2 questions to ask people who DON’T buy from you

I’ve talked about how the most important thing in the beginning of your online business journey is to find and prove product/market fit. In short, you need to find out what the market wants, then find the offer which they want to buy.

Certainly, my LAB members are no stranger to this. And I hope many of you non-members are onto this, too. If you intend to make a business out of a blog, then product/market fit is everything. It is the foundation.

So, what happens if you put an offer out there and it doesn’t work? Is everything lost?

No. Obviously, this means you haven’t pegged a product/market fit yet. You need to move the needle a bit until you find it. But, in what direction?

How do you improve your offers?

How do you make them sell better?

Here’s a super quick little strategy…

It is basically a 2-question survey. Those questions are:

  1. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate this offer? How attractive is it?
  2. What would need to be done to bring this offer up to a 10?

You can play with the wording. But, the real “gold” is going to come from that second question.

You want to learn what THEY think the most compelling offer would be. You want to know what those gaps are between what they think would be freakin’ awesome… and what you’re offering.

You can then take that info and go back and spruce up your offer, then circle back and re-test and see if you got yourself a better product/market fit.

Where would you do this survey? How do you ask?

Well, you got any number of ways. For instance, let’s say you just had people opt-in for a lead magnet. They’re on your list. Immediately after they opt in, they are presented with an offer. But, they don’t buy it. Crap conversion rate.

But, they’re on your list. Which means, you can reach out and talk to them. In fact, you don’t even need to send some kind of mass email to those subscribers. You can just reach out individually and email them personally. Say “hey, I noticed you didn’t buy my thing. No worries. No pressure. But, was just curious about a little feedback.” Then, ask them the 2 question survey.

You could do it via Skype calls. That’s be even better, really. Probably learn a helluva lot more that way than in an email.

Remember, building that monetization foundation for your online business (and blog) is a process. It is experimentation. What you’re after is product/market fit, but there’s no guarantees you’re going to nail it right away. In fact, you probably won’t.

But, even when nobody buys, that’s an opportunity. That’s a data point. But, ONLY if you reach out and COMMUNICATE to those people who didn’t buy so you can find out where you missed the mark.

Hopefully those 2 questions will give you an idea how to ask them.

– David Risley