Blindsided

It’s 6:53 on a Monday morning and Jack sits alone in his office above his workshop. He stares at the marketing spreadsheet for a new product he created.

It’s open on a tab called “What went wrong”.

Each row on the “What went wrong” tab is a different approach he tried, hoping to sell his new product to beef and dairy farmers: a livestock funnelling system.

The system bolts together 2 steel gates onto a narrow lane that funnels cattle through in a single-file line. A cage at the end of the lane holds 1 animal comfortable while a vet treats it.

He’s filling in the 4^th row, for his website rebuild he completed 2 months back in August. Before the site rebuild, Jack was averaging 1 enquiry every month. After the rebuild… still 1.

Jack uses the “What went wrong” tab to analyse how much each marketing attempt cost him, and what the outcome was.

1. Jack spent £5,413 to run 8 weeks of Google ads to farmers across Northern Ireland, which resulted in 6 calls and 1 sale. That’s a loss of £-3,177.29 Jack needs to swallow.

2. Then Jack spent £7,500 for a stand at the Balmoral Show, which got him 41 contacts that resulted in just 2 sales. Another loss of £-3,928.58 Jack needs to choke down.

3. He then e-mailed and called 163 farmers in June, which got him 0 sales but a lot of irritate farmers who were now likely never going to be interested in his product.

4. Finally, Jack spent £28,500 to rebuild his website, but nothing changed.

Jack’s the founder of a 16-person engineering firm in Cookstown, Ireland.

Over the past 12 years, he’s received repeat orders from 3 manufacturers, but rarely anything more than that.

After 12 years of building steel frames for other firms, Jack wants a product that his firm manufactures, so in mid-January – after a year in development – Jack launched his livestock funnelling system.

Jack assumed the hardest part about a product launch was designing and building the product. Jack already knew who he was selling to (which, he though, is the easy part).

Jack took a bank loan for £120,000 to build 21 funnelling systems and get this new product launched.

In the 9 months since the launch, Jack’s only sold 3, 18 are still standing in his firm’s yard, and he’s missed his monthly loan payment for the 3rd month in a row.

His bank sent him a notice yesterday at 1:42 pm demanding the arrears payment or he’ll have to repay the full £120,000 (with interest and fees) by the end of October.

Jack needs to find the money, somehow. He puts down a reason for every marketing failure he’s tried.

1. The Google ads brought in 6 enquiries but only 1 sale. Jack believes farmers don’t buy from Google ads.

2. Jack’s stand was in the far corner of the showground, past the food stalls. Jack believes the organisers gave him a poor spot.

3. Jack only got irritate farmers from his cold calling approach. Jack believes it was the wet weather. (It was after all raining for 2 days straight while he was calling.)

4. His new website only went live 2 months back. Jack believes Google needs more time to recommend his site to prospects.

But Jack’s only written down explanations of why he thinks each attempt failed. None of those are reasons.

Jack has interpretive blindness. He feels every failure, in the money he’s lost, but he can’t see what went wrong, or why it went wrong. Because Jack still can’t see the mistake he made before the launch.

To Jack, each failure (he believes) is either “bad luck”… or “bad timing”. And those phrases worsen Jack’s interpretive blindness.

Take the Balmoral Show. 41 people left their contact details at Jack’s stand, and 39 of them didn’t buy.

Maybe the price put off the 39 people. Or Jack’s stand did. Or maybe the rain did.

Or maybe those 39 people… were never going to buy.

Jack can’t tell what went wrong in each sale, so he doesn’t know what to change.

Jack spent over £41,000 on marketing. And 9 months he can never earn back.

He tried 4 different marketing techniques, and each one should’ve left Jack with a lesson he can use to improve… but they’ve only left him with guesses.

His 5th attempt will be a guess too.

Jack needs to find out why a farmer buys a livestock funnelling system, and when.

Your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ starts with the question most product launches skip: who will buy your product, and why?

Your research identifies

1. who buys your product, from data analysed in your business sector,

2. what your prospects have already tried, and rejected,

3. the exact words your prospects use to describe a problem to a colleague over a beer at the pub,

4. and what you can say that no other firm in your sector is saying.

Your research unfolds in steps:

• each step tells you something you didn’t know, and shapes the next,

• and in just a few short weeks your content hits them right between the eyes… and stops their scroll,

• we do over 80% of the work, your 20% is guidance and decisions,

• you take each step at whatever pace suits your week.

Once you know who buys your product and why, every marketing approach you take focuses precisely on the prospects most likely to buy, using the words your prospect uses.

A few weeks later, Jack attempts marketing strategy number 5 time… which fails again.

On a wet Friday afternoon, Jack stands watching as a scrap lorry loads the 18 funnelling systems, and 21 months of work, for £3,678.24. Tears roll down Jacks cheeks.

It barely scratches the 96,452 pounds (and 18 pence) Jack still owes to the bank.

Next the bank takes Jacks house, the house he grew up in. The house he got married in. The house his kids were born in.

Jack tells 8 of his 15 colleagues that he can no longer afford to keep them.

Facing financial ruin, Jack contemplates his spectacular collapse. Battling to make sense of how it all went so wrong for him.

Don’t bang your head against a wall when your next marketing strategy doesn’t succeed. Build your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ and prevent your business ploughing off a cliff.