Some Suggestions for When You can Only Find Laggards
Q: Help! I Can Only Find Laggards in My Target Customer Segment
Entrepreneurs are often quick to characterize prospects who don’t see the benefits of their new shiny technology as laggards. Sometimes that’s the case, but often the product presentation does not present benefits that are either relevant or compelling. Laggards get a lot of bad press in the startup community, but their reasons not to change are often more sound than startups give them credit for.
In the technology life cycle, laggards are traditionalists who are the last to adopt an innovation. They represent the trailing 16% of the population that are either happiest with the way things are, or most averse to change depending upon your point of view. I was reminded of this in a recent exchange at a Bootstrapper Breakfast® in Silicon Valley with two entrepreneurs that were frustrated by the lack of receptivity to their solution. Here is a summary of our exchange.
Q: Help! We are trying to bootstrap a software startup in an industry that seems to be full of laggards. We believe our technology offers advantages over what they are currently using, but we are starting to worry that we will have to wait until the old guard dies out before a slow transformation happens. How do we convince laggards to try something new?
A: I find when you label a prospect a “laggard” you are probably disabling your empathy for their true situation and the incentives that they face, and you increase the difficulty of reaching a meeting of the minds and making a deal. Here is my perspective on the “laggard worldview:” they are not in pain and able to use proven methods that work reliably and are adequate for their needs.
