The Buyer’s Pyramid, Unreasonable Hospitality, Boring Stuff that Works

Hey,

this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to share the most interesting trends, frameworks, opportunities, and ideas with you.

Let's dive in!

💡 Opportunities

• “Has anyone made a good AI tool yet where I can load in everything I've ever written, every podcast I've recorded, every note I've taken from a book, and then have a ChatGPT-esque interface where I can query my past self? I'd probably pay hundreds of dollars a month for this.” - Nat Eliason

• “I would pay $5 a month for a weekly newsletter that sends me new meme templates. Call it meme dealer.” - Dan Romero

• “"Roast my Airbnb" My friend is a revenue manager of 100's of Airbnb apartments. I asked him to help me w/ my listing Sent him: - Airbnb link - historic data - @airdna screens (paid $15) He replied with a few actionable tips

  I would pay for such a service!” - Peter Fabor

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out

• Your customers are on Reddit, they just don’t know you exist yet. Find them in minutes with GummySearch.

• Had a great conversation with Phil Lehoux, the CEO of one of my favorite SaaS companies, Missive. After getting rejected by YC multiple times they managed to bootstrap a SaaS that quietly generates millions in revenue every year.

• Senja makes it easy to increase conversion with social proof. In a nutshell: collect more video and text testimonials, share them to get visitors, sign ups and sales, more ways to share than anywhere else, free forever. Start collecting proof free.

• A book I enjoy reading right now is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. While Will’s background is as a restaurant operator, but there are tons of lessons for anyone running any kind of service business.

  • “Service is black and white; hospitality is color.” “Black and white” means you’re doing your job with competence and efficiency; “color”means you make people feel great about the job you’re doing for them. Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service. But genuinely engaging with the person you’re serving, so you can make an authentic connection—that’s hospitality.”

(all things above written in bold are sponsored ads, get yours here)

👨‍🎓 The stuff that works is boring

• One lesson I’m learning over and over again is that they sexy stuff, the stuff that’s easily sellable, is counter-productive.

• The stuff that works is boring.

• An obvious example is diet. Just don’t eat junk and don’t overeat, and you’ll be fine. But you can hardly fill a blog post with that, let alone sell books, courses, or coaching.

• Or want to get in shape? Just lift heavy stuff a few times a week.

• But it’s also true, for example, when it comes to lead gen. The really creative campaign ideas that get us and our clients excited, don’t produce results. It’s always the boring campaigns that deliver.

• The real challenge is always actually doing stuff consistently. It’s never some secret piece of information that’s missing.

• Great discussion with Mark Manson on the topic around minute 15 here.

🧪 The Buyer’s Pyramid

• A framework I’m getting a lot of use out of right now is Chet Holmes’ “Buyer’s Pyramid”.

• At any given time, only 3% of the people/businesses in your market are ready to buy right now.

• Another 6-7% are potentially open to it. They might be dissatisfied with their current item or provider and are not opposed to change, but who may not yet be “buying now.”

• The remaining 90 percent fall into one of three equal categories. The top third are “not thinking about it.” They are not against it, not for it, but just “not thinking about it.”

• The next third “thinking they’re not interested.” They are not neutral like the first third. They reply things like “I don’t think I’m interested”.

• And then the final third are “definitely not interested.” These folks are happy with what they have or just simply know they don’t need it.

• One reason why the framework is useful is that helps to calculate quickly what kind of results you can realistically expect. If your TAM (Total Adressable Market) is 200 companies, only 6 of them are ready to buy right now. So don’t expect to close 10 deals in the first week of running any form of sales or marketing.

• Another reason is that it’s extremely useful to inform any type of sales or marketing strategy. Different segments of the pyramid need to be engaged in different ways. Only for the top 3%, a simple “Hey, this is our offer, here’s why you should trust us, wanna buy?” will work.

End Note

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Have a great week,

Jakob