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It is a sleeping giant of a problem. I share your issue. In college, friends would end my stories with "...and then you found 5 dollars?" because after a series

It is a sleeping giant of a problem. I share your issue. In college, friends would end my stories with "...and then you found 5 dollars?" because after a series of digressions, I had never arrived at the point. I think practice with public speaking is the best way to improve. Look for meetups or toastmasters near you. The core skill is guessing what your audience cares about. Once you master concision, you can play with dramatic structures that hint at the point, but hide it until the right moment, but first you need to figure out what people want to hear and get right to it. One problem I can see in your statement is that you need to recognize the language people usually use when they are saying what you are trying to say. When you say "VR simulations for First Responders, focused on low-cost for high training value", you are missing that 'value' in marketing-speak already means low cost. If patio11 were here, he would probably say not to market your product as low-cost in the first place. While it's true that nobody likes to spend money, in marketing, the goal is to provide something people do want rather than to tell them you can help them avoid something they don't want. Practice taking off your engineering hat and putting on your marketing hat. They are different roles with different languages and values. When you put down Powerpoint and marketing speak, it seems like you haven't spent enough time trying to understand sales people and what they do. Don't underestimate the value of marketing. When you have your marketing hat on, your goal should be to figure out what your customers want and tell them that you have it.

samcodes 7y ago
To run with this, I assume your potential customers aren't looking explicitly for "VR training". They're probably looking for "training that takes less time and/or increases $success_metric" - can you take this angle? Do you have data that show something like "patients treated by EMS workers trained with $our_product have $improved_success_metrics"? Or maybe it takes less time? Something like "Spend less time on training. Our VE training takes 50% of the time as traditional training while improving $test_outcome"?
- Blakestr 7y ago
  I do have some benchmarks that are common sense in terms of tracking performance. It's challenging to link it directly to success metrics although that's a long term goal. The time is another one to push in terms of advertising - You can setup a virtual scene instantly and clean it up just as fast. I'll have to make sure my application has those benchmarks highlight appropriately. Thank you for your comment!
Blakestr 7y ago
Thanks for confirming my suspicions, I didn't really like adding anything to that original statement. I need to remember that just because the description is brief and in many cases, not flashy, doesn't mean it can't be exciting. If you are discovering the next big thing, I guess a decent analogy would be a sailor spotting a small, nondescript distortion on the horizon. Could that be land?! The public speaking isn't a problem, VR is a new form of training for the Fire Service which will allow users to become overwhelmed by simulated chaos, identify their weaknesses and correct them. In regards to what my customers want, well, I started this years ago because I wanted a product that didn't exist. It's more than that however, there are multiple stakeholders for a single product: Mind you, these stakeholders could widely vary: Fire Officer - USER - (he is in the trenches, on the streets) Battalion/District - USER/Possible Customer (Taking a more supervisory role, although still runs larger scenes) Fire Chief - CUSTOMER - Typically will approve a budget to be submitted County/City Manager/Councilmember/Mayor/ETC - CUSTOMER'S BOSS - Approves Budget submitted by Fire Dept Taxpayers - CUSTOMER'S BOSS's BOSSES - Can complain of wasteful spending While any weighting I could give to these would be subjective, I obviously gear my product and marketing towards the user and the customer. When speaking with a Fire Chief, I invite him to consider putting their City manager INSIDE the VR simulator so they can see how challenging his job is and why he is requesting the budget he's requesting. (involuntary empathy) Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment!
guiambros 7y ago
Strongly suggest to read about "Jobs to be done" framework, by Clayton Christensen (video [1]; starts @ 12:00). I bet you the job to be done in your case is not "VR simulations for first respondents", but something much more powerful, like giving first respondents the hands-on practice they need to save lives. The VR part is a characteristic of your product, but not what your customers are trying to solve for. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHdS_4GsKmg&t=718 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHdS_4GsKmg&t=718
- Blakestr 7y ago
  You know I was just saying to someone the other day, the VR headset has NOTHING to do with it, it's just a matter of putting you on in a scene, it's a means to an end. Originally I explored the phrase "experience transfer" because I was taking real calls and replicating them, as much as I could, into VR, then have someone else go through it, it was as if I transferred experience from one person to another.... I wrote an article titled, "How many years does it take me to have 10 years experience" exploring the possibility of this. Ultimately, First Responders just want to work out or hone these critical thinking skills, as easily as they can get good at practicing a rope knot. How does this sound: "Uses VR to allow First Responders to gain experience faster." This video is awesome, thank you! I'll probably need to watch it twice.
seventhtiger 7y ago
As a Toastmasters veteran I can say that this really is a common issue. Great job to you and the OP for realizing it. The two extremes are too conversational and too concise. Personally my nature was to be concise and deliver information efficiently. But a piece of advice I give commonly these days is "information is the enemy of story." If you want to evoke an action (inspire) or change an opinion (persuade) you need emotional engagement. Narratives are your more powerful emotional engagement tool, and information weakens them.

samcodes 7y ago

To run with this, I assume your potential customers aren't looking explicitly for "VR training". They're probably looking for "training that takes less time and/or increases $success_metric" - can you take this angle? Do you have data that show something like "patients treated by EMS workers trained with $our_product have $improved_success_metrics"? Or maybe it takes less time? Something like "Spend less time on training. Our VE training takes 50% of the time as traditional training while improving $test_outcome"?

Blakestr 7y ago
I do have some benchmarks that are common sense in terms of tracking performance. It's challenging to link it directly to success metrics although that's a long term goal. The time is another one to push in terms of advertising - You can setup a virtual scene instantly and clean it up just as fast. I'll have to make sure my application has those benchmarks highlight appropriately. Thank you for your comment!

Blakestr 7y ago

Thanks for confirming my suspicions, I didn't really like adding anything to that original statement. I need to remember that just because the description is brief and in many cases, not flashy, doesn't mean it can't be exciting. If you are discovering the next big thing, I guess a decent analogy would be a sailor spotting a small, nondescript distortion on the horizon. Could that be land?! The public speaking isn't a problem, VR is a new form of training for the Fire Service which will allow users to become overwhelmed by simulated chaos, identify their weaknesses and correct them. In regards to what my customers want, well, I started this years ago because I wanted a product that didn't exist. It's more than that however, there are multiple stakeholders for a single product: Mind you, these stakeholders could widely vary: Fire Officer - USER - (he is in the trenches, on the streets) Battalion/District - USER/Possible Customer (Taking a more supervisory role, although still runs larger scenes) Fire Chief - CUSTOMER - Typically will approve a budget to be submitted County/City Manager/Councilmember/Mayor/ETC - CUSTOMER'S BOSS - Approves Budget submitted by Fire Dept Taxpayers - CUSTOMER'S BOSS's BOSSES - Can complain of wasteful spending While any weighting I could give to these would be subjective, I obviously gear my product and marketing towards the user and the customer. When speaking with a Fire Chief, I invite him to consider putting their City manager INSIDE the VR simulator so they can see how challenging his job is and why he is requesting the budget he's requesting. (involuntary empathy) Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comment!

guiambros 7y ago

Strongly suggest to read about "Jobs to be done" framework, by Clayton Christensen (video [1]; starts @ 12:00). I bet you the job to be done in your case is not "VR simulations for first respondents", but something much more powerful, like giving first respondents the hands-on practice they need to save lives. The VR part is a characteristic of your product, but not what your customers are trying to solve for. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHdS_4GsKmg&t=718 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHdS_4GsKmg&t=718

Blakestr 7y ago
You know I was just saying to someone the other day, the VR headset has NOTHING to do with it, it's just a matter of putting you on in a scene, it's a means to an end. Originally I explored the phrase "experience transfer" because I was taking real calls and replicating them, as much as I could, into VR, then have someone else go through it, it was as if I transferred experience from one person to another.... I wrote an article titled, "How many years does it take me to have 10 years experience" exploring the possibility of this. Ultimately, First Responders just want to work out or hone these critical thinking skills, as easily as they can get good at practicing a rope knot. How does this sound: "Uses VR to allow First Responders to gain experience faster." This video is awesome, thank you! I'll probably need to watch it twice.

seventhtiger 7y ago

As a Toastmasters veteran I can say that this really is a common issue. Great job to you and the OP for realizing it. The two extremes are too conversational and too concise. Personally my nature was to be concise and deliver information efficiently. But a piece of advice I give commonly these days is "information is the enemy of story." If you want to evoke an action (inspire) or change an opinion (persuade) you need emotional engagement. Narratives are your more powerful emotional engagement tool, and information weakens them.