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Potential customers interested in idea but won't even sign up

Idea threads

LiveEntrepreneur

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I have been facing some challenges recently. I have been talking to potential customers and most of them like my idea, but there is one problem. I can't even get them to sign up, I managed to get a few but for the rest who liked my idea I have followed up with them at least 3 times. And no response. Has anyone had experience in this case and if so what should I do?

This is what I did for most of them:

Introduce my self and ask if I could speak to them ---> Ask them about the competition if they aren't liking the things that they are doing in a certain area ---> they say yes ---> I ask if I were to do "insert idea here", "Would you be interested in changing to my idea" ---> they say yes ---> then when I ask to sign up they say they will sign up but after constantly trying and asking again they don't make an account. It's like email marketing currently, for every 10 I get 1. Is my strategy ineffective you think or my there is not much actual interest in my idea? I remember reading somewhere, I think it was lean startup "The user may seem interested until you ask him to pull out his wallet" something like that, maybe it's similar.
 
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Ernman

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Ask them about the competition if they aren't liking the things that they are doing in a certain area ---> they say yes ---> I ask if I were to do "insert idea here", "Would you be interested in changing to my idea" ---> they say yes ---> then when I ask to sign up they say they will sign up but after constantly trying and asking again they don't make an account.
Change is very hard for people, the devil you know for the devil you don't. It would seem you haven't shown then enough benefits to motivate them to change. Try a new approach.
 

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"The user may seem interested until you ask him to pull out his wallet"

This is very true. Often people will appease you with words of confidence but saying yes and meaning yes are two different things.

You could try saying something like "what would it take to get you to sign up today?" to find out what their main objections are. Try rephrasing the offer. It will all be trial and effort. As you become more established it will get easier as you will then have history and can showcase other customers and provide their recommendation.

People are always wary of new and of change as @Ernman said.
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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Change is very hard for people, the devil you know for the devil you don't. It would seem you haven't shown then enough benefits to motivate them to change. Try a new approach.
That's very true.
 
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LiveEntrepreneur

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This is very true. Often people will appease you with words of confidence but saying yes and meaning yes are two different things.

You could try saying something like "what would it take to get you to sign up today?" to find out what their main objections are. Try rephrasing the offer. It will all be trial and effort. As you become more established it will get easier as you will then have history and can showcase other customers and provide their recommendation.

People are always wary of new and of change as @Ernman said.
Thanks for that advice. I'll give it a few days and try again and ask them that same question.
 

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Without knowing more specifics, there could be a number of things happening:
  • Your "ask" is too big--like proposing marriage on a first date. @458, who has a TON of experience in sales, says each sale is comprised of mini sales that lead up to the real sale. Maybe you need to insert smaller "asks" before asking for money--ladder them up to your the final "ask."
  • Identify/ask their objections, then decide how to counter and/or overcome those objections.
  • If you're pre-selling an idea that doesn't exist yet, getting the sale is much more difficult. You might need an MVP that prospects can play with before they're willing to pony up cash.
  • Maybe their pain is too low or the benefit from your solution is too small.
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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Without knowing more specifics, there could be a number of things happening:
  • Your "ask" is too big--like proposing marriage on a first date. @458, who has a TON of experience in sales, says each sale is comprised of mini sales that lead up to the real sale. Maybe you need to insert smaller "asks" before asking for money--ladder them up to your the final "ask."
  • Identify/ask their objections, then decide how to counter and/or overcome those objections.
  • If you're pre-selling an idea that doesn't exist yet, getting the sale is much more difficult. You might need an MVP that prospects can play with before they're willing to pony up cash.
  • Maybe their pain is too low or the benefit from your solution is too small.
Very interesting. Right now I just have a MVP almost like a landing page, but it is a functioning website. And all I ask for is a sign up no money required at the start. I understand I am selling them my idea, maybe I need to pitch it better. With the "pain is too low" I was thinking this might be a factor. Though I did ask them about the competitors and asked "Do you think its a big issue" and most of them said yes.
 
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Kevin88660

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I have been facing some challenges recently. I have been talking to potential customers and most of them like my idea, but there is one problem. I can't even get them to sign up, I managed to get a few but for the rest who liked my idea I have followed up with them at least 3 times. And no response. Has anyone had experience in this case and if so what should I do?

This is what I did for most of them:

Introduce my self and ask if I could speak to them ---> Ask them about the competition if they aren't liking the things that they are doing in a certain area ---> they say yes ---> I ask if I were to do "insert idea here", "Would you be interested in changing to my idea" ---> they say yes ---> then when I ask to sign up they say they will sign up but after constantly trying and asking again they don't make an account. It's like email marketing currently, for every 10 I get 1. Is my strategy ineffective you think or my there is not much actual interest in my idea? I remember reading somewhere, I think it was lean startup "The user may seem interested until you ask him to pull out his wallet" something like that, maybe it's similar.

I am a sales person.

There is no easy solution. Customers decide when they want to sign up and if they want to sign up.

So it boilds down to numbers and timing.

You have to have good prospecting strategies to generate large number of high qualities contacts for your sale pitches.

Call them and and if they dun give you what you want it means they are not ready, and you should call them again another time. Unless they specified that you do not call again, no always means “not now”.

I run law of large numbers on quality prospects to hunt for the right timing.
 

Roli

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I have been facing some challenges recently. I have been talking to potential customers and most of them like my idea, but there is one problem. I can't even get them to sign up, I managed to get a few but for the rest who liked my idea I have followed up with them at least 3 times. And no response. Has anyone had experience in this case and if so what should I do?

This is what I did for most of them:

Introduce my self and ask if I could speak to them ---> Ask them about the competition if they aren't liking the things that they are doing in a certain area ---> they say yes ---> I ask if I were to do "insert idea here", "Would you be interested in changing to my idea" ---> they say yes ---> then when I ask to sign up they say they will sign up but after constantly trying and asking again they don't make an account. It's like email marketing currently, for every 10 I get 1. Is my strategy ineffective you think or my there is not much actual interest in my idea? I remember reading somewhere, I think it was lean startup "The user may seem interested until you ask him to pull out his wallet" something like that, maybe it's similar.

This is an interesting problem, and I think there could be a few reasons they're saying no, a few jump instantly to mind. I'll generalise because without more data on what it is you do (feel free to PM), it's hard to pinpoint exactly.

1. Cognitive Load - This is difficult to overcome because you are trying to get people to act when they really don't want to.

Example 1: I call you up and ask if you'd like to pay 10% less on your cell phone bill. You say yes, but you still don't take up my offer to switch providers, it's free and it's easy, yet you still say no. Why?

Solution: The reason you say no is because it's too high a cognitive load, you weren't thinking about switching providers till I called you, and it just feels easier to end the call with me than it does to save yourself 10% on your bill.

Therefore if after I had asked if you'd like to pay less on your phone bill, I asked when your current contract was up, and if I could call you back at that point to switch, I would have more success. Why?

Because you are now shifting the decision to a time when you know you will be thinking about getting a new contract and possibly a new phone too. If I then made it clear that whilst you could switch immediately with no penalty, however I was prepared to wait, you might even take me up on my offer then and there. If not, no problem, you're expecting me to phone back.

So if your sector has some kind of natural break point, or you can work out when these people are more likely to be thinking about trying your idea. Or even asking them, by saying something along the lines of; I don't expect you to signup on the back of this call because you weren't thinking about this right now, is there a better time for me to contact you?

Show them you're confident enough in your product to take it away from them.

Example 2: Cognitive load can take another form in the shape of free trial cognitive load, whereby somebody doesn't want to sign up for a free trial, because they know that they'll probably forget about it and start paying for something they don't want. It's why I, you and almost everyone else does not sign up for every free trial they come across.

Solution: If the free trial ends automatically, and/or it doesn't require financial details, then I'm much more likely to sign up. If there are enough features to enjoy the product for free, however there are others that only get unlocked if you pay, then sign ups will increase.

So that might look like you offering the full service for free for seven days, after which all the key features are greyed out, and a note asking them to pay for access.

The key is making sure they know there is zero cognitive load by signing up with you.

2. Free means bad whilst paid equals good.

Example: @Walter Hay has an excellent thread on importing and a coexisting book on the same subject, in those he talks about how he started his business selling an industrial cleaner that was better than the rest, and thus more economical.

At first he found it hard to sell, because when he went back to see what they thought of his free samples, the customer hadn't even opened the cans.

Solution: He started charging for the samples - So instead of offering a free trial, offer 50% off, or maybe more, as long as you make it clear in their minds that they will be paying 100% after the trial.

This is probably my favourite solution, because it plays on the cognitive bias most of us have, that the more something costs, the better it must be. Plus it ensures that they'll actually use the service during the trial period because nobody wants to waste money.

3. A+ is better than A But Is it better enough?

Example: I call you up and ask if you'd like your energy company to charge you $10 less per year on your bill. Of course, you would, an energy bill is an expense, and you try and keep expenses down.

Now if I ask you to switch to my energy company and I'll charge you $10 less per year, you now just can't be bothered, because $10 over the course of a year just isn't worth the time it would take to fill out the form.

Solution: This is tough to answer, because if you have a non differentiating product like energy, then you don't have much to go on other than cost. However you might have something with many features and factors, therefore it might be a case of pushing some of those other features.

This one is a bit woolly because I don't know what you do, so hopefully your A+ is significantly better than your competitor's A.

4. Wrong Medium - Your problem could be as simple as you are contacting your prospects in the wrong way.

From your post it seems like you're phoning these prospects and then asking them to sign up online. - If that is not the case, then disregard this next piece of advice.

Example: You're driving along and you see a billboard advertising www.wowamazingproducts.com, and you think, wow, amazing! I must check that out when I get home. But then you get home, you've forgotten all about wowamazingproducts.com and you don't check it out. Why?

Solution: Clearly the reason you don't check out a website you see on a billboard, is because the billboard is by the side of the road and you are busy driving. If you saw the site when you were browsing the web, they would definitely capture you as a customer.

In your situation you need to get these people when they are in the right place, so you can either try making the site part of your pitch. After they say yes, they think your idea is great, take them to the site and sign them up there and then.

If this feels unnatural to you, then get them to the site early on in your pitch, I've sold products like this before, and if people have given you their time in the first place, they have no problem logging onto a site, in fact most people appreciate the visual aid to go with your words.

When it comes to the crunch say something along the lines of; Let me show you the signup process, it's so simple and you can get all the stuff we've just talked about for free. Just click on_____, do you see it? Great, well as you can see it's completely free ....

The second best thing is to make an email appointment with them, tell them that you are going to send them the link to the trial. Give them an exact time and stick to it, it may be in five minutes or an hour (try and find out their immediate movements after the call is going to end). People are much more likely to act on information that they have specifically requested.

In addition to this, if you could find a tool that can make each signup a one time only code that you can send to them, you can then add into the pitch the fact that this isn't a throw-away email, and if they want it fine, however if not tell you now so you don't waste your code.

Conclusion:

- Lighten the cognitive load - talk to them at a time they expect, and don't make exiting the trial to hard.

- Charge a discount price - Think about charging for your trial, especially if it is a premium type offering. People will use what they pay for, increasing the chance of them becoming regular paying customers.

- Differentiate - Make sure the thing that you are pushing is the thing people really care about. They may care, but do they care enough?

-
Right Time - Make sure you're not losing them simply because they're forgetting about you, get them on the site and signing up when you're on the phone with them.

Hope this helps, if I think of anything else I'll add to this, and like I said, I'm happy to receive PMs if you think it's necessary.
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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This is an interesting problem, and I think there could be a few reasons they're saying no, a few jump instantly to mind. I'll generalise because without more data on what it is you do (feel free to PM), it's hard to pinpoint exactly.

1. Cognitive Load - This is difficult to overcome because you are trying to get people to act when they really don't want to.

Example 1: I call you up and ask if you'd like to pay 10% less on your cell phone bill. You say yes, but you still don't take up my offer to switch providers, it's free and it's easy, yet you still say no. Why?

Solution: The reason you say no is because it's too high a cognitive load, you weren't thinking about switching providers till I called you, and it just feels easier to end the call with me than it does to save yourself 10% on your bill.

Therefore if after I had asked if you'd like to pay less on your phone bill, I asked when your current contract was up, and if I could call you back at that point to switch, I would have more success. Why?

Because you are now shifting the decision to a time when you know you will be thinking about getting a new contract and possibly a new phone too. If I then made it clear that whilst you could switch immediately with no penalty, however I was prepared to wait, you might even take me up on my offer then and there. If not, no problem, you're expecting me to phone back.

So if your sector has some kind of natural break point, or you can work out when these people are more likely to be thinking about trying your idea. Or even asking them, by saying something along the lines of; I don't expect you to signup on the back of this call because you weren't thinking about this right now, is there a better time for me to contact you?

Show them you're confident enough in your product to take it away from them.

Example 2: Cognitive load can take another form in the shape of free trial cognitive load, whereby somebody doesn't want to sign up for a free trial, because they know that they'll probably forget about it and start paying for something they don't want. It's why I, you and almost everyone else does not sign up for every free trial they come across.

Solution: If the free trial ends automatically, and/or it doesn't require financial details, then I'm much more likely to sign up. If there are enough features to enjoy the product for free, however there are others that only get unlocked if you pay, then sign ups will increase.

So that might look like you offering the full service for free for seven days, after which all the key features are greyed out, and a note asking them to pay for access.

The key is making sure they know there is zero cognitive load by signing up with you.

2. Free means bad whilst paid equals good.

Example: @Walter Hay has an excellent thread on importing and a coexisting book on the same subject, in those he talks about how he started his business selling an industrial cleaner that was better than the rest, and thus more economical.

At first he found it hard to sell, because when he went back to see what they thought of his free samples, the customer hadn't even opened the cans.

Solution: He started charging for the samples - So instead of offering a free trial, offer 50% off, or maybe more, as long as you make it clear in their minds that they will be paying 100% after the trial.

This is probably my favourite solution, because it plays on the cognitive bias most of us have, that the more something costs, the better it must be. Plus it ensures that they'll actually use the service during the trial period because nobody wants to waste money.

3. A+ is better than A But Is it better enough?

Example: I call you up and ask if you'd like your energy company to charge you $10 less per year on your bill. Of course, you would, an energy bill is an expense, and you try and keep expenses down.

Now if I ask you to switch to my energy company and I'll charge you $10 less per year, you now just can't be bothered, because $10 over the course of a year just isn't worth the time it would take to fill out the form.

Solution: This is tough to answer, because if you have a non differentiating product like energy, then you don't have much to go on other than cost. However you might have something with many features and factors, therefore it might be a case of pushing some of those other features.

This one is a bit woolly because I don't know what you do, so hopefully your A+ is significantly better than your competitor's A.

4. Wrong Medium - Your problem could be as simple as you are contacting your prospects in the wrong way.

From your post it seems like you're phoning these prospects and then asking them to sign up online. - If that is not the case, then disregard this next piece of advice.

Example: You're driving along and you see a billboard advertising www.wowamazingproducts.com, and you think, wow, amazing! I must check that out when I get home. But then you get home, you've forgotten all about wowamazingproducts.com and you don't check it out. Why?

Solution: Clearly the reason you don't check out a website you see on a billboard, is because the billboard is by the side of the road and you are busy driving. If you saw the site when you were browsing the web, they would definitely capture you as a customer.

In your situation you need to get these people when they are in the right place, so you can either try making the site part of your pitch. After they say yes, they think your idea is great, take them to the site and sign them up there and then.

If this feels unnatural to you, then get them to the site early on in your pitch, I've sold products like this before, and if people have given you their time in the first place, they have no problem logging onto a site, in fact most people appreciate the visual aid to go with your words.

When it comes to the crunch say something along the lines of; Let me show you the signup process, it's so simple and you can get all the stuff we've just talked about for free. Just click on_____, do you see it? Great, well as you can see it's completely free ....

The second best thing is to make an email appointment with them, tell them that you are going to send them the link to the trial. Give them an exact time and stick to it, it may be in five minutes or an hour (try and find out their immediate movements after the call is going to end). People are much more likely to act on information that they have specifically requested.

In addition to this, if you could find a tool that can make each signup a one time only code that you can send to them, you can then add into the pitch the fact that this isn't a throw-away email, and if they want it fine, however if not tell you now so you don't waste your code.

Conclusion:

- Lighten the cognitive load - talk to them at a time they expect, and don't make exiting the trial to hard.

- Charge a discount price - Think about charging for your trial, especially if it is a premium type offering. People will use what they pay for, increasing the chance of them becoming regular paying customers.

- Differentiate - Make sure the thing that you are pushing is the thing people really care about. They may care, but do they care enough?

-
Right Time - Make sure you're not losing them simply because they're forgetting about you, get them on the site and signing up when you're on the phone with them.

Hope this helps, if I think of anything else I'll add to this, and like I said, I'm happy to receive PMs if you think it's necessary.
Thanks so much for this in depth information, really appreciate it. It's tough to know what the reason is. Tomorrow I am going to ask them "What would it take you to sign up?". I wasn't phoning them just chatting to them online, they seem to have an interest just not enough to sign up. Obviously the offer isn't selling it self. I just thought of using fear of missing out tactic like, "If you don't sign up today you will miss out on being one of the first customers to our site when it launches, and you will miss out on massive discounts" for example.
 
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Rabby

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The "urgency push" tactic works for some people, but it would drive me right off if executed poorly... I recommend caution with it. If you do something like that, make it real... in other words, commit to a date when you will actually start charging, and maybe a maximum number of "pilot users." Then you can tell them hey, no pressure, but the free pilot program is ending on <date> or when I have <number> users. Whatever it is should be 100% true and reasonable.

I do like the idea of asking them if there is anything preventing them from signing up. I would say something like, "hey this is a new product, and I want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up, would you mind helping me?" You could even walk them through signing up over the phone or in person... get them to actually do it while talking to you.

How hard is it for them to sign up? Like, put in email and click button? Or is there a bunch of information required?

Oh! One more thing. If you're educating them about your product, get something in return. A promise, a commitment, information about their related business problems, etc. Don't just let them get a free education and then string you along. You're equal to them, so every conversation should benefit you both in some way. If not... something may be wrong with the relationship. Possibly something that can be fixed, but something.

You can use @Roli 's response above as a master checklist... that's fantastic.
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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The "urgency push" tactic works for some people, but it would drive me right off if executed poorly... I recommend caution with it. If you do something like that, make it real... in other words, commit to a date when you will actually start charging, and maybe a maximum number of "pilot users." Then you can tell them hey, no pressure, but the free pilot program is ending on <date> or when I have <number> users. Whatever it is should be 100% true and reasonable.

I do like the idea of asking them if there is anything preventing them from signing up. I would say something like, "hey this is a new product, and I want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up, would you mind helping me?" You could even walk them through signing up over the phone or in person... get them to actually do it while talking to you.

How hard is it for them to sign up? Like, put in email and click button? Or is there a bunch of information required?

Oh! One more thing. If you're educating them about your product, get something in return. A promise, a commitment, information about their related business problems, etc. Don't just let them get a free education and then string you along. You're equal to them, so every conversation should benefit you both in some way. If not... something may be wrong with the relationship. Possibly something that can be fixed, but something.

You can use @Roli 's response above as a master checklist... that's fantastic.

Legit the sign up is super simple but I understand that users want it to be easy as possible. You just put your full name, email, and just 3 fields to fill out to see if are eligible for my product. But in the fields they can put anything. I've noticed a bug in my system where they can skip the sign up information part, and I was wondering why I was missing details. But it's a mandatory part of my idea. Just need to fix the loop hole but it won't fix whether they want to put in that information.
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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I am a sales person.

There is no easy solution. Customers decide when they want to sign up and if they want to sign up.

So it boilds down to numbers and timing.

You have to have good prospecting strategies to generate large number of high qualities contacts for your sale pitches.

Call them and and if they dun give you what you want it means they are not ready, and you should call them again another time. Unless they specified that you do not call again, no always means “not now”.

I run law of large numbers on quality prospects to hunt for the right timing.
Well holy crap can I say I think you are right lol. I contacted them again to sign up and one of them told me that they've been busy in their work. And they are doing it soon. I guess timing is a factor. I know with email marketing is important but in this situation didn't even come to mind I guess it's the same.
 
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Why would I sign up with someone who "has an idea"? I want an expert with proven results.

Look at this forum. Would you buy a book and sign up for a forum if the guy behind it "had an idea" he wanted to run by you?

What is your idea?
 

Kevin88660

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Well holy crap can I say I think you are right lol. I contacted them again to sign up and one of them told me that they've been busy in their work. And they are doing it soon. I guess timing is a factor. I know with email marketing is important but in this situation didn't even come to mind I guess it's the same.
I read many sales theories and books.

“Persuasion” today is very overrated. In reality you cannot persuade someone from a no to yes. It wastes time and can risk backfiring. A standard good presentation will be sufficient. Don’t get obsessed with “what did I say wrong that caused the no”.

The reality I see is people decide if they want to buy and when they want to buy. Understanding that leads to dramatic improvement in my sales result.

Sales to me is a search engine game. It is finding enough high quality contacts and contacts them regularly. No means “not now”.

So our efforts should be channeled into prospecting to increase our base of quality contacts and maintaining the contacts.
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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Why would I sign up with someone who "has an idea"? I want an expert with proven results.

Look at this forum. Would you buy a book and sign up for a forum if the guy behind it "had an idea" he wanted to run by you?

What is your idea?
That makes sense, my idea is a subscription to use a service.
 
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I have been facing some challenges recently. I have been talking to potential customers and most of them like my idea, but there is one problem. I can't even get them to sign up, I managed to get a few but for the rest who liked my idea I have followed up with them at least 3 times. And no response. Has anyone had experience in this case and if so what should I do?

This is what I did for most of them:

Introduce my self and ask if I could speak to them ---> Ask them about the competition if they aren't liking the things that they are doing in a certain area ---> they say yes ---> I ask if I were to do "insert idea here", "Would you be interested in changing to my idea" ---> they say yes ---> then when I ask to sign up they say they will sign up but after constantly trying and asking again they don't make an account. It's like email marketing currently, for every 10 I get 1. Is my strategy ineffective you think or my there is not much actual interest in my idea? I remember reading somewhere, I think it was lean startup "The user may seem interested until you ask him to pull out his wallet" something like that, maybe it's similar.
I think you're close to winning their hearts...but have to throw in the last jab to get them in.

Like you already know people hold back when it comes to paying. And they do it because they don't see reasons to.

It's time you give them reasons to.

1. Put your proposed solution in front of them instead of talking more. This could be an MVP.
2. Create an offer that'll make them feel stupid to refuse. (Your goal shouldn't be to profit here but gaining trust).
3. Throw in the triggers humans respond to in your message: scarcity, fear of loss, risk free trial versions etc.

Do things that'll make them take you seriously. They don't see you as a business yet but an individual.

Cheers!
 

LiveEntrepreneur

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Hey everyone I had a question. I just realized that I went about this in an expensive way. As you know I built a landing page and that over $1500 dollars. And I just asked people who I was talking and I asked, "Is this problem bad enough (referring to competitors) that you would switch to my product?" so far it seems they are saying no. But there is another pain point that they have that pretty much all my potential customers are having. When I talked about my idea they told me about their problem.

My question is, do you guys think convincing people on my idea is not as great of an idea if I am not solving what they REALLY want solved? I did have one person say, if I can solve it for them, that they will pay me. This reminds me of Andy Black's earlier post of helping people.
 

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Hey everyone I had a question. I just realized that I went about this in an expensive way. As you know I built a landing page and that over $1500 dollars. And I just asked people who I was talking and I asked, "Is this problem bad enough (referring to competitors) that you would switch to my product?" so far it seems they are saying no. But there is another pain point that they have that pretty much all my potential customers are having. When I talked about my idea they told me about their problem.

My question is, do you guys think convincing people on my idea is not as great of an idea if I am not solving what they REALLY want solved? I did have one person say, if I can solve it for them, that they will pay me. This reminds me of Andy Black's earlier post of helping people.


Bingo!

This is what I was saying when I said is your A+ better enough than your competitor's A product, that your customers can be bothered to switch.

The answer was a resounding NO.

However you have now found the pain point for which they will pay you for, get on it, that will get you the signups you need.
 
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Bingo!

This is what I was saying when I said is your A+ better enough than your competitor's A product, that your customers can be bothered to switch.

The answer was a resounding NO.

However you have now found the pain point for which they will pay you for, get on it, that will get you the signups you need.
Oh F*ck. I wasted money which I could of saved with a single question lol. Well good lesson to know for next time. Things are starting to become clearer to me now. I think I'm almost having an epiphany lol. New rule for next time "Have an idea? ----> ask lots of customers if its a big issue for them ---> if yes ask if they would switch products ----> if no then ask them what their major pain point is ---> ask them if they would pay for a solution ---> if yes ask a price ---> if no (well this part here doesn't make sense lol).

The other mistake I made I think was, not asking them what their problem is instead selling them on a small problem when it's just peanuts compared to what their actual problem is. Great lessons for next time! I think...

Though one thing I think sometimes is "If I have good marketing they will come". I think it's true in some cases.

Thanks Roli.
 

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But there is another pain point that they have that pretty much all my potential customers are having. When I talked about my idea they told me about their problem.

My question is, do you guys think convincing people on my idea is not as great of an idea if I am not solving what they REALLY want solved? I did have one person say, if I can solve it for them, that they will pay me.
The market is telling you what it wants. Listen to it.
 

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Bingo!

This is what I was saying when I said is your A+ better enough than your competitor's A product, that your customers can be bothered to switch.

The answer was a resounding NO.

However you have now found the pain point for which they will pay you for, get on it, that will get you the signups you need.
Hey Roli, I had a some questions regarding this quote, "This is what I was saying when I said is your A+ better enough than your competitor's A product, that your customers can be bothered to switch.".

Correct me if I'm wrong but I look at all these ideas like facebook, dropbox, dropshipping, all the messaging apps, etc. I get the feeling that if at the time of these ideas if you were to ask the market if they wanted it they would of said no. Though my question is do you think if it just provides value in general and with good marketing it can be successful? Like I've seen some pretty silly ideas, and they have gotten successful. What are your thoughts on this?

I was thinking if I solve their main pain point, is it worth it adding in my other idea that provides value? I am referring to the one which they said they liked but they wouldn't change their product to mind for just that.
 

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Correct me if I'm wrong but I look at all these ideas like facebook, dropbox, dropshipping, all the messaging apps, etc. I get the feeling that if at the time of these ideas if you were to ask the market if they wanted it they would of said no.

I believe you are wrong, however I get what you mean. I think you're saying if somebody had done a phone poll and asked, do you need Facebook? Whilst of course describing it, then they may well have said no.

However they were 'asked' by demonstration, and don't forget Facebook solved some of the 'problems' that Myspace had. Such as not letting anyone and everyone follow you and look at what you've posted and a number of other tweaks and improvements.

Some times the market has to be shown rather than asked, this still amounts to the same thing though.

Though my question is do you think if it just provides value in general and with good marketing it can be successful?

Yes. Like I say above, sometimes showing is better than telling, whatever method you employ, that message must get in front of enough people.

If people perceive it to be good value, they will buy.

If you build it (and then market it), they will come.

Like I've seen some pretty silly ideas, and they have gotten successful. What are your thoughts on this?

Give me some examples... Though we can never rule out entertainment value...

I was thinking if I solve their main pain point, is it worth it adding in my other idea that provides value? I am referring to the one which they said they liked but they wouldn't change their product to mind for just that.

If your other idea does not cost you extra, then sure why not?

This is like me calling you and saying; would you like to pay £10 less per year on your mobile phone, if so switch to me.

You then say, yeah a tenner isn't worth the hassle. I then say;

I'll also chuck in the latest iphone for £50 cheaper and only tie you to a 12 month contract as opposed to your current 24 months.

In that scenario you want the phone and the shorter contract, and hey, you might as well get the tenner off per year as well, and even though it's not a deal breaker, it just feels nice to have something extra.
 

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I believe you are wrong, however I get what you mean. I think you're saying if somebody had done a phone poll and asked, do you need Facebook? Whilst of course describing it, then they may well have said no.

However they were 'asked' by demonstration, and don't forget Facebook solved some of the 'problems' that Myspace had. Such as not letting anyone and everyone follow you and look at what you've posted and a number of other tweaks and improvements.

Some times the market has to be shown rather than asked, this still amounts to the same thing though.



Yes. Like I say above, sometimes showing is better than telling, whatever method you employ, that message must get in front of enough people.

If people perceive it to be good value, they will buy.

If you build it (and then market it), they will come.



Give me some examples... Though we can never rule out entertainment value...



If your other idea does not cost you extra, then sure why not?

This is like me calling you and saying; would you like to pay £10 less per year on your mobile phone, if so switch to me.

You then say, yeah a tenner isn't worth the hassle. I then say;

I'll also chuck in the latest iphone for £50 cheaper and only tie you to a 12 month contract as opposed to your current 24 months.

In that scenario you want the phone and the shorter contract, and hey, you might as well get the tenner off per year as well, and even though it's not a deal breaker, it just feels nice to have something extra.
The other features will cost me a lot more. I was thinking doing it 1 customer at a time solving the main issue and worrying about the other one after. Funny thing is if I was to solve the issue building the whole site like I wanted to would of been a much more expensive exercise lol. Maybe I am thinking of scaling way too early.

The answer to your question about silly products. Here are some
* Fidget spinners
* Pet rock
* Slinkys
* Was thinking of that microwave thing that holds bacon so all the fat drops, but I guess it is pretty smart and useful.
 
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