Don’t Miss A Chance To Tell People About Your Business Idea.

Sometimes we get our heads stuck behind our backsides and think that our ideas are so revolutionary that no one else should know about them,

Sometimes we tell ourselves that we are being annoying for wanting to tell the whole world about our idea.

My glass is alwats half-full — Anything you do to raise awareness about your idea is text-book marketing my fellow!

I am working on a financial technology startup (fintech) that will solve some deep problems in the insurance industry.

I know I know, me being in London you would expect me to be riding the wave and trying to disrupt the banking sector, like Transferwise and co.

At this moment in time, this idea is only known to a few people, including myself.

So whenever I speak to friends, family or strangers I never miss the opportunity to let others know about my idea.

Unlike most entrepreneurs, I don’t just go on about my idea for the sake of hearing my own lovely voice:-)

What I do is focus on the person I am speaking to and ask them questions and listen intently.

Its actually part market research and part marketing.

If there clearly is a problem which they would appreciate a solution to, I wrap up my idea around it and speak to them as if the problem has already been solved.

Its when they say, “OMG how come I didn’t know about it?”

Kerching!!!!

Is when I know that just maybe, I do have the solution after all.

It makes me want to run to my room and just lock myself in for days and write some code…

But I am not Mark Zuckerburg or any decent programmer for that matter.

I am more a sales and marketing guy.

Anyway,

Today I spoke to a guy at Natwest Bank about opening a business account for ClaimFriends, my start up company.

I was on the phone for 30 or so minutes describing the business, making up some financial projections etc etc

Its interesting really because even though you are not speaking to an investor (pitching), it does feel like a pitch of some sort.

In fact, if a normal person can’t understand the business then what chance does an investor have!

It reminds me of the film margin call, when the investment bank realises they are sitting on a ticking time bomb, the CEO asks one of the junior analyst to

“Explain it to me in plain english, as if you are speaking to a 10 year old”

I believe that if you are onto something, it should be clear to whoever you speak to what your business is about.

I know this because last time I tried to open a business account, the person on the other side of the phone, poor guy, failed to understand exactly what my business idea was all about.

I ended up just saying I am a freelancer who develops website.

I realised if I wanted to explain it, we would have wasted each others time.

But today, it was different.

I explained quiet simply that I am an insurance broker who helps people buy and claim on their insurance policies.

So far so good.

Everyone buys insurance products of some sort.

I went to explain that I am the middleman, I connect people and small businesses with insurers.

He got it!

If I really wanted to be difficult I could have said,

ClaimFriends is an online marketplace connecting millennials and SMEs with insurers and other stakeholders.

We are a mobile-first, cloud based, application that uses Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to service the needs of insurance customers.

And oh did I mention, that ClaimFriends is a FinTech startup?

Good luck trying to figure that out.

So instead I made it plain and simple for him to understand everything about ClaimFriends within a few words.

I even explained that the name of the company, odd as it may sound, is made up of two words, Claim and Friends, a bit like salesforce.

CLAIM: We buy insurance policies with the expectation that if anything goes wrong we will be able to claim — to get value from the investment so to speak.

FRIEND: And an insurance broker is your helper when buying and claiming from your insurance policy, more like a friend in need.

So we use technology in the financial services industry to help people and small businesses with their insurance needs.

All this happens on your mobile phone!

So after 30 minutes or so of being asked questions,

I then took the opportunity to ask him about his views on insurance and whether or not he buys insurance products.

He obliged and told me that he does spend more than £1,000 a year on insurance products (In the UK the average household spends about £800 on insurance products).

So he has 2 cars, a mortgage, so had purchased motor, life and home insurance products.

And he confessed that he was intrigued about my mobile app during the interview process.

And the one thing that really really really caught his attention, was the convenience of doing everything on his mobile phone!

Welcome to the new world order baby!

Now I was happy to know that this would be a massive convinience for him, but I thought to myself, “Is that it, is that all?”

Then he told me that he has worked with insurance products and probably is more knowledgeable than the average person about insurance products and appreciates their benefits etc

Ah, that explains why he was just excited about the convenience bit.

BUT

He conceded that the new generation (millennials as we call them in the tech sector) would really find it useful to have a mobile app that did everything for them.

I took the opportunity to give him an example that most people don’t know what an excess / deductible is — and its not because their less intelligent or negligent, they are just not BOTHERED with things that don’t matter!

They have snaps to take, vidoes to share on facebook, lives to live than be bothered with insurance clauses and jargon.

I told him that a group of young lads wanting to go on a stag do or group of girls on a hen night to lets say Spain, they wouldn’t care about the kind of risks they might face or the insurance products they need.

He agreed.

And I said to him with the ClaimFriends mobile app,

You just speak as if speaking to a friend, and we will determine the policy you need.

He was impressed, which made me happy:-)

He wanted to know when I will launch the app and was going to give me his e-mail address!

Talk about building a mail lists!

So once again, if you are an entrepreneur or anyone excited about what you do, never miss the opportunity to let even strangers how you are working on something to solve their problem.

Its all about the customer.

Who knows, I might decide to crowdfund this idea and probably or most likely he would invest!