How to sell?
Take the example of Google search. Websites existed before Google search and so did people browsing and searching for them. What Google search did is presenting the results in a simpler and easier way to the one searching. Simpler and easier in this context is categorisation. If I search for a car, I don’t want just the list of cars, I want the list to be broken down into sports cars, wagons, electric, petrol, diesel etc. Every search engine had access to the same list of websites but people liked the way Google presented it, so the we all preferred using Google, this set the standard. The websites as such never bothered about anything but content, this changed. Telling people about existence of a website was getting old fashioned, expensive and irrelevant when posted on a billboard. It had to be the first one in the Google search result. Websites changed content, did modifications in their design to achieve this. Google search defined what websites need to have in their content.
We always think telling people what they need, showing people what they are missing out if they don’t have something is the way to push a product into the market, it might be, but it’s short lived. Changing the market so people have no choice is more sustainable.
When you think about selling, there are 3 constituents. The buyer, the seller and the product. The biggest mistake is focussing on the product and not the customer (buyer). The seller unknowingly focusses so much on the product and tries to fit “the” product in “a” buyers lifestyle, this is because the company which makes the product has hired the seller. Take the example of Amazon, the focus is on the buyer. Seller, in this case is actually hired by the buyer (we log into Amazon). Amazon has multiple products to sell, tries to fit “a” product to “the” buyer by showing options.
Mathematically, this makes sense too isn’t it? Control something which is lesser in number (products) than trying to control something which is higher in number ans more in variety (people)?