Why Customers aren't Buying your Brilliant Product
And how to change that.
Here’s a scenario, let me know if it sounds familiar…
A couple of years ago you had a brilliant idea. You didn't realise that it was brilliant at first, but after a couple of months you realised that people whose opinion you respect thought it was a brilliant idea.
You have decided to try and make some money from your brilliant idea and have managed to persuade a seed funder that you are sufficiently dynamic and determined enough to turn your idea into commercial success.
With this money you have hired several enthusiastic members of staff with impressive expertise in the field of your idea and they are helping you to make it even better.
You have given prototype versions of your idea to several well-informed people and they have said very nice things about it.
Most of the people you speak to about your idea think that it might be useful in theory, but they don’t have the money/time/inclination to pay you for it at the moment.
Q: What do you do now?
A: Hire a communication expert to build your marketplace.
Surprised? A recent article in the Harvard Business Review explains why this is the logical next step. The problem is essentially this: your clients aren't buying because they don’t understand the significance of what you’re selling.
Key lesson: It isn't enough to have a brilliant idea, you must also communicate the significance of your idea to your potential customers.
This is understandably disheartening. We are led to believe that coming up with a brilliant idea will be the answer to all our money worries forever, but that simply isn't true. No matter how brilliant your idea, you cannot expect customers to understand it straight away.
A communications expert can help you find a way to present your idea to the marketplace in an effective manner.
Turning an idea into a commercial proposition is not something that necessarily comes easily to people with a background in engineering, research or software development (to name but a few examples). Understanding how the problem looks to an outsider without your specialist knowledge is also difficult.
By creating the right communication tools and putting out the right message, you can inform your customers about a problem they didn't know they had and provide them with a brilliant solution at the same time.
Authenticity is the key to good communication in today’s marketplace. Contact me on twitter @jerseysam to find out more.
