 Thank you for joining the webinar today. I'm Nidhi Kanajiya, and today I'm here to talk about the topic human connection in your product story. Before we dive deep into the topic a little bit about myself, I've been product manager for more than 15 years. I've managed hardware products, software products. In addition to being a product manager, I'm also board member and president of IIT Beria organization, a very reputed organization that brings community together and tries multiple initiatives. In the past, I've also managed the programs and marketing for the organization. So today, the ideas that I'll share with you that come from the overall experience of product management and leading other industry initiatives as well. So, and I think there's a big similarity between product management and how we communicate with our customers and how we interact with them. And other areas of product, for example, marketing and building that connection with our customers. So, the ideas that I'll share with you that come from this overall perspective, so let's go dive deep into this, right? So, before, give me a moment, all right. Okay, so as I mentioned, we are talking about product, human connection and how do you build a good product story. In today's topic, we'll discuss three categories. One is product narrative and story building, which basically means that how does building a product and narrative relates to story, telling a story itself. We'll also talk a little bit about how does human connection work, which we are all aware of. We'll just touch upon a few key points in that, which relate very well to building a product story. And then we'll talk about how do we actually humanize product story. Now, see, we are all very much on high level aware of how to build human connection and how to write a good product narrative. The goal of our conversation today is to bring this all together and find those connection points and make us aware that when we are thinking of telling a story about our product, what is that framework and where should we be paying attention to and is there something that we're missing out or not? So that is the goal of today's conversation. So let's start with product narrative versus story building. Okay, focus on the center of the chart. You'll see four Ps here. It is people, place, plot and purpose. These are called the four Ps of writing a good story. Now, if you go and try to find more details, you'll see many other similar frameworks as well, but eventually it comes down to these four primary pieces. So when, now, for a moment, keep the product aspect aside. Just think of a story. Any great story that you have heard or any amazing movie that you have watched, there are always four great things happening, right? The four components like people, place, plot and purpose are fit together in such an amazing way that it makes sense that it resonates with your idea. You find something connecting in that. So these four are the key fundamental pieces of any story. Now, you have people, place, plot and purpose. How does that relate to when we're talking about a product, right? So when you're building a product or you're thinking about product, the people in your story are the centerpiece. People are the one that are driving your story. Their experience is driving your story. So pay attention to the people in your story, which basically means are these internal customers or are these external customers? Are these, let's say if these are internal customers, are these internal stakeholders? We're trying to sell your idea. We're trying to communicate that why this product idea makes sense, that let's say for example, it should be funded or not, right? Should you be investing more resources in this or not? For external customers, again, it's important to pay attention. Are you talking about more partnership initiatives? Are you talking about external customer in B2B environment? Are you talking about customers in B2C environment? So it's very important to know who your customers are. Then a place or a setting, which is are you having this conversation in internal setting or an external setting? What is your platform? Because the kind of conversation that you will have or the kind of information you will share or the similarities and differences that you will draw will be very different if you're having this conversation in internal versus with an external organization. And then comes down to, it comes down the plot where we talk about circumstances, curiosity, conversation and conflict, right? So plot is a very, it's a core of your story, which is basically when you're talking to your customers or the people within your story, what is it about? What experiences are they sharing, right? And pay attention to, were they in the similar circumstances? Be curious about asking questions, have more deeper conversations and try to find out were there was there any conflict in that story and we'll dig a little bit deeper into that as we go along. And the last is purpose. See, in any story that you write, there is always a goal. If it is not, if actually if you actually watch a movie and you can't figure out what are they trying to do, that's definitely not a very good movie, right? So your purpose has to be clear. So know that your story of a product or any story out there, which is an amazing story, there's a lot of similarity and there is a framework. And today we're going to dig a little bit deeper on how do we find those connection points? So before we dig deeper into the story, how to write the story, know that the bigger pieces, human, human experiences are the ones that drive story. Now it is very important that we understand how does the human connection work? Now we all know how to make friends, how we all know how to build relationships, right? And we understand that relationships, the real relationships thrive on few core characteristics. Few of those are attentive listening, authenticity, selflessness and consistency. It's basically going beyond the small talk and building real relationship. If you want to have deeper connection, for example, you met a new person, right? And you're trying to have conversation. And then after a small talk, you move away and you never find time to connect back. You will never build that friendship. You'll never build that deeper bond. But to have a deeper bond, you need to be actively listening so you can ask the right questions. You can know what their requirement are or what their point of view is, right? In addition to learning their point of view, it is also important to relate it back to your own point of view. You have to know yourself, only then you can find out if it is a right friendship or not, right? So you need to be authentic. You need to be true to yourselves. You need to know yourself. So it's more, it's both out looking outward and looking inward. The combination of both is where you can actually figure out that is this the right friendship or not. So it's active listening. It's authenticity and it is selflessness. Selflessness is important because the truth, if you want to build a longer relationship, you need to have a thought of going beyond, right? Going beyond, the purpose can be just to you. The purpose has to be bigger than you. When the purpose is bigger than you, your act is selfless. It is also important that once you act selflessly, you give way beyond your capacity, right? And once you do that, you become true to yourself and you become true to the purpose. And that's when you go selfless, when you have that selflessness and go beyond the thought of that is everything is for me, you drive greater things, right? Also doing something one time versus doing something over and over again, there's a value of the impact that you drive for doing things for longer time is amazing rather than doing something for short term because you cannot, okay, it's very simple that anything valuable will not come in short time. So if you want to achieve something valuable, you have to keep giving and stay the course, right? And when you do that, that's when you realize if one was that whatever you're trying to achieve is that worth, is that real? Is that good for you? Is that good for other party as well? And over time, you build a deeper human connection. Now, all of this relates very well to how we build product or how we promote product, how we message our product, how do we build that whole narrative? Now, I know that when it's a very important point is that once we are building product narrative, we think very deeply about the content of the product. Is that, do we have good authentic, do we have good words in that? Do we have, how do our visuals look? Does it have all the right technical details and specifications? But your product narrative that actually sells your story is way beyond that. It's one step ahead from that. So it's not just the content, there are few more things that matter as much as your content does, which is intent and extent, right? That we're talking about on previous slide that how do you build deeper human connection? Now think about you have your product and you want your product to have deeper connection with your customers, right? So just having beautiful graphics or right specifications, it is great, but it is great in its absolute value. If you wanted to go beyond, if you want to realize that greater value that you have to have a more intent and extent in that as well, right? And I'll explain a little bit more what intent and extent mean. Intent relates back to your selflessness, right? If you're explaining a product to your customer and for example, the only thing you had in mind is, are they gonna say yes to the beta version to qualify the beta version of my product? Well, then you're not going to ask the right questions because the moment your first goal is met, you'll probably stop, right? But to build deeper bond and to truly build great products and tell the right message for your product, you need to actually listen deeply to your customers. You need to understand what makes them happy, what are their pain points and how can I improve my message from, how can I map what I have with their requirement and do it selflessly? Which also means that if it is not the right fit for them, then don't pitch it in that way to them. That will build trust over time. Another point is extent. Extent means how deep are you willing to go, right? How far will you go to find the right details or to understand their pain points or to be consistent in your efforts? So now let's see, we saw how the human connection work. We saw what are the components of product narrative, which is beyond content. It is also your intent. And to the extent you are going to put your efforts in, let's see how does this play a role and when we try to build the story of the product. So this is the interconnection that I was mentioning on the previous slide. See, you can actually see the mapping right here, right? If you're trying to build great content, you should be actively listening that because that is going to contribute to your content of the product. You need to be authentic enough because for example, if your customer points out a problem or a pain point in your product and we don't completely agree with it, then we won't be able to take that feedback as authentically as we should, right? We won't be able to bring those changes in our product. We won't be able to put that, let's say to spin our messaging. Here's the thing, whether it is a positive thing in your product or whether it's a negative thing in your product. As long as you come authentically and you tell the truth, you will find the right message. No product, how many perfect products we try to build, there will be something that still can be done more. It can be done better, right? So as long as we know it deeply and we are ready to accept it and we are ready to put a message forward accepting both positive and negative, it's gonna make our product look good, okay? So this is on high level, how the interconnection looks like. For example, as I was talking, the content is both about active listening and authenticity. Now, if you think about intent, there comes authenticity and selflessness and consistency if you want to consistently to put your efforts forward. And similarly, extent as well. Your extent has to be authentic as well. We can't make promises and then step back that we are, we'll get back to you and we'll give you this information and then we never get back to them. So then you're lacking on authenticity, whatever you are saying, you're not doing. Similarly, selflessness and consistency. So these are very interrelated and pretty much these are very subjective concepts but a little bit of objectivity around it when you're thinking about your product helps you build a good product story. So in next few slides, I'll quickly walk you through that how these map and what these actually look like when we are trying to build a good product story. The first one, people, as I said, people are the core of your story. They are the ones that are building that story. So know that who is sharing their story with you. I mean, who are your point of context when you're trying to reach out to customer? One, and second, when you're trying to pitch your story to them, it's both, whether you're trying to find your product idea or whether you're trying to sell your product idea, are you talking to right people? When they're telling your stories, are they aligned with your product idea? Is their story, is that relevant to you? So think, you have to be very curious and think when they're talking, you need to think deeper into that and be really, really engaged in that conversation. That is where people matter in your story. It is when they're telling you their experiences and also when you are telling your product narrative to them, it is very important to pay attention to people in your story, right? Talk to right personas, talk the right way to the right personas. Then the place, right? As I was mentioning that whether you're internal to organization or external to organization or even your strategy internal versus external is going to be very different. So have the right, have a point of view and then try to find, are there any differentials from where you stand? For example, even for your internal customers, let's say you have a point of view that these many resources are enough or this particular method of solving the problem makes sense, right? Even in that case, pay attention to what are the differences? What is the point of view that they are mentioning, right? And when you do that, you can find out what are their challenges similar to yours, what you already thought? Are there opportunities similar to yours that you thought? If not, then that is the platform that you can work on. You know that this is what is lacking and here is where I can position my product, right? The next one is plot. This is very important. As I mentioned before, that if you want to find a great story from there, from your context life, then you have to go deeper. You cannot stay with just a small talk. You have to go deeper and that is where your human connection comes in. Be curious, have a template for conversation, know the right, have a set of questions that you would want to ask them. And also look for conflicts. It is amazing if any great story that you would hear or any amazing movie that you watch, they have great conflicts in them. If I tell you that, hey, you know what? I went for a walk and I came back, right? That's not an amazing story, nothing really happened, right? Now, if I tell you I went for a walk and someone chased me down there and then I had to run back, it's somewhat interesting. So it is about anything which brings conflict, makes the story interesting. So when you're trying to find story from your customers or from any pure point of context, try to find the conflict or the pain points that they had or the challenges that they went through because that's where you're going to fit your product in if it makes sense. And similarly, once you go and narrate that story to your customers when you're trying to sell their product or reposition your product, you can bring in those stories and those experiences and you insert in that. So don't shy away from sharing the pain points. Don't shy away from conflict. Your goal is to not move away from conflict. Your goal is to not ignore the conflict but your goal is to find how it was resolved or how it can be resolved for them. So do pay attention to that if you really want to write a great story that relates to your audience. And last one, when you're building a product, your goal is to, your purpose is to persuade to care and act. Now there's a lot of information out there where you can read and learn the art of persuasion but eventually it comes down to human connection. And if you want someone to listen to you or that's what you want, right? You want them to, I don't know, sign up for beta, buy your product, have more followers or whatever your goal is, right? You're basically persuading another person. You want them to be aligned with you and act accordingly. Now if you want to have that, if you want to persuade them the best course of action is tell the truth. You know, telling the truth is selfless act. What does telling the truth means for a product? That telling the truth for a product means you know the right and wrong in your product. Tell that, which doesn't mean that you say that, hey, you know what, this thing is broken, it doesn't work. That's where your narrative comes in. You figure out what is their pain point and you tell the truth in a beautiful way. You still tell the truth, but you tell it in a way that it makes sense for them and they understand. So what it does is that it builds trust with them. When you tell, when you share your positive story with someone, they think you're great and you had great experiences. When you share your negative story with someone, it also builds trust with them because we're all human and humans build products which are great many times, but sometimes there are some faults. So humanize your stories that you tell about your product. Second point, very well mentions the same thing that you own your narrative for both positive and negative because if you don't own your narrative for the negative aspect, we all own narrative for positive and we all say our products are great, right? But if you don't own narrative for the negative aspect of it, someone else will own it. So it's better that you own it and you tell your own story that, this is right, this is where we lack because if you're not gonna do it, someone else, maybe your competition or someone else who doesn't want your product to do that great, they are going to own your narrative. So it's better that you do it your own and have it communicated in the right way as you want it. Also know that staying consistent is important because results don't show right away, it takes a lot of patience, just like in any human connection or relationship, it takes time, building bond takes time. So give it enough time, which doesn't mean you slow down, is your velocity is important, but stay consistent with your efforts. If you don't see results right away, which means that there's somewhere else we need to pay attention, we need to tweak our story, we need to dig deeper in some area, but stay consistent, keep building those bonds over and over with your customers. And also the last one is very important, give option to take action. It's very interesting, if the greatest of the bonds are built when you do something, when you perform an act of service, we feel more connected with our customers because we're building product that serves them and we feel motivated, we try to get information from them, get their feedback and try to build a great product. It's pretty similar with your customers as well. If you give them an option to take action, they'll feel more connected with you. Whoever serves the other party feels more connected. That's just how human psychology works. So what it could mean in the case of your product that have a call to action, say sign up for VEDA or show up for my VEDA, give them an option where they can take action that makes sense for them. And it doesn't have to be a big huge action, it could be a one simple feedback and appreciate if their feedback was meaningful. They'll feel like an act of service on their part and they'll feel more connected with your product. So in this, you can see on this slide, the whole story includes your people, place, plot and purpose and how that relates back to human connection and building the right narrative for your product. Eventually, if you want to have great product story, have meaningful content, always have positive intention for your customers and go beyond limits, go to greater extent, do things again and get care for them. I think the whole first sentence comes down, do we care about our customers? And if we do, this is what we do for anything and anyone we care about, right? So know that the skills that you need to build that, to bring in the human connection in your product story are the same ones that you need to build the human connection. It's very intuitive and it can be done because we do it every day. We just have to do, we just have to think it from the angle that when we are doing it for our product, it's pretty similar, it's not an alien idea, right? So this is the thought I wanted to share with you. Hope it was useful. Please feel free to ping me if you have any questions. Happy to connect with all of you and thank you so much.