Being a Creepy Stalker

As I wrote in this article here, I have been delivering handwritten letters to schools seeking approval to promote Viglo to their outgoing students (students who are finishing up their time in classes with the school). All but one letter has been met with either outright rejection or by being completely ignored.

So, as I was reevaluating my strategy, I was asking myself, "Why continue delivering these handwritten letters?" The true answer is that I want access to these students so that I can show them Viglo in the hopes that they will become students of Viglo. But then it occurred to me, I could just stand outside of these schools waiting for students to leave and approach the students myself without permission from the schools. This idea is so blindingly obvious, especially seeing as how I deliver the handwritten letters by traveling directly to the schools and delivering them myself. So obviously, these schools have physical addresses that are shared with the public. So my next actionable marketing plan is to wait outside of the schools and approach students themselves, and try to convince them to use Viglo once they've completed their time at the school.

I've been practicing in my apartment how I want to approach the individuals leaving the building. I phrase it as "individuals leaving the building" because the schools share office space with other businesses. So, I will be waiting outside of the building to approach anyone who leaves, but they may not even be students of the school. And even if I happen to approach a student, nobody likes being ambushed like this, thus making the way that I open up to them extremely important in order to intrigue them enough to listen to a stranger on the street.

The first thing I need to do is obviously find out if they are a student at that school. There's nothing more I can do than just to simply ask, but as long as my tone of voice is friendly and I don't walk up aggressively, as long as I display some recognition that I am intruding a little bit (by starting with something like, "Sorry to bother you but…") That shouldn't be a big problem. The real trick is to get them willing to listen to a salesman on the street when they're most likely just trying to get home and have no desire to be sold something.

I started out by practicing different lines like, "Can I ask you some questions about the school?" or, "Can I ask you three questions about Spanish?" The first question didn't feel right to me because people don't wish to be interviewed in the streets by a stranger. The second question I believe is a better approach because by stating I only have “three questions,” at least they can be assured there's a limit to my conversation and I'm less likely to ramble on and take up more of their time (I used a technique like this when I was hitchhiking across the United States. At first, I would just stick out my thumb, like seen in the movies, but I was having very little luck. I tried imagining myself being a driver and seeing somebody on the side of the road with their thumb sticking out asking for a ride, and I got thinking even I would be hesitant to pick the person up not so much out of fear for my safety, rather fear of being stuck with somebody in the car that I may or may not get along with for an extended period of time. I didn't want to ruin my drive that way. So, to mitigate this type of fear from people who would be willing to pick up a hitchhiker, I would find sheets of cardboard in a dumpster and use a marker to write down the name of the next closest big city on route. I didn't conduct any interviews to find out why people would pick me up, so I'm purely speculating right now, but I would assume that some of the people who are inclined to pick up hitchhikers would see my sign and say to themselves, “Well, he's just going to the next city so I won't be stuck with him for too long. It's no big deal to pick him up and get him to that destination." Often times while I was in the car, I would learn that they are going even further than the destination I had written down on the cardboard sheet, and would fortunately get further than what I planned [not to mention that cardboard sheet, if thick enough, made for a good mattress at the end of the night, as can be seen in the picture below of me waking up]).

Nonetheless, both of these approaches still leave the person I come up to simply desiring to get out of the conversation. So while practicing different approaches in my apartment, I've decided to immediately throw out an offer that I believe will make them more than happy to listen to me. I've decided I'm just going to straight up offer them $10 to hear me out and to register with my online program. I know if I were on the streets and approached by somebody who offered me $10 to register with their program, especially if it's in a field that I'm openly demonstrating interest in, such as leaving a Spanish School and being offered a Spanish program, not only would I be excited to receive easy money, but I couldn't help but be genuinely interested in what somebody is willing to pay $10 to talk to me about (hell, if somebody wanted to talk to me about makeup, which I will never use, but offered me $10 to listen to them, even beyond the money I would still just be interested in hearing what somebody has to say about makeup that's so important that they would give a stranger $10 in the streets to listen to).

Furthermore, I obviously don't want to keep standing outside of these schools trying to recruit every new student into Viglo. Therefore, I'm also going to offer the person that listens to me a further $10 for every student that he or she recruits and tries Viglo. Once these other recruits register with Viglo, I will have their email address at the very least, or maybe they will have contacted me on WhatsApp using the business cards I will give to the original person that I approached, and I can also offer them money in exchange for sharing Viglo with other students. Giving all this money for recruitment efforts will definitely add up in the expenses column, but these are prime recruits that I'm seeking. By going to these schools, these students will certainly have the minimum conversational abilities to use Viglo, plus, they've already demonstrated a willingness to pay to learn Spanish by attending the schools. And in one single Viglo payment cycle, I will much more than recuperate the money I spent on that individual to get them to try Viglo in the first place. It's time to hit the streets and act like a creepy stalker.

UPDATE (JAN. 3, 2024)
I have to say that I am surprised that nobody gave me the time to show them the video I made for Viglo. I spoke with three individuals, separately, who came out of the school building, asked them if they were students at the school (to which they all replied yes), quickly explained that I'm making an online Spanish program they can use for when they finish their time at the school, and that if they were willing to register with Viglo, I would pay them $10 on the spot. All three students took the time to listen to me explain everything I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but when I asked to show them Viglo itself, they said no. Nobody ran away nor seemed desperate to get away from me, they merely expressed disinterest in what I had to offer.

These rejections genuinely came as a surprise to me because I figured most people would not just be interested in getting the money, but also more interested in the fact that somebody is willing to pay the $10 to share their product that directly aligns with their goal of learning Spanish. When I asked why they weren't interested in hearing it, all of them simply said, “I'm just not interested.” So, while I wrote in the article made the title an intentional joke about stalking, the individuals certainly did not appear to trust me at all. I can only assume that they thought what I was trying to do was scam them in some way.

I'm going to go back out again because there's another set of classes that will be ending tonight, but I got to think about how I want to approach this differently. Well, now that I write that out, I need to keep in mind that my sample size is very small; only three individuals. Sales is generally a numbers game, the vast majority being rejection, and so maybe there isn't necessarily anything wrong with my approach, I just need to do it more often. I will still try to think of ways to improve my approach, but this might just be something I have to do with some frequency before I get somebody to give me a chance. My only real concern is them talking to the director or a teacher at the school and having a conflict with the school. But I will deal with that problem if it comes up.