Selling glasses to blind, rural Indians

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Selling glasses to a bunch of blind, rural Indians: a beautiful lesson in marketing

Ever heard of Seth Godin?

Don’t worry if you haven’t - I hadn’t either until one of the guys I work with turned me onto him a month or so ago.

But if you have heard of Seth, you’ll know he’s one of the most prolific marketers of all time.

He was VP of marketing at Yahoo.

He built the wildly successful article-sharing site Squidoo which later got acquired by HubPages.

And, as any titan of industry does, he’s also published multiple best-selling books - Purple Cow, Tribes, This is Marketing, along with many, many others.

And it’s actually that last book - This is Marketing - that I want to talk to you about today.

Because it’s the one I’ve had my nose buried in recently like a… well, I’ll leave you to apply the finishing touches to that analogy.

And there’s one particular story in that book I want to draw your attention to.

Because it relates to your own business.

It’s going to help you land more clients.

And if you’ll indulge me for the next 2-3 minutes, I’m going to explain how you can use the lessons from this story to drastically improve your odds of making money online.

This is a story about selling glasses to partially blind dudes in India (random I know, lol)

Ready to hear it?

Here’s how it goes:

VisionSpring, glasses and a bunch of blind, rural Indians

Way back in the day, Seth was doing some work for a company called VisionSpring.

Who are VisionSpring, you ask?

Well, they’re a rather altruistic company which specialises in getting glasses to the billion or so people round the world that need them.

Because, despite what you might think based on your local high-street, the rural, suburban villages which make up the bulk of the larger world are hardly inundated with Specsaver branches or Vision Express pitstops.

So that’s where VisionSpring comes in.

They’ve found a way to produce attractive but, more importantly, high-quality glasses for only a couple bucks a pop, sell these for just enough profit to keep the organisation growing, and have since made it their mission to begin distributing these specs round the world.

And way back in the day, they actually recruited Seth to head up their marketing campaign for a small, rural village all the way out in sunny India.

And upon setting up shop there, (after taking a few days to acclimatise to the intense heat no doubt), Seth noticed a few key things:

By simple biology, a huge proportion of the people in this village needed glasses (most of the villagers were 40-50 years of age and, if you aren’t aware, the probability of you needing glasses by the time you reach this ripe old tenure is way beyond 50%).

None of them had glasses - as I say, Specsavers is hardly commonplace in rural, little Indian villages.

The vast majority of the villagers had more than enough spare change to spend on the simple, yet ultimately life-changing experience that a pair of glasses can offer.

So, selling these things should be a piece of cake, right?

A large market.

A burning desire for a solution.

And more than enough cash to splash on a pair of fresh specs.

Except, that isn’t how it played out at all.

In fact, Seth found the complete opposite.

Despite demonstrating (via a simple eye test with and without the sample pairs of glasses) to all the customers that their vision was infinitely better with the glasses than without, only one third of the people actually took them up on their offer.

Think about that for a second.

You’re offering a simple, affordable solution that you and the customer both know will dramatically increase their quality of life, and yet still a whopping 65% of people don’t take you up on your offer (at this point I’m sure a few of you are beginning to see how this story relates to you and your own business).

Seth was boggled by this too.

So what did he do?

He sat in the sun for a few hours.

He let his mind be free to explore its curiosities (the key to any great marketing strategy).

And he decided to change one simple thing about the marketing process.

One simple thing which DOUBLED the number of people who decided their life was better not spent wandering round blind in the dark like a kid playing wink murder (anyone remember that game from childhood btw? Fucking class).

So, what was this simple change?

This one piece of marketing trickery which turned the entire success of the campaign on its head?

It’s common sense AF once you hear it.

Experiencing life in 20/20

Here’s the change Seth made:

Instead of performing the eye test, setting the sample pair of glasses aside and then giving the customer the opportunity to choose from the pair they liked the most, Seth reframed the process:

He handed people the glasses.

He let them experience the sense of improved vision.

And then he simply said to them “These are your new glasses. If they work and you like them, please hand over $3 and they’re yours. Otherwise, please give them back.”

Do you see what he did there?

The subtle reframe.

The practically invisible yet immensely powerful perspective shift that completely changed the entire experience for the perusing Indians?

He shifted the experience from “let me browse your wares, shop at my leisure and feel a sense of ownership from beginning to end” to “do you want us to take away what you already have (the glasses they were holding)? The thing you’ve now become attached to? Your new default?”

And this simple reframe.

This seemingly inconsequential, yet utterly brilliant anchoring mechanism was enough to turn the entire sales process on its head and leave the customers fighting for their life to hang onto what, from their perspective, was now their own property and be willing to pay whatever they had to keep it that way..

Fucking genius.

I’ll be honest, as I was reading that story, I caught myself smiling.

It’s just so disgustingly brilliant.

And, of course, it got me thinking - how does this apply to my own business?

And, more importantly - given you’ve just listened to me ramble for 5 minutes about a dude selling glasses in India - how does it relate to yours?

What this all means for you

Here’s what this little story means for you:

If you’re struggling to land clients right now, there’s one thing you must prioritise above all others (and I’ve seen this work on numerous occasions for both myself and my clients):

Do everything in your power to simply get people in the door in the first place.

Whatever that means.

Tell them you’ll work for $1 for the first month.

Tell them they don’t have to pay a single dime until you’ve delivered on your promise

Fuck, go out of your way, do a shit ton of work for them without them even asking and then send it to them for free.

Just do something to spark them into motion.

I know this isn’t what you want to hear.

You want me to give you a magic potion that’s going to instantly turn you into the next Steve Jobs.

That you don’t have to eat shit.

That you don’t have to lay aside your pride.

That you don’t have to work for far less than you know you’re worth.

But, I’m sorry, that isn’t how this game works.

For your first few clients, at least, you need to do everything in your power to simply get them in the door.

And this is exactly what I was referring to when I wrote this tweet a week or so back:

Because once they’re in, you’ve got the opportunity to show them exactly what life can be like.

What working with you has to offer.

And, more crucially, remind them how much harder life without you is.

You’ll reset their default.

Show them how easy the game can be with you by their side.

And at that point, once you’ve overdelivered beyond their wildest fucking dreams, you’ll be more than able to start charging the high price you’re actually worth.

And they won’t question it for a moment.

Most of you reading this won’t listen to this advice.

You’ll insistently tell yourself you’re above working for free or charging on a results-only basis.

That it’s beneath you.

That even for your first few clients you should be making absolute bank.

But for the ones who do?

For the ones who are willing to put their pride aside, work for far less than you know you’re worth, and eat shit for just a small period of time, you’ll do very very well for yourself (I know because it’s how I landed my first few clients).

Right.

That’s me done for the day guys.

I hope you enjoyed that story and, more importantly, I hope you found it useful.

I’m not taking on any more coaching clients right now - my todo list is long enough already and I’ve got a lot of big life plans coming up - but if you do need some help with your own offer, business or content strategy, reach out - whether that’s by replying to this email or a DM on Twitter.

I’ll be more than happy to offer whatever advice I can to get you on the path to building a life you genuinely feel excited to wake up to every day.

Talk soon,

Harry