Autonerdz forums

Tom,

It is a reality today that you always have somebody trying to eat your hard earned lunch.

To that effect you must remain dynamic and prepared to make changes.

Every member of the Picogroup enjoys a special privilege.

I however do have a couple of issues that do concern me.

One is that sometimes I think that our good group members offer too much help and reveal too much about the finer details of scope work, function and tricks in the general board.

Also I think we are a little guilty of offering non Picogroup members too much technical help.

It is my view that access to the minds in the Picogroup is a privilege that has an affordable flagfall, Picogroup members have all seen the merit in paying that flagfall.

We all develop as a consequence of the unbridled freedom to academically discuss our issues on this board.

You have kept a kindly paternal hand on this and have only stepped in where you have seen it get out of hand.

You have an unprecedented group where we are all good to each other and we generally keep to the subject matter.

People hear about or find the general group and start posting, only to receive help from the Pico members.

I think this is help that they should either not receive or pay for.

THE GENERAL GROUP SHOULD ONLY EXIST TO ACT AS A FEEDER TO THE PICOGROUP OR SHOWCASE AUTONERDZ, NOT BE A BACK DOOR TO FREE ACCESS TO PICOGROUP MEMBERS.

I also think the days of the free general group need to be numbered, naturally you wish to showcase the benefits of being a member of the Picogroup, and naturally being in the general group does not give one full access, but I think the time comes where general group members need to put up.

I'm certainly not going to tell you how to run your business but as a person of academic background I can tell you there are no finer minds in the automotive aftermarket than you have attracted here.

(Imagine where we could all go if we had access to car manufacturer engineering documents).

Yes it is competitive, yes people need to see what you have to offer, but the free advice in the general area needs to be restricted.

I for one will not reveal my craft or what I have learnt in this group in the general area.

I urge all Picogroup members to only post significant information within the group.

I also suggest where we do have such information and we can see that the general member may benefit from our knowlege that we suggest he refers it to the Pico group, thus requiring membership.

How long should a general member be able to have access to the general group without making a financial contribution?

Perhaps the stay should have a sunset date before a subscription from a general member is required either to the Picogroup or a lesser subscription to the general group.

I also think that Pico should keep out of the market when it has distributors, Pico is a good company but needs to be aware that Tom in particular is having a global effect on the reputation of the product.

I'm in Australia and when I did my research to me there was no choice.

Yesterday I recieved a call from New Zealand from a friend with an issue with a BMW.

I advised him to purchase a Picoscope from Tom when he first wanted to enter into scope use a few years ago.

So yesterday he was having some issues with a BMW SMG and phoned me a couple of times during the diagnosis, which is still ongoing.

It is an area where I have Picofiles from my own work, which I sent him.

However I could not read his files because he opted not to go with Tom and went for the cheaper option with a scope of a name I did not commit to my long term memory.

The conversation went like this "Send me your capture files......ahhh fuck you don't use a Picoscope from Tom do you...buggar now I cannot review your work!"

He replied "I know I know I've learn't my lesson and I plan to buy a Picoscope, I made a mistake"

I said" Well you make sure you buy it from Tom" and in reply" Oh yes I will only buy it from Tom".

Another benefit Tom, we are all sending little private messages to each other as well, so the influence that the Picogroup has even trandsends what you will read in the Picogroup.

In addition Tom, I see no issue with you increasing your product range to include other devises and tooling required to diagnose and work on cars, once again I'm not going to specifically dictate but for instance you could sell good quality battery chargers from a company like Durst in Australia.

All in all Tom, you have my total support and I see clearly your strategy.

Ward likey!
I remember when I bought mine, I printed off the list of what's included with a couple different options. Then I was scratching things off the list to see what came "extra" with the more expensive option, looking those pieces up item by item to see what they were -
This is much much better. Keep it up!
-Ward-

Tom,

What you offer is out of this world! The main problem is until you are in the Group there is no way to really know.

Pico has been advertising in national trade publications for awhile, I believe we have spoken about this, which is actually cutting your throat in the market.

I do agree with Logic that there is way too much we provide to non-members not only here but on other forums. This must stop!

I am not a marketing expert in any sense of the term, however anything but the real and true cold hard facts would be my approach.

I understand what you are trying to get across with the unlinked web page, but let me say I tried a similar approach when I began accepting credit cards with a horse & buggie compared to a race car and as a result I actually offended / lost a few customers.

In my opinion, window dressings and glitzy ads will not get the Nerdz advantages across in the short time folks spent on web search.

Maybe a third temporary Nerdz membership to limited areas may let the help the market see what you are really all about?

Pico, the company, has to be made aware of the impact and the end results of their attempt to compete with what you offer.

Just look at what this group has provided to Pico with testing Beta software development and other things I may never know. That surely would not come from their sales here in North America or anywhere else.

Pico is promoting a vendor type of sales strategy rather than a franchise system. Pico is cutting their own throats, at least here in the USA.

I cannot go into a Sears, Home Depot, or Walmart and purchase a Snap On Tool. I must order directly from the company or one of their dealers.

What to do???

Thanks for all the comments so far.  We have no intention of lowering our standards.  We just want to draw the price shoppers in and, in the process, educate them about value vs price. 

If they still don't get it, oh well.  We tried.  Best case scenario would be that no one purchase the cheapskate kits because they realize that would be stupid.  (except for Picogroup members)

daveyK wrote on Feb 20^th, 2015 at 6:06pm:


That's what the public areas are for. Teasers.  We have had requests for peeks in the Picogroup areas but there is no way we can do that, as the way it is structured, it's all or nothing.  We would be having passwords to the tutorial library, drop site, and everything harvested.

Looks pretty good Tom.

My only critique is that it's difficult to understand exactly what the price difference is getting you.  I hard a hard time trying to compare the stripped-out kits to the full blown kits.

For example, in the "What's this mean?" literature, it mentions the extra hardware AND the picogroup resources, which is great, but it's hard to look through the "stripped" kits and then switch pages over to the "full blown" kits without forgetting what was in the first kits you looked at.  Like Ward said, you would have to make a little list of all the accessories in a kit and then switch pages and compare to another kit.  Showing a "stripped" kit on the same page as a full blown "welcome to the family" kit may help solve that issue.

So, this being the case, it may be hard to see the difference in VALUE, unless you are the type of person who is would do something like that ... like Ward did ... and like I did

Perhaps a more side-by-side comparison of the options would help other people see exactly what the differences between the kits are.

Make sense?  I hope so.

Also, when I click on the "what's this mean" link, the pop-up with the literature pops up UNDERNEATH my main browser window.  May just be my browser, but it also may still be worth looking into.

By the time I realized what was happening, I already had 3 instances of the literature up

yeah yeah, so maybe I'm a little impatient

Tom Roberts wrote on Feb 20^th, 2015 at 7:08pm:



I agree, but could you just offer the therapy sessions as part of the cheap package? This shouldn't be too hard to set up as the site keeps changing every month

Or offer a pay per phone line help

Tom,

Your query and this discussion prompted me to look at just how Autonerdz members overall perform.

Clearly you will be able to run better statistics than I can however,If I look at how many pages of members recorded there are 138 pages of members with 25 members per page.

There are 250 members who have never made a post
               150 members who have made one post
               120 members who have made two posts
  and only 350 members who have made more than 10 posts.

Whilst I'm not suggesting that this is the be all and end all of analysis but it clearly there have been some 3500 individuals who have had sufficient interest in Autonerdz to register a user name.

Tom, do you see,a value in an email marketing exercise direct to these people who have not converted to a Autonerdz purchase to find out what the issue is with this failure to convert?

I do understand that the reasons will be varied, bit you have a direct marketing list non the less




.