This week, I read the seventh and eighth chapters of The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. The seventh chapter was about how to make it so your offer could not be refused. One of the tips for doing this is that sometimes there is a difference between what the customer thinks they want and what they actually want. When I first read this I was very confused but then he explained it with an example; he said how almost everyone complains about not having enough space in their airplane seat but then when the airline offers a few extra inches for a few more dollars nobody wants the seat with more space. In this scenario, the customer thinks they want more room but they actually want the cheapest possible flight. Guillebeau said that an entrepreneur should figure out the difference between what the customer says they want and what they actually want but I feel like this would be very difficult without actually testing to see what the customer wants. In a previous chapter he said that you could just ask the customer what they want, but in this situation, the customer would only say what they think they want.
Chapter eight was all about having a big opening. Guillebeau said that a good opening is similar to the release of big movies; there should be lots of people that know about and are excited about your product when it first gets released. At first I thought that the movie analogy was odd but then as I thought about it more, it started to make more sense. He chose to use the movie analogy because movies are coming out pretty much every week and almost all movies come out in the same fashion which is helpful to the reader but I still don’t totally see how a small business could open in a similar fashion to a big blockbuster movie.
Yes, figuring out the difference between that the customer says he wants and what he really wants is the key--but it's so, so hard. If a customer tells you, "I want this," how can you contradict him and still win his business? Yet if you give him what he says he wants, it's quite possible he won't want it. Solve this problem and you'll be a genius--and quite wealthy.
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