Is it easy to give away money?

Try to go out and give away 100 dollar bills to strangers on the street. I bet that this is not as easy as it sounds. A lot of people will not take the money. They will think that this is a scam. The conversion rate will be pretty low. The problem is lack of trust in you.

Now try to sell something to bypassers on the street. Or through Internet advertising. Or through cold phone calls. This task is even harder than giving money away. The conversion rate will fall to fractions of a percent.  The reason is the same, lack of trust.

It turns out that the basic unit of marketing is not a unique value proposition or creativity, but trust. This means we should not start our sales funnel from announcing our value proposition but with actions aimed at building trust. When there is trust, you can sell almost anything. And when there is no trust, even giving away money can be hard.