Dear Team,

I have been thinking about why people hate used car salesmen so much and why they are synonymous with being pushy, sleazy or just crooks. The answer is simple, it’s because most of the time they are only focused on trying to sell the car they wants to sell and not the car that the customer actually wants. 

The best salespeople are the ones who are really good at listening. Your job is to listen 70-80% of the time and ask questions to better understand what the customer actually wants. If a customer wants a 2018 black audi r8 for no more than $80,000, and you try to sell them a van or even a lamborghini, then you are a fool. Give them what they want and it and it won’t feel like selling. They will even thank you for helping them. 

Now, the second thing to worry about is trust. There are 3 levels of trust.

1. The most common but least effective is in the form of self promotion. Example: I make the best and healthiest chocolate chips cookies…would you like to buy some?”
2. The next level of trust is what others say about you. Example: “We have been awarded first place for the 2020 cookie of the year by the Los Angeles Association on Bakers. We have 102- 5 star reviews and testimonials saying “wow these cookies are delicious, I eat all of them without sharing them to my kids”… Would you like to buy some? 
3. Then we have the best layer of trust and that’s what the customer experiences. Example: “Here, please try a free sample of our chocolate chip cookie. (They are eating it and they say, wow this is delicious!) Then you can follow up with….Would you like to buy some?

This proves that the only thing that matters is our product. Then when it comes to giving them a free sample, the product will sell it self. 

Dear Team,

I realize that the only thing that matters is our product. The marketing, operations, system, procedures all doesn’t matter if we have a shitty product. We are in the start-up phase and we are learning but now I want to have a team dedicated to just R&D. That teams only goal is to create a product or services that has “Product market fit”. 

Experts have shown that to reach product market fit, we need a score of at least 40%. We ask our beta users “How would you feel if you could no longer use Networkingfx?” 

1. Very disappointed
2. Somewhat disappointed
3. Not disappointed. 

If 40% or more of our users says they would be very disappointed if they could no longer use Networkingfx then we have done a great job and found product market fit.

I also want us to focus our service on the fundamentals of human psychology that will never change. For example, Amazons 3 pillars are:

1. Low price
2. Vast Selection
3. Fast Shipping

Amazons knows that 15 years from now people are not going to say “ I wish you had higher, pricing, or I wish you delivered more slowly. These are the pillars that will never change.

For our business model, we know that word-of-mouth will be around 15, or even 100 years from now. Therefore our platform should focus on:

1) Trust/ building meaningful relationships within the community

2) The amount of people on the platform (vast selection)

3) Entertainment/ dopamine 

Caleb and Bryan, can you track and try to change the product if necessary to create product market fit and reach our goal of 40%?

I’m going to focus on sales and market research. I’ll invite new leads to the platform with our free offer, but I’ll also ask open ended questions such as “ what’s the hardest part about networking on zoom? 

“Why was that difficult for you?”

“Have you tried any other solutions”

“What don’t you love about the solutions you have tried”?

“How frequently do you encounter that problem” 

Once we combine the data from our beta users and our marketing discovery questions then we will have the perfect opportunity to create a great platform and product that people will really enjoy. I would like to end this memo with a quote from Elon Musk. 

“Great companies are built on great products” Elon Musk.

Dear Team,

I just finished taking a course in price psychology by Andrew Luttrell, Ph.D. If you are interested in taking the course yourself, then click here. If not, I can save you hours of time by summarizing the key topics for you. 

Should you price the ending at 99 or 95?

If the price of your product is under $50, use .99

If the price of your product is over $50, use .95. 

Don’t ever use commas when pricing. 

$1586    $1,586

Don’t use decimals for prices over $99. 

If you sell luxury goods, use whole numbers. If you sell utilities, don’t use whole numbers. 

Use the color red in the price to help increase sales.

When presenting price options, always start with the highest price first, then work your way down. 

When you have an anchor price, use a whole number so it’s easy to subtract and the customer can easily know how much they are saving. 

Also, decrease the left digit of your price to make it seem like a bigger discount compared to the anchor price. 

Decrease the left digit of your price to make it seem like a bigger discount compared to the anchor price. 

This is a study on price decoy:

Below are ideas for our pricing models that we can test.: