Holistically
From Stewart Butterfield:
To do this well, we need to take a holistic approach and not just think about a long list of individual tasks we are supposed to get through in a given week. We get 0 points for just getting a feature out the door it it is not actually contributing to making the experience better for our users, or helping them to understand Slack, or helping us understand them. None of the work we are doing to develop the product is an end in itself; it all must be squarely aimed at the larger purpose.
Consider the teams you see in action at great restaurants, and the totality of their effort: the room, the vibe, the timing, the presentation, the attention, the anticipation of your needs (and, of course, the food itself); nothing can be off. There is great nobility in being of service to other, and well-run restaurants (or hotels, or software companies) serve with a quality that is measured by its attention to detail. This is a perfect model for us to emulate.
For Reboot:
Butterfield mentions a key point- no individual task is important on its own. All of it is part of a holistic view to do something big. For us, it is fundamentally change how coaches help athletes move better.
Every piece of code written, every social media post, every potential product improvement…it is all unimportant on its own.
The only thing that is important is our mission: help coaches help athletes move better.
Because that is what we are selling- not data, not an assessment, not a report, not advice.
We are selling biomechanics.
W are selling more wins, more scholarships, and better player development.
And ultimately, we are selling the opportunity for coaches to fundamentally improve how their athletes perform.