Hey bootstrappers,

>> How well do you know your customers? 

Understanding customer behavior can help you sell more, but you needn’t always follow their lead. 

For one, customers don’t always know what they want, or at least how to articulate it. They behave according to the limits of what’s available to them and tend to be creatures of habit. 

You can work that to your advantage, but today, I want to suggest an alternative... 

Rather than respond to their behavior, change their behavior. 

All the big companies did it, including Salesforce (servers to cloud), Netflix (rentals to streaming), and Airbnb (hotels to hosting). 

And as you’ve probably guessed, so did this week’s founders.

Next time you’re struggling to retrofit your business idea to customer expectations, consider establishing a new pattern of behavior that works better for them and you. 

– Chris Roper

Nick Bartlett and Chris Crutchley consolidate logistics networks into a streamlined, flexible “4PL” service – but convincing clients to try their untested model was another story.

When Ecommerce Businesses Want Better Logistics They Call This Eight-Figure Startup

“Even in a small market like Hong Kong we’d probably land one out of every one hundred and fifty potential clients we talked to at first. Some customers like the idea that we don’t own any assets. Some are also nervous about not controlling who looks over their inventory.”

Peter Janssens knew companies needed a better way to collect payments and debt, but it took ten years to convince them SaaS was the answer. How did he do it?

Would You Stay on After Your Startup Got Acquired? This Founder Has a Strong Case For Why You Should

“Twelve years ago, people were skeptical about SaaS products. It used to seem unnecessary to give data to an external supplier. Fortunately, we found some early believers and many of them are still customers today.”

Aaron Beashel’s clients complained that Google Analytics never gave them the whole story. Unable to find an alternative, Aaron decided he could build something even better. Here’s how.

This Marketer Retooled Some Lost Code He Wrote 15 Years Earlier and Turned It Into a Six-Figure Business

“Once I created the website, I put it out there to see what the world thought of the Attributer concept. It was the smallest thing I could do to validate that this is something people want. It was a basic UI that took signups. That was it.”

“You gain confidence every time you get a new customer that needs you. All it takes for me is one sales call to land in my inbox and I’m back. Entrepreneurship is like a trampoline with no sidewalls. You fall off a lot but you’ve got to get back on to keep having fun.”

 - Nick Bartlett, CBIP

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