marketing, customer-development, lean-startup, sell, designHow do you visitors of this site think about the concept of faking it untill you making it ?
I have this startup website that will be released soon and think about faking a little bit of the numbers perhaps even the list of customers to get more traction and so it looks “bigger” and more creditable.
How do you think about:
Then if things grow scale those fake things back or just leave them as is.
Never lie to your customers. Never sacrifice values for profit. And always set an example for your employees and customers.
If you’re doing fraudulent things, your employees will follow, and your customers will hate you for it.
If you can’t do even those three things (they’re really simple) you shouldn’t even think for a second about starting a company.
Ethics, and a likely tarnished brand aside, there are many legal implications involved with lying to customers who are spending money.
Well the short answer is: NO.
Leaving the ethical side of it apart, you’ll be dealing with proving and bettering statistics you don’t have which will be doubly difficult.
There are a few tricks that can give such impression without the need to lie:
The list goes on, I think you get it.
No and definitely NO!
If you know what your USP is, you would not need fake numbers to make your product attractive. Sell what you have and be honest. If your product has THE something that your customers want and value, you will bust the numbers without faking them. Because when people feel happy, they take positive action. They make a purchase, they make a recommendation, they return.
As above, It prob would be a safe assumption to say most (if not all) would recommend never to lie.
in some cases it might be worth considering saying nothing…..
and adding to the above list -
eg, you have your first 10 clients - rather than publish “we have 10 clients” - just don’t publish anything
then wait until you have 501 clients - “Now servicing 500+ clients”
but I’m sure with even 10 clients most can come up with a creative marketing ploy…. (that is not lying)
In addition to previous answers, “fake it, till you make it” in some countries is considered a pretty serious commerce offence - I believe France is one of those countries, but I am not 100% sure.
Legally, it can in some cases be considered something called “malicious falsehood” with intent to lure a customer into purchasing services/products from you by you intentionally distributing false information.
For example, in my home country this kind of practice could lead you to a fine of up to 10% of your yearly revenues up to 100,000€. Laws in EU are actually pretty stiff against these kinds of stunts. Something for you to consider.
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