“The Mom Test”

I read an interesting article by Ian Yarett published in recent Newsweek Magazine. Ian pointed to the importance of Customer (consumer) behaviour resulting in acceptance or rejection of a new product, in this case Apple’s iPad.

Ian’s mom, a phyical therapist, in her mid-50’s A lady with no interest in new technologies. She uses a slow first-generation MacBook, primarily for basic wordprocessing, emails and web browsing. And how experiencing iPad excited her. When she tried out its email and web browsing, and watched the display reorient automatically as she turned it sideways, she wanted one immidiately!

My learning from this article is very simple, Experiencing increases the customer (consumer’s) confidence and makes marketing simple.

What is a Lifetime Opportunity?

“This was a lifetime opportunity”, is an statement heard by many. The statement explains a rare chance that can bring some extraordinary benefits for us, be it making money, career growth, buying a car, finding a life partner, etc.

I agree that certain and extremely rare opportunities may apprear only once in lifetime, but that does not mean there will not be other and better opportunities coming our way. Hence my argument is when our future is a secret thing, how can we call an opportunity a “lifetime or rare”?

In my opinion, lost opportunities are those that have never come our way, these were never meant for us. But those that are intended to be ours, will not only be easy to grab, I would say “These will fall into our laps”, and without much efforts.

Please see how many such opportunities fell into your lap during your lifetime and did you grab them or else?