Sales in Little India Pt. 2

So last Sunday's purpose was to verify the previous week's sales weren't a fluke. Now, this time the odds were stacked against me for sure: 1) I hadn't managed to get Kumar to commit to assisting with sales in the days prior to last Sunday, and 2) the retailer started talking about charging to rent the space out front, making noises that I was drawing attention away from the other two revenue-generating storefront vendors of phone cards - in short, I had just one hour, from 5pm - 6pm, to do my marketing. So I went in expecting difficulty - can a foreigner sell to skeptical Tamil buyers? Kumar was clearly key to sales last week; I had been out there last week for three hours on my own without securing the attention I needed to even begin explaining how the product works, that is until Kumar came along, having just finished his construction work and joining in with his successful demo'ing and sales efforts.
So I set up shop. After forty five minutes, I had difficulty attracting the attention I needed, just a few demos to a few individuals. The end of my time window was approaching, so I started packing up, unsure of how to interpret things. I happened to be cranking the charger as I stood up to start closing, cause someone noticed and came over. I demo'd and explained to him, and a crowd gathered. By the time I continued demo'ing to others, he decided to buy, and I fulfilled his purchase. So there it was, second week, and demand is demonstrated once again (sigh of relief!). However the crowd had dissipated In the minutes it took for me to fulfill the buyer's purchase; since the demo's drive sales, and I couldn't keep the demo momentum up while fulfilling the buyer's purchase. And yet I was feeling good - in spite of odds stacked against me, I could still sell product, and last week was not a fluke.
Satisfied, I closed up shop then, and continued to plan the way forward: Yes, partners are needed on the marketing and sales side, so I've put out the word on that.

PS Finally, the thing I'm learning about consumer tech product sales is, you don't really ever sell. You explain how the product works, how to use it, and what it can do for them. People make and assert their own buying decision of their own accord. There's no 'selling' moment. They buy or don't buy, and that's it.

Selling in Little India

Last Sunday represented a successful run of sales in Little India. I have to try to repeat the effort this Sunday to verify the non-fluky-ness of last Sunday, so we'll see what happens. In short, this was a watershed moment for my company, as it showed that there is real market demand (translate that to, people are willing to reach their hands into their pocket, taking out cash to give me, in exchange for my product). Rock on.

Little India video

A dose of cultural sampling amid the business activities! I'll provide the track name on request.

Gatekeepers

I operate RST out of a member supported tech office space in Singapore called Hackerspace.  You can look it up on www.hackerspace.sg  This afternoon there was a knock on the door in the Singapore hackerspace. There was a woman, japanese, speaking carefully enunciated but broken english.  I wasn't sure what she wanted, but she appeared to have some sincere
needs.  She mentioned the word 'job', yet she had a minimum of the things you would imagine someone
looking for a job would carry, like a CV.  Yet as an entrepreneur, I'm conditioned to despise gatekeepers,
especially the box-checking kind, so despite my cautious door-answering instincts, I decided I would try being as
un-gatekeepy as possible.  I imagined maybe she was supposed to meet someone in hackerspace, or just to hang out
here or get a tour.  But then at one point she said emphatically, with a very serious face, "I'm looking for
a job".  So I asked her for her card, told her I would put it up on the bulletin board, and if I or anyone I heard
around was looking for artists, I would mention her card.  Well yesterday I had heard a couple folks from
another in-house company talking about artwork, so i queried one of them elliptically asking if they knew any
company looking for an artist.  And surprise surprise,  their own company was looking for artists right now. 
So either the girl was responding to an ad of theirs, or Lady Serendipity was working overtime.  The guy I was
querying bolted upright and immediately sought her card that I put on the bulletin board.
Whether or not she's competent for the job at hand, she's got the best chance someone could hope for to be
considered for it.  I feel good.  

More marketing in Singapore's Little India

You know, over the past few years I've been keeping this blog, it's been anonymous. Over the same three years, i've learned to come out of my shell. Starting with facebook updates, tweets, then the company fb brandpage and company smartmob group I get consulting from.
And over time, no matter what message I'm trying to get across, I've learned that anonymity serves me little. So for now, I'll just provide some links to my other online identities, and you can sort out from there. So first, I tweet much more frequently than I blog at @walkaboutrick . Then, on facebook you can navigate to my company brand page by searching facebook for 'Really Solid Technology'. Finally, the SmartMob. What's a SmartMob? Well quite simply, I'm going about my entrepreneurial efforts without a business partner. makes it especially tough going, but it is what it is. SmartMob allows me to air out my plans on an upcoming activity or decision, and people i trust can provide their feedback to shape my activities.
That is also searchable on facebook under really Solid Technology. The product I market itself, the K-Turn, is featured on www.rstoem.com . That should pretty well cover my online persona. Now on to business updates:
Last week I had a 1.6 meter tall poster printed, and later, 200 leaflets. They all associated the hand cranked portable cell phone charger I market with an emotion , which is the feeling of helping someone. In essence, the user is taking the charger, called the KTurn, and charging someone else's phone with it who is running out of power. Emotions are very powerful things, and I surmised that the ad's imagery of a boy charging a girl's phone would be very compelling indeed, and that i would be getting calls to my own phones (as listed in the leaflets) so I could tell people which retail storeshelves to buy my product in.
Well we're at about 24 hours after the close of the ad campaign, and no calls yet. Perhaps excessively conditioned instinct by this point tells me not to expect calls. Which leads to another change in strategy.
You see, in handing out the leaflets, I had a Tamil laborer working for me for a few hours. You know, it would be more authentic if people received the ad from one of their own then from some random white guy in the middle of Little India.
Let's call this laborer Kumar. We'll call him that because that's his name and he deserves the credit I'm about to give him.
So where Kumar could have just handed out the leaflets to be people and go on, he would get engaged in conversations with them about the product. He was holding a sample charger I had given him a few days before, (he evidently had been trying it out a lot on his own because he had a lot of feedback for me) and he was demonstrating it during his one on one interactions with randomly approached folks in Little India. He made it clear that he felt he was doing better by me to talk to people instead of just to hand out cards. I decided it was lucky I had structured his compensation both on time and number of leaflets handed out, with emphasis on the time. I hadn't predicted his behavior, but I was sure happy with the result of that and more importantly, Kumar's own initiative.
So Kumar most deliberately forced me to realize that the only real way to 'market' to the Little India denizens is to have little demonstrations in public. The demos have as goal to instruct people, who've probably never seen a dynamo, how they can recharge their phones' batteries using only their own hands.
So over the next week, look for me tweeting about securing a table for demonstrating on, a space to put it up in. and hey, maybe even a microphone, amplifier, and speaker. This INSEAD is not too proud to learn marketing from a construction laborer.
Rick Sheridan