This is the 16th, but really the “real” 15th post in this series, click here to read the first one.
In my last post I jumped out of chronology to respond to something in real time. In this post I go back in time again. Where was I? Oh yeah, I remember. Maybe you sell something that gets doors slammed in your face a lot, that sucks, I’ve been there also. But not this time, this time it’s worse. I actually have people quickly taking my call, listening to my proposition intently, and then saying “I’m all over it”.
You are probably thinking “What’s wrong with that, isn’t that what you want?”. Here’s the problem, as excited as they are on the phone, the don’t ultimately do anything. It’s human nature I guess. You meet the greatest couple on vacation. You spend your entire vacation hanging out with them because they are sooo cool. You’re like instant best-friends. When the vacation is over, you both say “we will definitely stay in touch” and then you never speak to them again.
Momentum is hard to create and very easily stopped. Getting prospects to act is like pushing a truck, as soon as you let go, it stops, unless you are lucky enough to be on a hill… preferably down-hill. It sometimes feels as though you could tell a prospect “Hey, I got these awesome $10 bills I’ll sell ya for $5 each”, “Really, let me go get my wallet”, and they never come back. What happens? Do they get distracted? Are they all just lying to me so I won’t feel badly. Like the restaurant owner, I would rather have you tell me my concept sucks! Well, I need to find out what the problem is.
I reach out to several people who told me they were “working on their content”. They all pretty much said the same thing “Still workin’ on it”, and yet I know they are not. Some said it was more work than they thought. I am thinking that we have become “Option 3″.
Today, everybody is hungry and looking for fast money. Long-range, even mid-range planning is basically gone, everyone is in “gotta pay the rent” mode. When faced with several potential income generating options, our’s is just not coming across as the fastest path to cash. Ironically, had most of these people spent a day or two on this months ago when we first spoke, they would all be generating revenue from our platform today. Instead most are still chasing their tails… how do I crack that nut? This is the most frustrating position for an entrepreneur: when everybody says your stuff is great, but they don’t act. If they said “its sucks” at least you would know that you have to go back to the drawing board, but where do you go in this situation?
I decide to come back to that later, and focus some time on our first platform and my real goal of enterprise level use. When I think of enterprise, I think of budgets and resources. Most of them have both. I go back to our marketing site and give it another look, through enterprise eyes. Clearly, since I put this together several things have happened. First of all, we have added a lot more features than are mentioned. But more important, the content is not properly targeted to enterprise. This actually happens a lot. You have your “ideal” target, but you also have all these tertiary targets, and you try and create a message that resonates with all of them. It ends up not resonating with any of them. I need to create some” forks”.
This is starting to remind me of the Social Media Engine project with Phil. Phil wanted to target MLM, I wanted to target SMBs, clearly the message had to be different, even if the product is the same. We settled on a landing page that asked which track you were interested in, a fork, you click and you are sent over to that content. The problem in my mind was SMBs were being asked “are you an smb or an mlm?” Thus planting the seed in SMBs heads that this product served MLM also and turning a lot of the SMBs off. This is real bad because the SMBs have money, the MLMrs are all broke. So I learn from my mistakes, and I know the “fork” needs to be right.
What am I forking? Well, on the “Free to Attend” front, as I have said many times, I really want enterprise. But enterprise is a long play. Enterprise usually means bureaucracy and politics and all the time that wastes. We need to start generating revenue. So I am looking at the “Get Rich Quick” crowd again as a jump-starter. The problem is, like MLM, most of the people pitching “How I made my Millions” are also broke. But they are spending money, even if it is their last few dollars, on webinars. But once again that damn competition has popped up, to spoil my plans.
Next Post: Competition at Every Turn
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