It’s not a secret that I’m a fan of 37 Signals and how they’ve built their business. What I didn’t know until yesterday was the number of customers they have. How many of those are paying it’s hard to know – but a good proportion I bet.

Jason Fried is the co-founder and president of 37 Signals and in his presentation below, taken from a Chicago conference last year, he outlines his company’s ethos for winning new customers.

It’s all about Market Leadership, as Ed Dale would say.

It’s also a brilliant case study for David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of PR and Marketing.

[quote]The video below will make old skool marketeers shake their heads in disbelief. [/quote]

At 12 mins ish Jason talks about a single blog post which explains the way 37 Signals have tested and implemented a flashing yellow bar to alert users to a change on the screen. This post has been read 800,000 times! How many of those hits have resulted in sales? Who knows – but a good few I bet.

The moral to this story is give away your secrets, build trust and people will buy from you.

If you have any interest in winning customers in the 2010’s, do yourself a favour and spend 20 mins watching this.