Comments on: If Foursquare had Sales Reps

By: Preparing for Unidentified Opportunities | THE DREAM IN ACTION

Preparing for Unidentified Opportunities | THE DREAM IN ACTION — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:11:55 +0000

[...] I had signed up about 12 venues to run Foursquare specials I wrote about my experiences. “If Foursquare had sales reps“, “The here and now is a cash cow“, “Don’t be late to the party, get [...]

By: Ryan Graves

Ryan Graves — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:33:09 +0000

By: ryangraves

ryangraves — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:33:09 +0000

By: Steffan Antonas

Steffan Antonas — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:13:16 +0000

Love this line in your post “If you are going to make a case to them, you’ve got to relate what your trying to do with something they already see the value in.”

By: ryangraves

ryangraves — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:59:13 +0000

Thanks Reece. Much appreciated.

Foursquare does have the upper hand in that they have the customers excited
about going to venues, they're taking care of the "bring customers in" part.
Like you said the next step is to make it appealing for venues to get
involved.

In my opinion that's just the small play here though. One venue will
definitely find value from the service once Foursquare packages data
appropriately but there are so many more things you can extract from this
info. Look at SocialGreat.com, they are aggregating checkins from multiple
location based service and creating really powerful information about how
people are acting around a city.

Last night I didn't go out and I checked socialgreat, it said that Chicago
was dead (compared to normal Friday nights) and I felt pretty good about my
decision to stay in and get work done. When I watch socialgreat all I can
think about is watching an ant farm. Now because of foursquare and other
similar services we can watch our cities the way we use to watch ants as
kids. Remember how much we learned from ants?

By: reecepacheco

reecepacheco — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:47:18 +0000

I grew up in a family restaurant, and I struggle to get my parents up to speed with Yelp, Google Local and the web in general. You're absolutely right that you need to relate the use of technology to brick & mortar business owners with relevant terms and experience.

Really, I think a key for foursquare to gain some momentum is to develop a viral loop for the business owners themselves. Sure, foursquare attracts users and keeps them invested with game play, but if the business owners are going to drive revenue, then they need to focus on that plan.

It's a tricky scenario. On one hand, restaurants (for example) are competing with one another, but they also help each other out. So, developing an easy/natural way for restaurateurs to pass foursquare on to one another would be key. They'd also do well to lock up a contract with some chain of restaurants/cafes. And this is old fashioned, but going to a restaurant owners' convention or something would probably help too.

My point is, they need to get a critical mass of businesses on here, and doing it one at a time is tough. We have run into the same thing with our web startup, dealing with college coaches, so we make an effort to partner with whole leagues and our viral loop leads to word of mouth customers for us.

Finally, I'll make the comparison to Twitter. Once Twitter started getting celebs on board, it drew attention to and validated their service. foursquare has that with its users to an extent, but they'd do well to develop a partnership with Starbucks (or similar).

Great project, Ryan. Your drive is admirable.

By: ryangraves

ryangraves — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:48:24 +0000

Practical-
We're on the same page, it will be tough, but the potential value prop is huge if the model is figured out correctly.
I think Foursquare has an upper hand in that the game can determine the customer behavior. In other words if it's adventagous to help the small biz owner because of the games structure, then they will. Quite possibly the “missing link” has been found.

By: Practical Cafe

Practical Cafe — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:59:28 +0000

Very interesting article. I've spoken and dealt with several start up organizations who have the “next great thing” for restaurant and small biz owners, but have no logical way to onboard those businesses without a massive sale force. The simple fact of the matter is that the small biz owner is quite literally bombarded by sales people and/or resellers of the next big thing on a daily basis. The first question by these start ups should be who is the end user? I, as a small biz owner, am more likely to listen to my customer than any one of the ten sales people that call or walk into my business every day. If these concepts focus on educating and inspiring the end user, the business is more interested in hearing the sales pitch and considering the value of the service.

By: ryangraves

ryangraves — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:39:58 +0000

Paul-
I appreciate the notes. Totally agree, gotta be in front of the customer to
know how to provide value.
Put in a request for Nashville here --> http://foursquare.com/cities

Talk to you soon buddy.

By: Paul L'Acosta

Paul L'Acosta — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:34:50 +0000

FourSquare is one of those services that you crave for since you don't have it (they're not yet in Nashville) but hope one day to get to know better. Great notes here Ryan not only for them (FourSquare) but for anyone looking for clues on “how to make it” out there. It's about showing business owners new tools that will help them pay the bills at the end of the month.

And it's great to see that one of the startup owners (Tristan) is anxious to know how to make this service I'm still not able to use better. That way when it finally gets here it'll rock our world! Best of luck. –Paul