Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kyle_morris_ 2226 days ago
Almost every brick and mortar company’s website includes a phone number.

Call 5 of them and order a meal, when you pick it up ask to talk to the manager for a minute.

Elevator pitch: you’ve got 5-10 seconds to get them to ask for more time.

“When I was ordering food I noticed that I couldn’t prepay online, I almost thought of going somewhere else, how come you don’t have a way to pay before coming in?”

“Don’t know how to do that”

“I built a plugin that takes 5-10 mins to set up and people can pay while they order so I don’t have to come inside, can we do a Skype call when you’re not busy to walk through this?”

Once you’ve gotten a handful of trials like this you can start calling but your options with restaurants(especially mom and pop) are to walk in the door or get to them directly on the phone.

3 comments

If you’re going to do this have some sense and call at an off peak hour like 2:30pm local time.
“What’s plugged in?” “Skipe?”

You’re seriously overestimating the layman’s understanding of technology. Chances are they hired a company to do a templated one-and-done website, and you’ll need to give them a reason to not just go back to whoever put the site up in the first place.

Restaurant owners: Oh, we have thought of it, many guys comes in and invite us just like you. But at the moment, we’re unable to use it. Maybe sometime in the future.

P/s: there is another they won’t tell

Particularly with credit cards, brick and mortar stores have been promised lower fees by many card processing vendors. As soon as you mention credit cards, I'm done listening.
If I heard that objection I'd record a video of me ordering from a competitor down the street compared to placing an order with the prospect.

Showing the prospect how easy it is in some situations against reality is a good way to highlight a real pain point.

Prospects tend to fall into three categories: [1] they'll buy no matter what you do, [2] they won't buy no matter what you do or [3] they'll buy depending on how you sell to them.

Many prospects feel they're in group 2 but if you can outline how your solution solves a problem or provides an opportunity, many of those group 2's will change their tune. The hard part is keeping their attention so you've got to get to value quickly, making it personal is just as important IMO.

You’re theoretically right. But figuring out the actual pain points that the store owner doesn’t see is hard. You might need to observe for sometime of time.

In your case, when people ordering from a different store. Well, it might convince the new restaurant. But old ones will say not in their area, and they’re fine with that.