We’re looking for another teammate. This time we’re looking for someone who is completely focused on improving conversion and retention. You love moving the needle, one small step at a time. This job is all about seeing untapped potential.
Conversion could be financial (get more people to start a trial or complete it – what we consider a “sale”), or outcome-based (inspire people to create more Basecamp projects by showing them creative ways to use Basecamp they never thought of before). Or something else.
Retention could be reducing cancellations, or reducing unsubscribes from our mailing list, or increasing the number of people who log into Basecamp every day. Or something else.
You should…
You should be great at figuring out which words or phrases hook people instead of letting them get away. We believe the right words at the right time can make all the difference.
You should look at a sign up form like…
…and already know three ways to significantly improve conversion.
You should be great at understanding what motivates people. This requires deep insight into the decision making process. You should know why people buy, why people don’t buy, why people buy more of something they already have, and why people who bought decide not to buy any more.
You should look at a screen like…
…and think to yourself – “if they rearranged this, highlighted that, or renamed this other thing, they’d increase sales by at least 25%.”
You should be great at knowing how to help people find value in something they already have. There are always more ways to use something than the ways you already use it.
You should look at a new project like…
…and say “no, no, no… a better way to get someone started on a new project is like this…”
Or you should look at an email like…
…and think “You’re missing a big opportunity to get more people to take action here. If we…”
Ideas and execution
This is not just a job for an idea person – it’s about ideas and execution. You’ll be expected to write the copy. You’ll be expected to implement the designs. You’ll be expected to shepherd ideas from start to finish – not just to toss them out there for other people to worry about.
You should love to propose, experiment, implement, execute, and measure. You may not be able to take everything on 100% yourself, but you try your best before you hit your limits and have to ask for help.
The challenge: Double our sales
We’d like to double sales over the next 12 months without making deep material changes to our products. We don’t believe it’s possible. Change our minds. Convert us.
Can you do it?
If this sounds like something you’re great at, we’d love to talk to you. This is a new position at 37signals, so you’ll be in charge of making it work.
You’ll be part of the best overall team in the business. From ops, to programming, to design, to support, to data, to video – we’re ready to work together to see your bright ideas through.
To apply
Send an email titled [Conversion] to [email protected] telling us why you’re the one. How you tell us is up to you.
Our office is based in Chicago, but our team is spread out all over the world. You can work from anywhere. We just require a few trips to Chicago a year when the whole company gets together.
We’ll be accepting applications until June 4.
This is a chance to do the best work of your career. We know you’re out there. Get in touch.
Zarel
on 14 May 12Good Luck Jason!
Zarel
on 14 May 12Jason, are you influenced by bezos ? I don’t know, I just feel something is missing on 37signals.
Laurent
on 14 May 12Interesting position… What would be the name for such a job ?
Anonymous Coward
on 14 May 12I do remember “harsh” rejections of customer suggestions and you tellng customers to leave if they want more advanced features. That 37s would not complicate the product because they would miss the newbie market.
With that biz model, I’d expect retention to be low for growing companies/projects. And no “words” will help that anyway. So don’t change your messaging to try to keep those growing projects/companies.
So maybe it’s just a matter of focusing your messaging on your target newbie market, and accept low retention for growing companies/projects. Let them migrate to Asana, etc. Don’t try to make your messaging fit both camps because your product does not. That would make your newbie-oriented message watered down.
Like MacDonalds, their entry level training is so good that they don’t care if a new employee quits after a month.
George
on 14 May 12“The challenge: Double our sales”
Only doubling? And i thought this should be a challenge.
JF
on 14 May 12George: We look forward to receiving your application.
David
on 14 May 12@JF
What happened to Noah?
I thought Noah was hired to do this
JF
on 14 May 12David: Noah is alive and well and focused on a variety of other data/code projects at 37signals. We’re looking for someone entirely focused on conversion/retention. This person will work closely with Noah.
Bruce
on 14 May 12I’ve have some great ideas to take ownership and help grow 37s’ business. Will be sending an email shortly.
Rishi
on 14 May 12I like how you guys believe in the power of good copy writing. Looking forward to seeing the improvements in your product and learning from them.
Good luck on your search!
Bruce
on 14 May 12I have*
Rick F
on 14 May 12@JF
How much authority will this position have without needing to consulting with you?
1. can this person change product pricing?
2. does this person have ultimate design authority (e.g. win design decision conflicts between this person and a 37signals existing designer)
3. If this person attained the goal of doubling revenue but it was all through increasing Job Board or Deck ads, would that be considered a “successful year”?
I’m assuming a lot of the answers to the questions above would be “no”, which would then make this position have all the negatives of responsibility with no authority.
Dave
on 14 May 12Do these people actually exist?
Pretty sure any company can put up an advert for someone to double their sales.
“We’re pretty good at what we do, but we want someone to make us look rubbish!” Just sounds a bit like someone got back from the gym after a big session and is pumped full of testosterone. “25%! Three ways! Double sales! Hell yeah, I’m gonna put a job advert up and it’s gonna happen!”
But maybe I don’t know jack. Are there existing examples of people achieving this sort of thing?
Lance Jones
on 15 May 12@Dave, there are indeed people who know how to do this and who also make quite a nice living doing it. :-)
Doubling conversion is no easy feat though. You need deep insight into people’s motivations, pain points, anxieties, objections, and receptiveness to incentives—all of which vary from site to site, and business to business.
Someone who can do this well requires a mix of experience in user research, usability, UX design, copywriting, analytics, and A/B testing, most of which is not even taught in schools.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with Jason’s theory that someone can merely look at email copy or a page and know what needs to change, but with some decent customer insight and Web analytics in hand, the right person should certainly be able formulate a list of hypotheses on how to change user behavior—and then try to validate her assumptions thru testing.
@JF, I’ve been waiting for such a position to open up at 37signals (as I’m sure others have, too)...
15th comment
on 15 May 12what do i win?
Rob
on 15 May 12@JF, I like to watch how 37signals is growing. I can learn a lot from you.
I am very curious what will be your next moves. Looks to me like you are planning to “retire” or move to a new thing ;)
Ps: After all your experience you have now, what would you change in your Rework book? Something, what you couldn’t know before as you were smaller company and you would write it differently now.
iPhone Dev Guy
on 15 May 12This should be a great challenge for the lucky person that lands this position. Even better that they can work remotely.
Bryan
on 15 May 12@JF
How will the compensation for this position be structured?
Since the entire goal of the position is to increase sales, therefore making this a salesperson role, what will the split between base salary and commission pay look like?
For example, base pay is 45% of on target earnings. Quota is to 2x revenues.
JF
on 15 May 12I’m not sure I entirely agree with Jason’s theory that someone can merely look at email copy or a page and know what needs to change, but with some decent customer insight and Web analytics in hand, the right person should certainly be able formulate a list of hypotheses on how to change user behavior—and then try to validate her assumptions thru testing.
Reviewing analytics and other data is definitely part of this job. It’s not pure intuition.
Matt
on 15 May 12Slightly off topic – You have a 45 day trial – on the first day do you have 45 days left? Or 44 days left (because you’re in the first day)?
I guess having 44 days left on your first day might be confusing, but if you have 45 days left then that would mean that on your last day you have 1 day left, which implies one full day, which could also be confusing.
Which do you choose?
Bryan
on 15 May 12“We believe the right words at the right time can make all the difference.”
Sometimes action speaks louder than words. I have to believe some of what you seek can to be attributed to how you handle feature requests. I would bet you could easily “move the needle” if you roll out privacy and time tracking into the new Basecamp. I know you are working on these things and don’t want to rush. But it seems like you feel these things are somewhat important, but not critically important.
Maybe I should send in an application and prove to you that it is.
Peter
on 15 May 12Slightly off-topic: what about the “Across the pond? Join the 37signals Customer Support team!” job? Did you managed to find a suitable candidate? I think it would be great if you would be replying to job application emails, a definite no would be a lot better, than nothing.
JF
on 15 May 12Peter, no it hasn’t been filled. We’re still reviewing applications.
Chris Neumann
on 16 May 12@George – Doubling sales is probably a pretty stiff challenge here since I would guess the problem they’re facing is that growth has slowed because churn is killing the growth. IOW, if they’re adding 100 customers/day, they’re losing 100 to churn, so growth is 0, not 100. This is the “curse” of SaaS when the company gets more mature. The person who takes this job will need to be an “out of the box” thinker to bring the company to the next level.
I agree with the comment Lance Jones made – doubling sales will come from deep understanding of what problem the customer is trying to solve, and changing the entire marketing funnel to orient around identifying people who have that problem and trying to solve the problem for them. I’ve been using musthavescore.com with my clients to accelerate this learning process lately, with a lot of success.
Eoghan McCabe
on 16 May 12Awesome opportunity.
Taio
on 16 May 12So Noah was not able to do his job, instead of letting him go, you’re keeping him. This does not surprise me, reading his post I can tell he was not getting the job done. The person who can do this job well won’t need Noah, Noah may even be in the way.
Yipekaye
on 16 May 12where is DHH ? I never see him again. I am waiting for his fucking awesome post :)
Michael
on 16 May 12DHH is preparing his Facebook post for Friday afternoon in case the stock tanks.
Yipekaye
on 16 May 12@Michael, thanks, can’t wait :)
Andy
on 16 May 12@Yipekaye
He’s on the beach in the South of Spain. Seriously
Pamela
on 16 May 12While y’all are arguing about specific staffing and job descriptions, I thought I would throw out an idea that might assist whomever takes the new job.
37signals would do well to target not for profit organizations. i run a (for profit) manufacturing company that uses 37signals every day to assist us in coordinating purchasing, among other tasks. I also, however, am involved with not for profit boards and have recommended 37signals to them on many occasions. Strangely, they have a hard time picturing what the product can do for them. If your site contained extensive examples of the various modules being used to coordinate committees (Basecamp), committee meetings (Campfire) and store/organize committee records (Backpack) it would be an easier sell. Your products are sized perfectly for NFPs with members who are not necessarily geographically accessible to one another but board members are not always the most creative or visionary people so it needs to be really, really easy for them to see how it would fit their organization. Also, use small words because simple never hurts.
PS – I know it SEEMS like people should be able to understand that what works for the rest of the world will work for an NFP trust me when I say, sadly, “no.”
Pamela
on 16 May 12And another thing…. I’m assuming that you do know that Apple has managed to piss off a large number of small businesses who were avidly and happily using Steve Jobs’ favorite punching bag, MobileMe. In particular, the iDisk portion of MobileMe. The Apple Forums have several threads of unhappy people panicking about what they will do by 30 June since Dropbox et al doesn’t really do what most of us needed it to do. My company moved all that over to 37signals and, as it turns out, it’s both faster and easier for us to use. Here’s the talking point, being EASIER THAN APPLE is a big deal. A MARKETABLE deal. You should be on those forums every day making that point. Every person there is looking to pay for functionality that you already have. If you aren’t taking advantage of that than there’s a short bus with your name on it.
One last thing…. If you are REALLY serious about retention, than get your act together and make all of your modules FULLY functional on the iPad. Seriously, guys. Drive down to your nearest airport or subway station and try to tell me that the iPad isn’t the future of business computing. That you do not have reasonable iPad apps that support your core apps is an embarrassment to you and a problem for many users. If you want to get new users and keep them, get yourselves up on the biggest wave around. Fast. I know you are the masters of ignoring customer input but at some point, you do that at your own peril.
JD
on 16 May 12Taio, I have decided to let Noah go. Not in light of your comments though. He has been using Linux lately, and this simply cannot be tolerated.
Kevin B
on 17 May 12I love how you trolls assume that you have any clue in hell what Noah spends his time on.
who?
on 17 May 12Free. Account.
Alex
on 18 May 12Careful folks, they might fill this job today with a lesser candidate very quickly, so send in your application NOW.
I was working on the finishing touches of an analytics portfolio when Noah’s job was available. They shut down that opening in days when Noah, the “perfect” candidate – was hired that same week. I didn’t even get to show them what I could do for them. Don’t make the same mistake.
Dave Woodall
on 18 May 12Hey Jason,
Are you are interested in making a decision before 6/4, or do we have until then to submit?
Thanks! Dave
Mark
on 19 May 12Chaps, I’m sure bringing back the free for life plan would really help “sales”. I’m a paying customer after having used Classic for free about 2 years. 45 days isn’t enough for someone to fall in love.
In the 2 years before I was a paying customer, you also had a huge BC evangelist who brought in at least 3 paying companies. Think the new payment option might be a little myopic.
Don’t worry, I’m still an evangelist despite the above :)
Hal
on 21 May 12I hear some people really like gantt charts.
I love the “You have 23 days left on your unlimited free trial”.
If Noah was responsible then I can understand your letting him go. Who uses a yellow like that everyone knows purple is the new yellow.
This discussion is closed.