David’s sitting at his kitchen table at 20 to midnight, his wife and kids went to bed hours ago.
His laptop’s open on his business account, he needs to know what’s left in his account before his ad account renews in 4 days.
His phone lies beside his laptop, with a list he made around 2 hours ago:
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the ad account needs £2,417.86 a month; it’s the only way he has to bring people in at all,
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the injection moulds he bought on finance need £1,148.50 a month; there are 19 payments left to make,
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and the pallet storage for the units he’s already had made needs £324.00 a month, which he keeps paying for because he believes the order that will clear them out is bound to come any day now. He has to believe it.
He needs £3,890.36 to buy him another month.
After scraping money together and looking through what he can cut from this month’s budget at home, the total still comes to £2,657.92.
He can barely keep his eyes open, the dinner and tea his wife handed him before bed sits on the table, cold now.
But he must find the rest of the money to keep his business going 1 more month.
David launched FlowSentry, a retrofit washroom leak and blockage sensor for Facilities Management companies 14 months ago, in March of last year.
There’s a total of 3 people working in his company, his units sit in 60 buildings, warning property managers about a leak or a blockage before a tenant reports it.
David’s last job was running maintenance portfolios for one of the biggest Facilities Management companies in the UK.
After 6 years of working at the company, he quit to pursue his own business, building the product he always wanted, with his own savings.
2 months after he quit, his first units shipped, the website went live, and 3 companies ordered inside the first month.
All 3 came through people David knew from his old firm, who’d been testing his prototypes in their own buildings for a year.
David burned through every contact he (and everyone around him) knew to win these accounts.
After those 3 customers Davids sales went flat, and stayed flat.
Those 3 companies still pay him every month to keep watching their units; the money covers wages for the 2 people who work with him, and his website hosting & maintenance.
By July of last year, nothing new had come in for 3 months.
David saw an ad on LinkedIn for a founders’ event in Leeds, one of the event speakers told him a founder’s first job is to find out exactly who buys his units – and why – before another pound gets spent on ads.
The speaker offered to help David, but after hearing how much the research costs, David declined, claiming he couldn’t afford the research.
The research costs more than what David’s business makes in a month; he went back home defeated, feeling like he wasted his time by going to the event.
David’s wife comforted him; David needed to find a way to drum up more business.
From August he spent his savings and any money his business made on the 3 things he could see other companies doing:
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Google and LinkedIn ads, at roughly £680 a month for the next 9 months,
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a freelancer for £600 a month to create posts he can publish on LinkedIn,
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and a stand at a facilities management show in Birmingham, in mid-September, for £3,200.
David spent just over £13,500 of his own money in 9 months, and every pound of it was spent before anyone worked out why people buy his product.
After the show in Birmingham he came home with 27 business cards. 2 of the 27 were potential prospects.
David couldn’t continue paying the freelancer in February because money was tight, but he keeps paying the ads, because they ‘re the only thing bringing leads in.
The Google and LinkedIn ads bring in clicks, and a click leaves an e-mail address. David works through the e-mail addresses himself until someone agrees to book a call.
He books 4 demos in October. 3 of the 4 are with maintenance managers who like the units but don’t have authority to sign anything. Or the budget.
The 4th is someone who can sign, but they listen for 25 minutes and then say “We send a cleaner twice a day, and that works just fine.”
David thinks his words must be wrong. He changes the headline, then the pricing page, then he changes the headline back.
Two weeks ago, in April, David managed to get another potential prospect. In the call the prospect asked David how his unit was different from his competitor in Manchester. David had never heard of the firm.
David couldn’t answer, the prospect was polite enough to finish the call. Afterwards David did a search for the firm in Manchester.
The very first thing David sees on the firm’s site is “Why do you always find out about a leak from your tenant?”
David sits there staring at the screen, unable to understand why they were getting customers and he wasn’t.
It’s not because they’re better than him. They found the words that speak to their prospect, he didn’t.
David’s savings run out in September, and his wife has stopped asking him how his business is doing, which somehow feels worse than when she did ask.
David lost a lot of money, but he also lost time. David can’t flip a magic switch to take him back to when he started; he can’t get back the months he spent trying to make his business work… and failed.
David’s story doesn’t have to be yours; you don’t have to spend 14 months like David, marketing to the wrong person.
Your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ is where the guessing stops; the research tells you:
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who is going to buy, from data rather than from your own description,
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what your prospects have already tried and rejected,
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the words they use to describe their problem when they talk to a colleague over coffee,
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where the market gaps are that nobody else has found… yet,
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and where your price sits in your market, instead of against a feeling.
Your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ is built to make it easily digestible for you and your team:
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The blueprint takes a step-by-step approach, each step’s signed off one at a time, so you never feel overwhelmed.
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At least 80% of the work is done by us, your input is the vital 20%.
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You can commit to each step at your own pace.
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And if you’re not happy with the step you’re on, you get your money back. We carry all the risk; there’s no risk to you.
Writing to a real person instead of a crowd is what converts. Your Competitive Edge Blueprint™ gives you copy written to a real person. With real problems. That only you solve.
