This post originally appeared on the Louisiana Technology Park blog.
Coming up with great ideas is often the easiest part of starting a business. The hard part: Finding paying customers for those great ideas.
“Entrepreneurs are blinded by passion — they think only a fool wouldn’t buy their invention,” says Martyn Lewis, CEO of Market-Partners and author of “How Customers Buy & Why They Don’t: Mapping and Managing the Buying Journey DNA.”
But if you want to win customers over, you’ll need to understand how people buy. We asked Lewis for his best advice on making that connection.
Get Inside the Customer’s Mind
When customers aren’t buying, it’s easy to think that they just need to see another demonstration or perhaps another graph or chart explaining the many benefits of your product or service. However, Lewis says this is the wrong approach. “For example, you’re asking people if they would buy your product, but you should also be asking them why they would buy it and when they would buy it,” he says. “And to get objective answers, don’t limit your queries to just your friends and family members.” You should also ask people who don’t know you, Lewis says.