BRX Pro Tip: The Downside to Focusing on Early Adopters
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, what are your thoughts on working with, going after early adopters in the marketplace?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] I kind of had mixed feelings about it. I mean, we started our business and, obviously, early adopters were critical in our success that we had a lot of people saying, “Hey, what you’re doing nobody else is doing, and I’m going to jump in and I’m going to trust this is all going to work out.”
Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] So, on on one hand, early adopters are the ones most likely to take a chance on someone doing something new and they don’t have much track record. So, early adopters are great at that. They’re willing to take that risk to check you out before people who are less kind of comfortable with risk would do. So, they’re willing to take the risk, so they’ll try something new, so that’s where early adopters are great.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] So, now, you’re going, “Oh, wow. Look at all these early adopters that like what we’re doing.” Not everybody is an early adopter. There’s way more people that aren’t early adopters. So, how do I get them? Those people need to see results. They need to see it working successfully before they take the leap and that takes some time.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] So, when you’re focusing only on early adopters, the double-edged sword of that is that early adopters are going to leave sooner because another cool idea is going to come their way and they’re going to jump on that and they’re going to leave you behind. So, they don’t always make the best loyal customers over time because they’re always looking for the latest and greatest thing. So, you have to make that transition away from early adopters at some point and build up a track record, the social proof you need, testimonials, case studies, user studies, user cases that show that your thing works and it’s reliable and people are going to get the results that they desire.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:53] So, early adopters, it could be a trap for you because you’re like, “Wow. Look at how easy it is to sell to them.” They don’t need as much evidence to buy than people that are kind of less risk averse. So, you have to be able to make that adjustment at some point. Early adopters are great, but you better have a way to also find that other subset of the masses that are interested in your thing and are ideal clients if you want your business to grow.
