
Why you’re not making sales - wallflower
http://justinjackson.ca/sales/
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programminggeek
One other reason people aren't making sales is they aren't considering what
people buy when deciding what to build. I don't mean this just in a big sense,
I mean this in a very small, day to day sense, week to week sense.

I like to think of each product feature as a "marketing event". Before you add
a feature or do a release, you design things around how you are going to sell
it, how people will use it, and what the messaging might be for it. Then, when
you launch the feature, you email your users, blog about it, drop press
releases, go on podcasts, tweet the news, post to Facebook, and in general get
the word out.

This might seem basic to some people, but I'm continually surprised by just
how very little this is done by most companies or products. It is rare to see
a company that nails the basic concept of "do things and tell people".

Github seems consistently good about this. Their pattern is launch a feature,
blog about it, tweet about it, and their passionate users probably post it to
social media or write about it on their blogs.

Now, imagine if Github shipped the same features, but never blogged about
them. How much exposure would they miss out on?

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unclebucknasty
Meh. Nothing really new or insightful here. It's actually cartoonishly cliche
advice at this point.

There are absolutely companies that have succeeded wildly without taking this
approach, so it is not definitive by any means, in addition to not being
novel.

On the other hand, there are plenty of great products that people are
struggling to market effectively, for a number of reasons. Please, stop
misleading people with the notion that marketing is easy if one simply "builds
the right product".

When you're out there hustling and trying to solve tough sales and marketing
problems, it's frustrating to keep seeing the same watered-down pablum on
offer as advice.

It's even worse when the advice ends with "buy my product".

~~~
nerdnorth
What are some examples of companies that have succeeded without taking this
approach?

Also: examples of great products that people are struggling to market
effectively?

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _What are some examples of companies that have succeeded without taking this
> approach?_

Virtually any company that created a new product or product category. See what
others have posted on this thread as examples.

> _Also: examples of great products that people are struggling to market
> effectively?_

Well, I could, but the likely subsequent quibbling over products of which
you've probably never heard misses the point. So, instead, why don't I just
state the corollary to the implication in your question: everyone is aware of
every product that could be of great interest or use to them.

Because, that is effectively the corollary to this article as well.

There are marketing challenges that are completely divorced from the viability
of the product itself.

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progx
Absolutly.... not.

Companies like Apple, Amazon, google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or developers of
things like WhatsApp did NOT do it this why.

They build something for their own needs or something they think someone want
to use.

So what is now right and what is wrong?

~~~
unclebucknasty
Indeed. Many innovations fit this description: products that people didn't
know they needed or couldn't even imagine, until invented.

~~~
ams6110
Well it's the classic Henry Ford quip: "If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'."

That doesn't mean that there wasn't a more fundamental pain that people were
feeling: getting around more quickly.

So no, it's not always the best idea to solve the problem the person has, as
they literally describe it. But if you are not solving either their perceived
problem or their underlying real problem, they are not going to buy your
solution.

Few people imagined an iPhone before they saw one, but it did solve real
problems.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _That doesn 't mean that there wasn't a more fundamental pain that people
> were feeling: getting around more quickly._

Yes, the product ultimately needs to be something that people need or want, of
course. But, that is so self-evident as to be a non-statement. Certainly no
need to write an article about that.

It's the advocated approach/conclusion that is nonsense. Failure to ask people
what they need or want as this article and many before it advocate, is not
_the problem_. In fact, such an approach can be counterproductive.

What has gotten old (and was never true) is people advocating this as _the_
way to build a product/company.

The reason this matters is because it obscures the real point: Marketing is
hard and is its own animal. There are many other moving parts involved in
getting a product to market in a manner that reaches and compels the intended
audience. To say that people aren't selling because they didn't build the
right product is so simplistic and misleading that it does earnest
entrepreneurs a disservice.

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orionblastar
First you cannot sell anything unless you figure out your target market. In
order to do that you need to find a problem in the target market that isn't
solved or isn't solved very well, then solve it and make a product and/or
service for it. Make sure it is a large market or else you will niche market
yourself into a hard to grow area.

Second if there is a goldrush for something, instead of becoming a miner,
become a general store and sell them tools, picks, and shovels instead. If you
write programs write libraries, development tools, templates, websites and
ebooks on the subject, and other things. Remember that in most goldrushes
miners will find fool's gold or not find any gold at all. But the ones selling
them the tools will always earn money.

Third take care of your customers so they become repeat customers. You might
have to offer them discounts or free stuff, as long as it helps them decide to
keep coming back.

Fourth do a SWATT analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Analysis, Threats, Trends.
Focus on your strengths, cover your weaknesses, analyze everything you can,
look at threats like competitor's products and tech that can make your product
obsolete, and then watch trends so you know how to avoid threats by innovating
your products and services.

~~~
programminggeek
I'm pretty sure it is SWOT analysis Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and
Threats, but the idea is the same.

~~~
orionblastar
Yes sorry about that, brainfart. :)

We used SWOTT, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and Trends.
Trends was added to SWOT because if a startup is not paying attention to
trends their products and services will get very old fast and lose their
customer base in an instant.

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mkolodny
I've definitely been guilty of this. It took me months of struggling, hoping
people will use my product before I really thought deeply about why they'll
use my product. Successful products address real needs. Intrinsic motivation
trumps all else.

"Build something people want" and "find a pain that people need solved" are
the same things. While I don't think the four examples OP gave are the only
things people care about, they're great examples:

\- How will this make me more money? \- How will this save me more money? \-
How will this save me more time? \- How will this make me look good?

Those questions address real needs that people have. Anything that doesn't
directly address a need your customer has is just a feature.

Implicit in this is that you have to figure out who your customer is. Your
customer is the first person you'd ask to use your product. That's the person
whose needs you need to address.

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collin128
That depends on what and how much your product is.

For example -

A $10k per month email marketing service will need to go through many
different stages of approval and have multiple buying influences involved.

On the other hand,

A $10 per month Gmail add on could be purchased on a corporate card or even
one's personal card and then expensed.

Scenario 1 - no, building ONLY for the users is a bad idea because they aren't
the only ones buying.

Scenario 2 - yes, the purchase is small enough to be handled by the user or at
the highest the users boss (because they sign off on the expense reports).

We touch briefly on the subject in a blog post from last year:
[http://blog.voltagecrm.com/mapping-the-sales-process-
part-36...](http://blog.voltagecrm.com/mapping-the-sales-process-part-36/)

Hope that helps.

~~~
mijustin
I think appealing to the folks with the corporate credit card is best. They
can make faster purchasing decisions (often related to the amount of pain
they're feeling)

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bliti
I get the point the OP is making. Which is _don 't build anything without
being sure people need it and will use it_. I can't find any reason to argue
with that. Sure, there are examples of people building things that later went
on to be huge. But 99% of the time, you just have to talk to people and find
out what problems they want solved. And its not like I have known this for a
long time. I used to think I knew what people wanted, without asking them.

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nerdnorth
Do you think it's more important to build products for the end user, or
(especially in a B2B situation) the people that are paying for it?

