Hey guys, Snake Oil Salesmen is a fortnightly series on how to sell, with examples of Tech/SaaS products. I got good responses to my first post here, so here I am with issue #2.This series is for people whoHave an idea but don’t know how to sell,Have an idea but don’t have an audience,WantrepreneursI try to give examples of human nature that I’ve observed, read, and put into practice in my four years of sales experience.Let’s dive in.Sometimes as a salesman, you meet customers who aren’t right for your product/service.For some reason, they insist on buying from you even though it doesn't solve their problem in the way they would expect it to. Then they suck your time with complaints and request for more features.The customer experience sucks and soon you find yourself hating going to the office and start saying ‘Thank God It’s Friday’.How do you deal with them? By saying no, of course.But why is saying no so hard?For some cultures, it is rude to say no… (Asians, I am looking at you!)And there are enough people who take advantage of this inability of some of us to say no. Casually browsing through r/Choosingbegars, you can find many of them. (Think annoying influencers who can't influence for shit, begging small businesses to give free stuff)I take inspiration from Steve Jobs, who is famous for curt ‘no’ replies to customer complaints. (Here’s a non-comprehensive list of the times he has said no to his customers)I am not asking you to be an arrogant douche. But consider what happens when you say yes... To quote the company behind Basecamp, a project management tool targeted at remote teams:Each time you say yes to a feature, you’re adopting a child. You have to take your baby through a whole chain of events (e.g. design, implementation, testing, etc.). That’s why you start with no. Every new feature request that comes to us — or from us — meets a no. We listen but don’t act. The initial response is “not now.”Ahrefs took this a step further with their trial pricing and they are gonna be the focus of this discussion.Ahrefs is an SEO toolset. You use it to find topics that people search for in Google and then use it to rank your site on the first page of the results. Their main competitor is Semrush. Both have similar features, with Semrush gaining a slight edge on product features and Ahrefs being better in the UI/UX department.Here’s a comparison of their pricing plansPlanAhrefsSemrushTrial$7 for 7 daysFree for 30 daysBasic$99$99Intermediate$179$199Enterprise$399$399Every SaaS company I know of usually offers a free trial to get the customer hooked onto the product.But Ahrefs does not have a free trial! They charge 7 dollars for 7 days when their competitor is offering a 30-day free trial.Their CMO – Tim Soulo is quoted on their landing page as saying“Don’t spend $7 on the trial until you learn how Ahrefs can help you get more search traffic and grow your business.”They tell their potential customer outright not to spend their money! Why?It's because they invested significant time and money to build content that teaches you how to rank your website on Google. Once you know this, you are more likely to spend $$ on a recurring basis.And since their own content ranks on the first page of Google results (most often in the first or second result) people started to trust them.In addition to the articles, they also made an $800 course called Blogging for Business. It was made free during the pandemic (and that's how I came to know about Ahrefs). The people who complete it, go on to sing their praise to others (like I am doing now. The course is still free btw, in case you want to check it out)The course did name-drop the tools sold by Ahrefs from time to time. But the principles taught in the course could have been used with any tool. So you could have completed their course, and simply signed up with Semrush instead as they give a better trial offer of 30 days.But by the time you complete the course, you're familiar with their tools, and more importantly, you have some goodwill towards Ahrefs. People in general usually feel obligated to give back when you do something for them. Ahrefs is betting that once you complete the course you will pay to use their product at some point.Having a quality product that is easy to use attracts a lot of people who abuse the free trial. It only takes 7 days to find content ideas for the next six months.They indirectly say NO to their customers by having a paid trial. And they directly say NO by quoting their CMO asking them not to buy it until they have learned to use it!And by saying no, they achieve two things:They reduce free trial abuse which saves them time and resources &They shorten the sales conversion cycle to 7 days, which allows them to earn revenue from the 8th day as opposed to the 31st day (which is the case for their main competitor – Semrush)That’s the end of my analysis. I have three questions for you:Can you share any other examples (personal or otherwise) of companies saying no to their customers that don’t fit their product?Have you struggled to say no to your customers or did so and felt all the better for it?What do you think of my analysis?If you were looking to subscribe to my newsletter, here is the permalink. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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