I will be writing about this more, but this is a great example as to why you really need to know your customer/user. If you don't understand how they think, you can't get them to buy. There are many ways to achieve sales, and some great ways to do it, but it's key to understand who you are selling to.

The irony here is that the CEO came from Apple, which is NOTORIOUS for not testing ideas. I've had many an argument with Apple employees about testing, research and user feedback. The thing is, products in Apple are designed for their users, who are a tech savvy group of people, similar in profile to those creating the products. One could say (ok, I'm saying) that they generally design for themselves – and that's super easy to do.

One article is on Huffington Post. I'm sure there are other articles out there, and most likely an HBR case study is in the works. 

Being successful and having sales is about listening and having a dialog with your customers. Gee – maybe I don't need to write a new blog entry about this – I already did!