Tell People Why NOT to Buy From You
Why advertising your flaws will increase – not decrease – your sales
The job of a startup founder is to sell. Not only must you sell customers on buying from you. But also sell employees on working for you, partners on cooperating with you, and investors on funding you. While selling is an art in itself, there is arguably one factor that matters most:
Trust.
Every decision involves risk. If the decision was obviously good with no risk, we wouldn’t need to sell. Selling is ultimately an art in reducing risk and building trust.
But trust usually takes time to build. And time is exactly what a startup can’t afford to waste. This leaves us with a dilemma:
How can startup founders get others to trust them instantly?
The answer is to start by telling people why they should NOT buy from you. This probably sounds ludicrous. Won’t I simply scare my customers away? Well, let’s look at this example:
How an airline advertised their weaknesses:
“We are an airline that focuses on providing a wide selection of flights at the lowest possible price. We believe that people are happier when they spend money at their destination. Not on getting to the destination.
As a result, we have cut most of the frills you may see at other airlines away from our flights to keep our prices low. For example:
We don’t serve drinks or meals on the plane.
We have only economy-class seating.
Luggage is limited to 20kg per person.
Many of our flights leave early in the morning or late at night.
If any of these perks are a must-have, we may not be the right airline for you.
However, if you are willing to forgo these luxuries in exchange for:
Savings of $20-$100 per person per flight.
Guarantee that your plane will land on time.
A kind staff who will treat you as the important person you are.
Then we may be the perfect airline for you.”
Were you scared away from this airline? I guess most of you answered “no”. Maybe you were even more inclined to fly with them over other carriers.
How did the airline above manage to turn their weaknesses into an appealing selling pitch? There are 2 steps to this process.
The 2 steps to create trust in your pitch
Step 1: Lead with your beliefs
The first thing the airline does is to explain who they are and what they believe. They take a stand for something – money should be spent on enjoying the destination and not the transport.
Leading with one’s WHY sets the stage to talk about one’s WHAT. When the airline explains its weak points (no meals, 20kg luggage limit, etc) we understand how these fit into their WHY (to save their customers money so they can better enjoy their visit).
If you don’t have any clear beliefs, don’t worry. You can instead lead with just your niche. If we were to remove the “We believe…” part from the airline’s message, the message would still remain strong:
“We are an airline that focuses on providing a wide selection of flights at the lowest possible price. As a result, we have cut most of the frills you may see at other airlines away from our flights to keep our prices low. For example…”
Once you have set the stage, it’s now time to explain your weaknesses as trade-offs for your strengths.
Step 2: Explain your weaknesses as trade-offs for your strengths
Never talk about your weaknesses without also mentioning your strengths. Imagine if the airline had just said:
We don’t serve drinks or meals on the plane.
We have only economy-class seating.
Luggage is limited to 20kg per person.
Many of our flights leave early in the morning or late at night.
If any of these perks are a must-have, we may not be the right airline for you.
Well, that’s a sure way to scare customers away! But that’s not what the airline did. They advertised their weaknesses loud and clear, but then immediately jumped to talking about their strengths.
If you only talk about your weaknesses, then they will appear as pure negatives and indeed scare people away.
But if you first talk about your weaknesses and then immediately follow with your strengths, your weaknesses will instead appear as trade-offs. And trade-offs we can happily live with.
You don’t need to have actively chosen your weaknesses to portray them as trade-offs. No matter what your weak points are, list them quickly, and then move on to elaborate on your strengths.
First weakness. Then strength. That’s the golden rule to build trust.
Why does starting with your weaknesses work?
Why are people more attracted to buy when you start with your flaws? There are four reasons:
1. You reduce the buyer’s risk
Selling is an art in reducing risk. And if the goal is to reduce risk for the buyer, there is no better way than to start with why they should NOT buy from you.
Most people believe their product must be unique to sell.
Not true.
You may only need to convince the customer that your product is lower risk than the competitor’s.
If the customer is certain that your product is good, and is uncertain about the competition, they are more likely to buy yours. Lower risk is a competitive edge in itself.
2. Your strengths become more credible
Any damn fool can talk about why they are great. The problem is that we don’t trust them. In fact, the more amazing you proclaim your strengths to be, the more likely people are to mistrust you because you seem to good to be true.
But when you start with your weaknesses, you gain the buyer’s trust because you put their needs ahead of your own. When you do explain your strengths, people are much more likely to trust that what you say about your strengths is true.
3. You appear more humble and likable
When you are honest about your flaws, people tend to like you more. For one, the buyer feels safer in your company because they can trust you. For another, you make the buyer feel better about themselves by showing it’s ok to have flaws. And we like to be around those people whose company makes us feel better.
4. You stand out from the crowd
A startup needs every trick in the book to stand out. And advertising our weaknesses is so rare it makes people stop and go “Wait… WHAT?!”, read through every word, and remember you afterward.
Advertising your weaknesses is also a sustainable edge – because most people will always be too afraid to talk about their flaws.
Again, you don’t need a unique product. You just need a unique way of selling your product. And nothing can be more unique than telling people why NOT to buy.
Poison Frogs vs Labradors – Scare your bad customers away!
“But if I’m honest about my weaknesses, won’t some customers be scared away?”.
Absolutely! And these are the customers you don’t want to serve.
Yes, you heard it right. There are customers whose money you don’t want.
The reason is that there are 2 types of customers: poison frogs and labradors.
The poison frog is the critic who cares more about your weaknesses than your strengths. For our airline, it’s the customer who demands meals on the plane, comfortable seating, or tons of luggage. No matter how low the price, the poison frog will be dissatisfied.
The labrador, in contrast, is your biggest fan. They are happy to live with your flaws and love you for your strengths. Labradors are easy to sell, pay more than anyone else, tell all their friends about you, and are fiercely loyal until the very end.
Sure, if you hide your weaknesses, you will get some more poison frogs to hand you their money on the front end.
But how much money are the poison frogs costing you on the back end?
Let’s look at both the direct and indirect costs of a bad customer:
Direct costs of serving poison frogs:
Higher acquisition costs.
Smaller purchases.
Needing to build one-off features.
Processing refunds and returned products.
Lost time spent in customer service.
Once you account for these direct costs, you likely won’t have any profits left. But we haven’t yet accounted for the indirect costs of lost sales.
Lost sales caused by poison frogs:
Negative reviews.
No word-of-mouth recommendations.
Opportunity cost of not attracting new labradors.
Opportunity cost of not selling more to existing labradors.
Once you also factor in lost sales, you are almost definitely losing three dollars for every one dollar you get from the poison frog.
The point of advertising your flaws is to scare away the poison frogs – and instead attract the labradors.
Remember, the labrador is happy to live with your flaws in exchange for your strengths. But if you only talk about your strengths, the labrador won’t be sure if it can trust you.
Not talking about your flaws is what scares the labrador away.
Imagine if you replaced every poison frog customer with a labrador customer. How much faster and more profitably would your startup grow then?
Attracting labrador employees
Starting with why people should NOT buy from you is even more crucial when hiring employees. The damage of a poison frog customer is small, and you can fire that customer easily. A poison frog employee – that’s a mess you don’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole.
How might a startup advertise to attract its labrador employees? Here is one example:
Our startup is building a search engine that will display the environmental impact of products when you shop online.
We believe that work is meaningless without a bold purpose. And a bold purpose can be achieved only by a committed team of A-players – people who care so much about the long-term vision they are willing to push through the short-term pain we will face getting there.
So before you send in your job application, let us tell you why we might NOT be the right company for you:
The salary is low. We are still in development and are not yet making any revenue. We are therefore keeping salaries at a minimum to ensure our capital lasts as long as possible.
The work is highly technically challenging. As soon as we conquer one impossible problem, we are faced with yet another one.
The hours are long. We believe our mission is important, and we can’t afford to work just 9-5.
Now, let us tell you why our company might be just the thing you are looking for:
You get to join a team of 20 friendly and highly talented peers who are all passionate about building a more sustainable world.
You can work from anywhere at any time. While many prefer to come into our office, we allow everyone to work whenever and from wherever it suits them best.
We have almost no rules or bureaucracy. You can make many decisions yourself and focus almost all of your time doing productive work.
We give every employee generous stock options. You will be a co-owner of the company and share in its potential upside.
If that is the kind of opportunity you are yearning for, then our company might be the perfect choice for you.
Attracting labrador investor
You think a poison frog employee sounds bad? Wait until you have a poison frog investor on your cap table. Then, we are talking about board coups and the risk of being expelled from your own company.
We can learn much about attracting the right investors from Jeff Bezos. This is what he wrote in Amazon’s 1997 shareholder letter:
“Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh tradeoffs differently than some companies.
Accordingly, we want to share with you our fundamental management and decision-making approach so that you, our shareholders, may confirm that it is consistent with your investment philosophy:
We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions.
We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case.
We will balance our focus on growth with emphasis on long-term profitability and capital management. At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business model.
[…]
We aren’t so bold as to claim that the above is the “right” investment philosophy, but it’s ours, and we would be remiss if we weren’t clear in the approach we have taken and will continue to take.”
What is Bezos saying?
That they will continue to bleed money in growing the business.
That they will make many big investments that will fail.
That shareholders must patiently wait for decades to realize the full value of their shares.
This is Bezos standing on a podium and shouting: “If you are not on my bus, get off now!”.
The result? Bezos got exactly the investors he asked for.
But how might history have been different if Bezos had not been open about Amazon’s drawbacks?
What would have happened in the dot-com bubble when Amazon shares fell 80% if shareholders had been short-term focused?
We can never know for certain. But it’s not unlikely that Amazon would be a mere shadow of the behemoth it is today.
Closing
Starting with why people should NOT buy from you seems counter-intuitive. But not if you think two steps ahead.
You don’t want every customer who happens to stumble onto your path.
You want the labradors – the loyal high-energy people who are happy to live with your flaws and love you for your strengths. And you want these people as customers, as employees, and as investors.
But if you hide your weaknesses, you shoot yourself in the foot twice:
You won’t scare off the poison frogs, and
You’ll attract fewer labradors – because they won’t be sure if they can trust you.
But lead with your beliefs, openly share your weaknesses, and then immediately pounce on your strengths – and you will gain the trust of exactly the people you want.
Thanks for reading,
Henrik Angelstig