+1-617-916-26324 Questions for an Awesome Pricing Strategy
Three dollars for real maple syrup. On a supermarket shelf, that’s not a bad deal. On a restaurant menu, next to some pancakes or waffles… a little less appealing. My summer travels have brought me face to face with this “extra” line item several times. I haven’t sprung for it, although sometimes it has made […]
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Matt Volpi - Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Marketing, Product Management, Sales
Sep, 09, 2015
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Quit Talking About Features & Start Talking About Benefits
No business is immune from living inside its own echo chamber where their world starts revolving about their own product or service. This can lead to lots of unfortunate side effects, but one of the most common is to focus its messaging and sales efforts on “features.” The problem is that most people don’t care […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Content, Knowing Your Customers, Marketing, Product Management, Sales, Social Media
- May, 26, 2015
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Avoiding Platform Arrogance: How Apple Watch is Intruding on Your iPhone
On March 9th Apple released version 8.2 of iOS, the platform powering all of its mobile devices. Along with its bundles of bug fixes and improvements came a new app to our home screens – “Apple Watch.” We have been hearing about Apple Watch for years now and this version of iOS not coincidentally coincided […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Product Management
- Mar, 10, 2015
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Don’t Confuse Novelty with Innovation
If you follow technology business news, you have probably seen plenty of headlines like this one: “Bostonians can pay their parking tickets with a mobile app.” While that is a nice convenience factor for a ticketed driver, this is really only addressing the core user problem at the “novelty” layer. First of all, if you […]
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- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Product Management
- Jan, 12, 2015
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Is Your Business a Spotify or a Pandora?
Spotify and Pandora do the same thing, but they do it very differently. Or you could say they do very different things but with the same ingredients. At their core, they are both about listening to music over the Internet. They both offer a free option (if you don’t mind some ads) and a monthly […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Product Management, Sales
- Oct, 17, 2014
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Upselling Isn’t for the Untrained
A trip to the vet provides an important reminder that non-salespeople still end up selling, and they’re not always very good at it. This morning I took our two cats to the vet for their annual check-up and rabies shots. Instead of our usual vet a different member of the practice saw us. While she […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Sales
- Aug, 11, 2014
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Safe Assumption: Your Customers Aren’t Paying Attention
Just because your customers are buying from you, it doesn’t mean they know what else you have to offer. Last week the president of GameStop, the leading brick-and-mortar video game shop in the U.S., announced something pretty surprising: “Believe it or not, only 40 percent of the people who walk into a GameStop store today […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Marketing, Product Management, Sales
- Jul, 28, 2014
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When Your Competitors Aren’t Competing for the Same Thing
It’s not always a fair fight when your competitors have “alternative motivations” In most cases, when your product/solution/service has a direct competitor for the same customers, you are all trying to accomplish the same thing: selling more widgets because you make money when you sell those widgets. It’s old school business: I sell boxes, you […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Knowing Your Customers, Product Management
- Jun, 16, 2014
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When Paint is a Barrier to Adoption
Sometimes it’s the little things that keep people from getting on-board with new solutions. This week Honeywell announced its latest foray into the “smart” thermostat market, the Lyric. From the design, there is absolutely no question they are trying to compete with Nest, the sexy startup founded by ex-Apple designers and acquired by Google for […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Industry Observations, Knowing Your Customers, Product Management, Sales
- Jun, 11, 2014
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4 Tips for Preventing Preventative Maintenance Fails
Post-purchase maintenance is part of the equation that shouldn’t be ignored or taken for granted. Spring is in full gear here in New England, and this weekend it was finally time to mow the grass. And while this is the 14th spring where I have had to mow a lawn of my own, this was […]
Read More- Posted by Matt Volpi
- Posted in Customer Service, Knowing Your Customers, Product Management
- May, 19, 2014
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