Book SummaryOversubscribed, by Daniel Priestley

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Oversubscribed

Oversubscribed is a business guide that starts with an unusual premise: Get more people interested in your product or service than you could possibly serve, and don’t start selling it until that happens. In other words, minimize the risk and maximize the profit of running a business by leveraging supply and demand—ensure that there’s always more demand than supply, and you’re practically guaranteed to make a profit. The rest of the book teaches you how to attract that level of demand.

Daniel Priestley is a serial entrepreneur who’s founded several multi-million dollar businesses around the...

Oversubscribed Summary Create More Demand Than You Can Meet

In this section, we’ll examine the foundational lesson of Oversubscribed: Attract more customers than you can serve to maximize your profits. We’ll also explore the benefits of word-of-mouth advertising and explain how you can get people talking about your business, as Priestley believes this is the single most effective way to market a product and thus create demand.

(Shortform note: The advice Priestley gives in this book is equally applicable to physical products and services. For brevity’s sake, we’ll refer to these collectively as “products.”)

The Core Message: Exploit the Law of Supply and Demand

As we’ve mentioned, the central idea of Oversubscribed is to maximize your business’s profits by making sure there’s more demand for your product than you can meet.

Priestley explains that the law of supply and demand influences the price of a product—the harder something is to get, the more that thing costs. So, if there’s more demand than supply for a product, you can charge high prices for it, thereby making a...

Oversubscribed Summary Build Demand Through Word-of-Mouth

Since the central theme of Oversubscribed is to have more customers than you can handle, a great deal of the book is devoted to methods of attracting those customers.

First of all, Priestley warns that mass marketing strategies like commercials and printed advertisements aren’t as effective as they used to be, largely because people are tired of being advertised to. There are so many companies and products already fighting for people’s attention that mass advertising would turn your product into part of the background noise of modern life, meaning your would-be customers would just tune you out.

(Shortform note: The death of mass marketing has been a theme in business books for quite some time—for example, in Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow (2002), he makes a similar claim that mass marketing strategies don’t work anymore because people are simply overloaded with advertisements. However, many experts disagree with that opinion; some argue that mass marketing is [still a key...

Oversubscribed Summary Drive Interest With Campaigns

We’ve covered why Priestley wants you to build more demand than you can meet and why he believes that word-of-mouth is the most effective way to do that. But how do you get enough people talking to make your business profitable?

Priestley says that *running a successful business—one with more demand than supply—requires you to be a campaign manager*...

Oversubscribed Summary Step 1: Determine Your Supply

Before you even begin your campaign, Priestley says that you need to figure out exactly how much supply you have—in other words, how many customers you can serve and how often. Only once you know your business’s capacity can you start making plans to exceed it.

Your answer to this question will largely depend on your business model. For example, if you’re selling handmade clothing, you might only be able to fill a couple of orders each...

Oversubscribed Summary Step 2: Prime the Market

Now that you know what you’re selling and how much of it you have, you need to know who you’re selling to. What kind of people would you enjoy working with? Would those people want what you’re selling? Can they pay your prices?

For example, maybe you’re offering a rideshare service that would make it easier for low-income families to get around crowded urban areas. However, if you have to charge more than those families can afford, that won’t be a good market for you—you might be better off branding it as a luxury service and targeting a higher income bracket instead.

(Shortform note: When selecting your target market, it’s crucial to research that market instead of making assumptions about it. For example, demographics like the...

Oversubscribed Summary Step 3: Reach Critical Mass

As previously noted, the core concept of Oversubscribed is that you should have more demand than you can fulfill; now Priestley clarifies exactly how much interest you should have in your products before you start selling.

Priestley sets three different goals and says that if you’re meeting at least one of them, you’re in good shape to bring your product to market.

1) If people express strong interest, sell when there’s five times as much engagement as there is product. Strong interest means a nearly-guaranteed sale, such as preorders and people putting down deposits for your product. So, for example, if you can sell to 10 people at a time and you have 50 preorders, you’ve met this goal.

2) If people express moderate interest, sell when there’s 10 times as much engagement as there is product. Moderate interest means that people have gone out of their way to learn about your product and express interest in buying it, such as going to an event or...

Oversubscribed Summary Step 4: Make the Sales

Once you’ve got enough engagement to be confident that your product will succeed, it’s time to actually make the sales. This should be the most straightforward step of the whole process—people are already interested in your company and educated about your product, so at this point, a simple conversation with the customer is all you need.

(Shortform note: Priestley talks at length about having sales conversations with your customers, but that's not always necessary, or even practical. If you provide a relatively inexpensive product or provide a product to many people, then there's no reason to have individual sales conversations with all of them—just let the customers make their purchases and move on. In that case, automating your sales process with tools like chatbots, automated mailing lists, and FAQs...

Oversubscribed Summary Step 5: Keep People Talking

Your work isn’t done just because you’ve made the sales. When fulfilling orders, Priestley suggests giving your customers more than you promised. Exceeding your clients’ expectations will excite them and get them talking about your company, making it so the end of one marketing campaign is also the start of the next one. For example, you might include a free sample of another product you sell or send your customers thank-you notes and small gifts.

Note that exceeding expectations doesn’t mean you have to work harder or strain your resources; you can accomplish the same thing by setting customer expectations a little lower at the start. For instance, if you’re prepared to deliver your product in one month, you might tell your clients that...

Shortform Exercise: Plan Your Marketing Campaign

Now that you know Daniel Priestley’s strategy for building more demand than you can meet, think about how you might put it into practice to sell a product or service of your own.

What product or service would you like to sell?