#LegalTech #CustomerUnderstanding #MVP #StrategicPartnerships
Hey fellow entrepreneurs! 👋 Ever find yourself in a situation where you offered a customer something for free, only to realize later that you could have handled it differently and potentially made some serious cash? 🤦♂️ Well, that’s exactly what happened to me recently in the legal tech space.
I was so eager to get my MVP out there that I put together a ‘strategic partner program’ offering unlimited free use of my product for two legal cases. Sounds great, right? But turns out, the customer I got deals with massive cases that span years! 💸
So, what could I have done differently to avoid missing out on all that potential revenue? Here are some key takeaways for myself and hopefully for you too:
– Imagine success: Visualize what would happen if your offer is taken up on a large scale
– Understand your customer: Dive deep into their structure and needs to tailor your offer appropriately
By taking these steps, you can avoid the same mistake I made and ensure that you’re not leaving money on the table. 🚀 What strategies have you used to better understand your customers and maximize revenue? Let’s learn from each other! 🤔 #Entrepreneurship #LessonsLearned
Switch to consulting and build their system, or move on and keep building a general platform. If your customers are not paying enough to cover development costs, you have not found product market fit. If you double down, you risk losing a lot.
This should be a lesson for everyone on this sub.
Giving away your product costs you money in more ways than one. It is better to do a free trial, offer 30 day guarantees, or offer the product for free with an advanced sales agreement to buy if the product meets their needs.
Startup founders make OP’s mistake quite often. I did similar myself.
Did you also promise free upgrades? If not, any feature updates could be a different product version, or even a different product name. They can keep using the free one, but the new one with more features requires payment.
Sounds like an amazing situation to be in. Now that you have them, start setting up a competitive moat so that they can’t leave you for a competitor without going through a lot of hassle. I.e. don’t allow bulk legal document downloads. Make it only single and have a viewer option in house. This way if they want to leave they have to manually download every single legal document by hand from your platform. Also you should sell them other services. Overall keep them happy and I’m sure it will pay off in time.
If they love you, and you are differentiated, then they will pay.
You are not thinking about the big picture.
Long legal.case is a good use case to test your product.
You will find bugs and new feature requests and enhancements.
They will bring on other cases and you will make monies on other cases by them ?
Don’t think short term if the product is liked by them.
This is a really great share, thank you for posting it.
I wonder if you could get them to pay sooner, if you offered them discounted pricing to sign on for the rest of their caseload? Or give them another free case if they referred enough business to offset the loss you’re taking on those two cases? I don’t know the exact economics of your model, or how the stress test has been going, but am wondering if something like that could make sense.
Try to get another customer… dont wanna start fighting against lawyers..
**TLDR: Companies know free isn’t forever; Updated them on the change to your free policy; Offer them a discount.**
Just email them and do a follow-up call:
>*Hey,*
>*We’re updating our free tier policy. Previously, it included 2 cases with unlimited use. Now, it includes 2 cases and 1 month of use. After that, the cost will be $X per month per case.*
>*This change helps us balance offering our service with covering our costs. We see you’re enjoying our service, and we understand changes can be unexpected.*
>*As an early user, we’d like to offer you a Y% discount on our paid plan.*
>*Thank you for your understanding and support.*
>*Best regards,*
*[Your Name]*
If they love your service, they’ll happily pay.
Send a nominal invoice discounting the whole price so that your customers and other referrals from them are aware of how much the tech will cost them.
If you cover entertainment law and federal courts, please reach out to me. I might be an excellent test case for you. My entertainment attorney had mentioned placing some of my contracts through an AI system. I was the attorney in fact for my own company for years.
By the way, if you didn’t sign anything, it’s an at will offer and you can revoke your offer at any point in time so why don’t you just do that if it’s costing a lot of cash. Explain the situation to them in plain English. I’m sure they’ll understand even if they don’t like it. Christmas is over.
Easy fix. Stop updating the version they use. Release an updated version of your product that requires them to pay.
Can you not build up a different tier offering, which makes theirs seem super basic and overtime limits them. That way you can push them towards a paid conversion (even if at a discount)?
If you stand on the street corner trading 10$ bills for 5$ bills you’ll have infinite customers.
Learn from their usage. You’ve already learned about giving away product.
What does the tech do?