Friday, July 18, 2014

Why you shouldn't hire me

One of my ventures AFPR is a consultancy where I offer all of what I have learned (mistakes and successes) over the past 20 years to small software and app. developers. Even though my greatest successes have been in product, or business strategy, and not just business development deals, that is often why entrepreneurs seek me out. The conversation us usually the same .... "Andy, I want you to do some business development for us. I noticed 'XYZ (their competition) corp. is having tremendous success and momentum...."

More often then not, I either try to structure these engagements as more of a strategic consult, or I turn them down outright.  Why would I turn away a potential client? If your product is inferior to the competition, or something is wrong with your funnel (there are many points of failure for a product) you need to ask, what would be the end result that new business relationships would add  to the bottom line?

In the Freemium world, from my experience the average conversion rate from free to pro is 1.5%. I always use this as my benchmark, and  mark how successful I am by how far I can exceed this.  While at RoboForm, I was proud that I had this rate converting far in excess of that average. If you approach me already knowing that your 100,000 monthly free users are converting at only .25%, there is nothing of value to be gained by me getting those 100,000 monthly's up to 500,000, or even millions.  You have a more critical flaw somewhere with the product,pricing  funnel, etc. This is why I prefer to approach any potential consulting engagement top down first. So should you.

So before you ask to hire me to do business development, let's have a more strategic conversation first.


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