November 11, 2020

Pick one (redux)

Just the other day I sent a message (subject line: "Pick one") in which I basically said:

“You probably aren’t going to successful if you want to sell $1000 hand knit cashmere sweaters AND you want to work with homeless people as your target market.”

A flood of helpful people wrote in with some version of:

“Sell the sweaters for $2000 to rich people and give the extra $1000 to homeless people.”

Great idea!

But I fear my choice of extremes in this example blurs the real point I was trying to make, which is this:

You usually can’t sell whatever you want to whomever you want.

In other words, price buyers aren’t usually going to pay for luxury products and services.

And luxury buyers probably won’t buy products and services that they perceive as “cheap”.

So here’s a more realistic example:

You probably are going to struggle if...

1) You want to make a great living writing custom software

AND

2) You want to work with small knitting shops as your target market

In most cases, the knitting shop owner is not going to get enough value out of your custom software to justify the price you would have to charge for the effort.

Options?

You can EITHER find people who greatly value your custom software services, OR package your software expertise in a way that small knitting shops can afford.

Yours,

—J