A while back I wrote about innovation and learning and especially how the recommendation by Scott Anthony to love the low end, makes a lot of sense for business and learning professionals. “The past 10 years have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of contract positions and freelance workers (previous post) ,” with 2.6M self-employed Canadians in 2008 (StatsCan), compared to 1.7M manufacturing production & administration workers in 2007 (StatsCan).
The self-employed are like start-ups in permanent bootstrap mode. My experience and those of many folks I know is that we keep our costs as low as possible. We don’t go for expensive office space and many of us use open source software or free web applications. We’ll buy something when it makes solid business sense. That is usually a top end computer or mobile device and perhaps a good car if we travel a lot by road. We love the low end and I believe this will be a long-term trend. If you’re offering business products or software as a service, you had better have a low end version that does the basic job. Some folks will go for the premium edition but only if it is absolutely essential.
As freelancers and contract workers become more of the norm, forget about selling high-end stuff that larger businesses used to buy. Find that sweet spot that the growing, and highly networked, part of the workforce will not only use but will probably do the word-of-mouth marketing for you.
