Supply Creates Its Own Demand
Supply creates its own demand. What a strange and seemingly contradictory concept. In the discipline of Economics, this concept is known as Say’s Law.
Jean-Baptiste Say was a French Economist in the late 17th & early 18th century. He is most famously attributed with coining the term “Entrepreneur” (which, it turns out, isn’t true, but we digress). Say’s law states that supply creates its own demand, but not just from its existence.
Please don’t fall into the Field of Dreams mentality, however. It is not true that, “If you build it, they will come.” Say was never so glib as to describe his own concept in such simple, distilled words. He stated and implied much more, as was the style of anyone who was affluent enough to be writing in the late 18th century.
He meant: build it, take it to market, and you’ll see, someone will pay money for it, whatever it is. He also meant; the wise business person does this process as rapidly as possible. The sooner they make it, the sooner it is sold, and the sooner their investment of time and money is recouped, to do it all again.
Yep. Ol’ Jean-Baptiste was onto the rapid prototyping and minimum viable product concepts way before Frank Robinson and Eric Ries. Long before Ideo had ever iterated a design, our French forefathers were well aware of the concept of getting to market as fast as possible.
“So what?” you ask.
Harness the power of Say’s Law. If you build it, you have to tell people about it, before they will come. This, friends, is a function of marketing.
Fervor is about making an impact on customers and constituents. We do this by helping you tell your story. Your product, service, company, consultancy, ministry, mission does great work. It helps people. You can make positive impact on the lives of those you serve. But, unless people know about it, how will they benefit from it?
Forbes recently cited the #1 cause of business failure as not being in touch with customers through deep dialogue.
“An amazing thing happens when an entrepreneur sees a potential opportunity in the market, or dreams up a new idea for a product/service: they retreat to a cave.”
It’s a strange phenomenon. But it is prolific in the human species. Blame it on perfectionism or blame it on fear of rejection. These things are the same things and they both are rationally irrational. The market, the place where you take your product, is full of people who need what you are building. Of course some will tell you what is wrong with it. But you have to hear that as ways it can be improved and the sooner people tell you about the problems, the sooner you can fix it. In fact, some people with those improvement ideas, will buy it anyway. In it’s current state.
Say’s Law should reassure you that what ever you are building, people will buy. The truth is that they only buy when they know you, your story, where to buy , how to use it and how they can join you. That is the difference between an economic law and what strange, whispering voices tell you when walking through a corn field.
How about this? Tell us your story. Then we’ll help you tell the world.