I gave a friend some sage advice yesterday about the market: "don't sell people what they don't want."

Sure, it sounds simple. It sounds like you'd be able to follow it rather easily. Just don't try to sell people what they don't want. But, though I give this advice almost religiously, I violate this rule #1 of easy marketing all the time. I'll decide that something is cool or necessary only to find the market has zero interest.

Training - nobody wants it.

Every single time I set up training sessions for people, people flake out on me. They just can't focus for ten minutes at a time. But, they want me to come to their business and train them face to face. It's the same thing. It is free if I do it online, expensive if I come to their location. So, why do they refuse to take the time to do the training online? I honestly don't know.

A few thoguhts that come to mind.

1. I could offer the training to work on a client's website in real-time. They join the training session and I add one feature or content piece or solve one problem per client. They get the service free if they attend the entire meeting. This way the client would learn by watching me work on problems other clients have. It destroys the potential to train more than four of five clients at a time, because you could only solve about that number of problems in a reasonably short training session.
2. People seem to love non-technical discussion videos. People will show up if it's just me in front of a white board or talking over coffee. Weird? Yes. But, this has been successful in the past. I do a session where I just answer questions, then point people to flat tutorials (just pics and text) on the website at the end of the discussion.
3. Maybe it's the people I'm talking to. Maybe they're not motivated enough. Perhaps controlling their own content (what I'm selling) sounds much more cool than the work turns out to be for them.
4. Perhaps I fail to sell the training sessions and fail to build up to the events. I've finally found good tools, to make it super simple to get involved. Everyone can click a link in an email and join the training session.
5. It's also important to note that people can't key in a session ID no matter how simple it is. They will mess it up and almost universally drop the process at the first glitch. So, if you're going to do training you have to call them. Perhaps a call out system would improve the performance and success of the training. So everyone gets a phone call that tells them to check their email and click on the link. Or, I put the link at the top of our website and tell them to go to the website and click on the big link that says [CLICK HERE]. But, a voice guided system, even automated, may dramatically improve participation.

In conclusion, what I've learned is that the way I want to do things, the way I know is much more efficient, is completely unacceptable to the market or my presentation is missing something very important. Testing that conclusion with real life examination will reveal what will and won't work. The discipline to take the time and test these ideas will yield answers very quickly.

How does this apply to your business? I'm examining a personal business failure in the light of the internet for a reason. I hope it helps you. Feel free to discuss here or via social media.

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