trip wire process

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• What is a Trip Wire and How Do You Use It?

February 03, 2021

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What is a trip wire? 

As its name suggests, a trip wire is a thin line of wire (or other material) that is intended to cause an intruder to trip over it, thus triggering a mechanism elsewhere that will activate an alarm. The wire is stretched tight and low to the ground between two fixed points, where it will be unseen. When an unwanted visitor trips over the wire, it activates an alarm system, which can be as crude or as elegant as you have the time and materials to construct. Trip wires have been used for hundreds of years by military, police, and civilians alike.

Trip wire comes in a variety of materials. Wire is often preferred due to its rigidity, but multifilament silicon coated Kevlar is also an excellent and more flexible option. In a pinch you could even use fishing line or string.

How do you use a trip wire?

A basic trip alarm system is essentially a simple booby trap. The alarm signaling device will be tethered to a length of trip wire. When the wire is pulled hard enough (presumably by someone tripping over it), it activates the device which alerts you to the presence of an intruder. It couldn’t be simpler! 

Trip wire can also be used independently of a signaling device as an all-purpose wire for whatever purposes you need.

When might you need a trip wire?

Trip wires are often used, with or without a signaling device, for applications such as:

• Perimeter alarms
• Boundary setting
• DIY animal trapping 
• Securing gear

Where can I get a trip wire?

Although just about any kind of string or wire can work in a pinch, the Kevlar Trip Line included in our Tripwire Alarm Kit makes excellent trip line (it’s not actually wire) due to its flexibility and ease of deployment. Get yours here:  https://tihk.co/collections/urban-survival-gear/products/tripwire-alarm-kit

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Tripwire Funnels: Complete Guide With 9 Powerful Examples

Are you spending a lot of money, time, and effort driving traffic to your website – but it isn’t converting enough?

Are you using SEO, social media, content marketing, and paid ads, but your conversion rates are below par?

What if I told you that you can change this and start getting massive conversions and profits simply by introducing a tripwire in your sales funnel?

What is a tripwire you ask?

Well, a tripwire is a low-cost introductory offer specifically designed to convert cold traffic into paying customers.

In other words, you use a tripwire to warm people up to purchasing your core product/service.

But will it work for me?

It definitely can and there are many companies that use tripwires to rake in huge profits.

McDonald’s, for instance, has been using tripwire marketing to build a billion dollar empire.

McDonald’s does not make any profits on their burgers (which is supposed to be their core product) as they sell it at a lower price (tripwire) to attract customers.

They make the profits on upsells and order bumps which include everything that is bought along with the burgers – like fries and drinks.

In this guide, you will learn everything there is to know about tripwires and most importantly, how you can use them in your sales funnel to maximize conversions and profits.

Here’s what we will be covering.

So let’s explore this further.

What Exactly Is a Tripwire?

To put it simply, a tripwire is a high-value product/service offered at a far lower cost, making it an irresistible deal.

It lowers the barrier to entry as it involves low risk and a lower level of commitment.

The goal of a tripwire is twofold.

The first goal is to quickly increase your customer base by converting cold traffic into buying customers. And the second goal is to identify qualifying leads who are more likely to spend money on your products/services (and hence easier to sell to).

Once a customer takes up your tripwire offer, you can upsell them complementary offers leading to your core (or high ticket) offer.

This works because of the fact that it’s much easier to sell to existing customers who have purchased and used your product/service than to a new customer who has no idea who you are.

Let’s look at a simple example.

Let’s say your goal is to sell a box of 50 premium chocolates priced at $350.

If that’s your initial offer, people will be hesitant to buy because for one, the product cost is very high, and they also don’t know who you are or how those chocolates actually taste.

So instead, you make your initial offer a tripwire.

You give them a smaller pack of 5 chocolates at a highly discounted rate of say $5 (instead of the actual rate which would be $35) making this a no-brainer deal.

Anyone who is genuinely interested will find it silly to pass on such a deal.

Once a customer takes you up on the tripwire offer, you can then upsell them a slightly bigger box of chocolates, say a box of 25 at the standard rate of $175.

And if they take you up on that, you can sell them your core offer which is the box of 50 at $350.

Not every person who takes up your tripwire offer is going to end up buying your core product, but a lot of them will (which will also lead to repeat transactions), making you a ton of profits.

So even though you might incur a small loss initially (as part of your low-cost tripwire offer), you will end up making a whole lot more going forward.

Now the obvious question that arises is, why not give away the 5 chocolates for free?

Well, by giving away the product for free, you will get a lot more leads, but there is no way to figure out if these leads will be interested in shelling out money to buy your products.

Instead, when you put a price tag on it and someone buys your product, they become your customer and it’s much easier to sell to your existing customers.

So a tripwire offer helps you identify buyers. It helps you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Now let’s look at a real life example of a tripwire offer.

The following image shows a tripwire offer from Rebus university that sells real estate related training courses.

As you would notice, the product, which in this case is a membership to a real estate training course is of an extremely high value consisting of 12 power-packed courses.

In comparison, the offer rate of $7 (for 7 days of access) appears miniscule making it an irresistible deal.

Once the customer takes up the offer and gets to experience the courses first hand, they are highly likely to continue the membership at its original price which in this case is $127 after the trial period.

So instead of presenting the customer with an initial offer of $127 which will put them in a state of freeze, the company offers them a no-brainer tripwire offer of $7 with an option to cancel anytime.

This brings down the customer’s guard as it’s a low cost, low risk, and low commitment offer. And once they find real value in the training course, they are more than likely to sign up for the monthly membership.

We will look at many such examples of tripwires in action in the later part of this article. Ideas that will help you formulate your own successful tripwire.

How Is a Tripwire Different From a Lead Magnet?

A tripwire might seem very similar to a lead magnet but it is not.

A lead magnet is used to generate leads by offering a free incentive whereas a tripwire is used to convert leads into customers by offering a low cost (not free) incentive.

Let’s look at the differences in further details.

A lead magnet offers an incentive in the form of a free product (eg. a free ebook) in exchange for the prospect’s email address or other contact information.

The following image is a good example of a lead magnet.

As you can see, the prospect just needs to enter their email address to get a free copy of the gardening book.

A tripwire, on the other hand, offers a heavily discounted product/service as an incentive to convert prospects into customers. For example, an ebook that is sold for less than one-fourth of its original cost.

You can use a lead magnet and a tripwire together in your sales funnel as shown in the image below.

You first generate leads by offering a related product as a free lead magnet and then pitch your tripwire offer to those leads.

Finally, you pitch your high ticket offer to customers who took up the tripwire offer.

This is a really popular sales funnel model used by a lot of marketers.

How Is a Tripwire Different From a Discount Coupon?

A lot of people tend to confuse tripwire offers with discounted offers (like discount coupons). Although they might look the same, they differ in terms of their objectives.

The objective of a discounted deal is to increase conversions while also increasing profits. Therefore, you can only offer a nominal discount that does not cut too deeply into your profit margins.

Whereas the sole objective of a tripwire is to quickly convert as much traffic as possible into customers. Therefore, while offering a tripwire, you are not usually focused on making a profit.

In-fact, there is a possibility that you may incur a loss because you are offering a high-quality product at a very low cost. This loss can be recovered by upselling to your customers once they have taken up your tripwire offer.

For example, let’s say the cost of an ebook is $25 and you offer it for $20 as part of a discounted deal for a limited period. This will increase your conversions while increasing your profits.

Whereas in a tripwire offer, you will be offering the $25 ebook for some insanely low price like $2 or $5. The moment someone sees this, they will want to take up the offer as the value they are getting from the product is far higher than the price they need to pay.

So you get far higher conversions but in doing so, your profit margins become extremely low or non-existent in-case in some cases.

Where Should You Use a Tripwire in Your Sales Funnel?

A tripwire is generally used in the beginning (top) or middle of a sales funnel.

Top of Funnel

In this strategy, you drive traffic to your website using SEO, social media, paid ads, etc. and then sell them your tripwire offer.

For customers who take up the tripwire, you can show a discounted order bump and then an upsell or two before selling them on the core offer.

Upsells can be sent via a series of emails.

This is a great way to convert people quickly.

Middle of Funnel

You can also use a tripwire in the middle of your sales funnel.

In this strategy, you drive traffic to your website and use a lead magnet (free offer) to get people to sign up for your email newsletter.

You can then send your tripwire offer(s) through a series of emails.

You can also use this strategy if you already have an email list.

You can also use this funnel strategy to bring back existing customers who are no longer actively engaged with your business.

The 5 Factors That Make a Tripwire Successful

Simply implementing a tripwire does not necessarily guarantee its success.

If you want your tripwire to be successful, your tripwire offer needs to have a combination of 5 important factors.

These factors are as follows.

1. Low Cost but High Perceived Value

To be successful, your tripwire offer should be a combination of low risk, low commitment, low cost, and high value.

Always make sure that the perceived value of your tripwire product/service is much higher than the price being charged.

A question that pops up in the minds of most customers upon seeing such offers is, ‘ Okay, where’s the catch? ’

Give a clear message to your customers that there is absolutely no catch and no risk involved when they take up your offer.

Also, offer a money back guarantee.

For example, if your tripwire is a product/service trial, assure your customers that they are free to cancel the trial anytime and that they will not incur additional charges (as shown in the image below).

2. High Product Quality

The product that you offer as a tripwire needs to be of high quality so it builds trust and encourages your customers to continue doing business with you.

Think of this product as a small sample to your core offer. If the sample is not good, people will not be interested in purchasing your core offer or your upsells.

Therefore, it is important that the product you offer is of the best quality and offers high value to your customers.

3. Useful but Incomplete

Your tripwire product should offer high value but also leave your customers wanting more.

It should evoke a desire in them to go back to your website and buy more products/services.

For example, if you are selling an online course , you can give away the first few chapters of the course as the tripwire product. This way, your customers gain value out of the chapters and their most natural step would be to buy the remaining chapters.

So always make sure that your tripwire naturally leads to your core product.

4. Creates a Sense of Urgency

In order to be successful, your tripwire should create a sense of urgency.

Let your customers know that your offer is not going to last forever.

If it’s a physical product you can tell your customers that you have limited inventory and that the products will be sold out quickly if they don’t act fast.

In the case of a digital product, you can put a time limit for which the tripwire offer will be available.

Urgency creates the fear of missing out which will motivate your prospect to take up your tripwire offer.

5. Specific and Relevant

If you offer a tripwire product that is completely unrelated to your core offer, then people will not be interested in buying your core offer.

So make sure that there is a connection between the products your offer as your lead magnet, tripwire, order bumps, upsells and your core offer. All of these should naturally lead to the other.

For example, if you offer a free ebook on indoor gardening as a lead magnet, your tripwire should be something related to an indoor gardening webinar, and your core product could be a complete indoor gardening DVD course.

As you can see, all of these products naturally lead to the other.

As a rule of thumb, try to come up with your tripwire offer based on your core offer and not the other way round.

8 Types of Products You Can Offer as a Tripwire

Depending on your industry, there are a ton of products/services that you can offer as a tripwire.

The following are just some examples to give you a head start.

1. Product/Service Trials:

Trials can work great as tripwires.

You can offer your customers a limited time trial (ideally 7 to 10 days) at a low cost (say $7 for 7-day access) that allows them to test out and use all the features of your product or service.

This can work great for digital products, training courses, and membership sites.

2. Physical Products as Free-Plus-Shipping Offers:

In this type of tripwire, you offer a physical product completely free of cost as long as the customer covers the shipping fee.

For example, you can sell a physical book for free and charge only for shipping.

3. A Smaller Version of a Core Product Offering:

You can take a small portion of your core product and offer it as a tripwire.

For example, if you sell a training program that consists of 15 modules, you can give the first two modules at a low cost as a tripwire.

4. Complementary Products

A complimentary product that ties into your main product can make for a great tripwire too.

For example, if you sell sneakers, you can give a sneaker cleaner as a tripwire.

5. Small Workbooks or Journals

You can offer workbooks or journals that go along with your main product as a tripwire.

6. E-books or Info Products

An ebook related to your core product can make for the perfect tripwire.

Just make sure that the ebook offers high value and is not merely a product plug.

7. Webinars

Webinars are usually used as a free lead magnet, but they can work well as tripwires too.

A good way to go about this is to use a free lead magnet to get people on your email list and then send them a link to the paid webinar.

People will sign-up for a paid webinar as long as they are sure it is going to give them great value.

8. Consultations

You can offer a 15-minute one-on-one consultation on phone, chat or email as a tripwire.

Again the best way to approach this is to first start off with a lead magnet and then pitch your tripwire to people on your email list.

Your free product should give them a great value which will encourage them to take up the tripwire offer.

How to Price Your Tripwire Offer

Tripwires are typically priced between $1 and $20. But the price can be higher depending on the average cost of your products.

For example, if your core product sells at $2000, you can even consider selling a $100 tripwire offer.

As a rule of thumb, just make sure that the product that you are offering is of a far higher value than the price you are charging for it.

For example, an ebook that sells at $45 can be offered at one tenth its price at $5. Now that’s an offer that is super hard to resist. Also, because this is a digital product, you will not incur a loss.

So you have the freedom to price it as low as possible. This is not the case with a physical product though.

If your tripwire is a physical product, make sure that you price it in such a way that it does not burn a huge hole in your pocket.

Ideally, you need to price it so that you break even or incur as little loss as possible. You can always increase the shipping fee a little to offset the low price.

You can keep making corrective changes to your tripwire strategy based on the conversion rate and the average cart value (ACV) of your tripwire funnel.

9 Powerful Examples of Successful Tripwires in Action

Let’s look at 8 powerful examples of tripwire offers from successful marketers and e-commerce stores that will help you formulate your own tripwire strategy.

1. Ryan Levesque – Free Plus Shipping Tripwire Offer

One of the most popular tripwire strategies is ‘Free plus shipping’.

You basically offer a physical product completely free of cost as long as the customer pays for shipping.

The following image is a good example of this strategy in action.

As you can see, Ryan Levesque , the founder of, ‘The Ask Method ’, is selling his bestselling book ‘Ask’ for free as long as the customer is ready to pay $7.95 for shipping.

The book retails at $12.99.

Given the popularity of the book and the high value it promises, this is a no-brainer deal.

A tripwire like this can be used for any physical product (as we will see in the next example), but books definitely work great for this as you can keep the cost of production low and still up the overall value of the product.

Just make sure that the product you give for free is complementary or is in someway related to your core offer.

2. DotcomSecrets – Free + Shipping + Order Bump

Another popular tripwire strategy is to combine your free plus shipping offer with an order bump and upsell.

This way you can start making profits from your tripwire even before showing your customer the core offer.

As an example let’s look at how Russel Brunson the founder of ClickFunnels users this strategy.

As you can see from the following image, Russel sells his popular book DotComSecrets (cost $19.95) free of cost as long as you are ready to pay the shipping of $7.95.

But that’s not all. Once you enter your shipping details and go to the payment step, you are presented with an order bump as you can see from the image below.

The order bump includes a package deal of 5 of Russel’s best selling books available at a discounted rate of $37.

Because you are already paying for shipping and the shipping cost will remain the same for 1 book or this deal of 5 books, this deal is sure to tempt you to take up the order bump.

It’s a given that not everyone will take up the order bump, but many will, resulting in a considerable increase in earnings.

Let’s look at another example.

TheAwesomeParents.com offers a free pair of premium socks (original cost – $22) as a tripwire. You only need to pay for shipping

Once you take up the tripwire offer, they upsell related products as you can see from the image below.

In this way discounted order bumps and upsells can help you easily make a profit using a tripwire.

Of-course once the customer has taken up your tripwire and order bump/upsell, you can start selling them your core offer through a series of emails.

3. Name.com – First Year Discount and Then Regular Pricing

Name.com (domain name reseller) offers an extremely low price for registrations of newer domain name extensions.

For instance, you can buy a ‘.club’ extension for as low as 99 cents for the first year making this an irresistible deal. From the second year onward, the regular rate of $15.98 is charged.

Name.com knows that once a customer buys a domain name there is a high likelihood that they will continue for many years to come. So they make more than the low-cost tripwire over repeat transactions.

This strategy can work great for membership sites like forums.

Instead of the entire year, you can give the first month at a lower cost and then charge regular rates from the 2nd month onward.

Once a customer starts participating in the forum and starts finding value, there is a high likelihood that will continue their membership.

4. DesignCuts.com – Bundled Products as a Tripwire

Bundled products can work great as a tripwire offer.

Let’s look at an example.

DesignCuts.com offers design related resources like fonts, graphics, textures, templates and more for designers.

They release tripwire deals on a regular basis that generally includes a bundled collection of various design elements at extremely low prices.

All of their deals are offered for a limited time making it that much more attractive.

The following is one such example.

As you can see (from the above image), they offer an absolutely amazing deal for their vintage design library that includes vintage fonts, lettering library, textures, decorative elements, vintage brushes, illustrations and a lot more at an insanely low price.

Any designer will find this offer too good to pass up on. And once they take up the offer, they are more than likely to checkout the multitude of other resources offered by the site.

5. Ahrefs – $7 Trial for 7 Days

Product trials can make for great tripwire offers.

Ahrefs (online competitor research tool) offers a $7 trial (for 7 days) as a tripwire.

The 7 days trial gives you full access to all the features and you have the option to cancel anytime.

Once the trial is over, you will be charged the regular amount which is $99 per month for the Lite plan or $179 per month for the standard plan.

Many Ahrefs competitors offer a free trial with limited features but this is a better option as you get to use all the features for a low cost.

There is a high likelihood that anyone who signs up for the tripwire will continue with the monthly plan as they get to experience all the amazing features firsthand and know that these features are worth the money.

6. ExceedNutrition – $1 Trial for 14 Days

A really popular tripwire option is the $1 trial.

This tripwire is absolutely irresistible because of its super low rate and the fact that you get access to all the features of a product for a set period of time.

A good example is Exceednutrition.com that sells recipe packs.

This site offers a $1 trial that gives you access to all membership features for a period of 14 days.

As you can see from the image below, the customer is free to cancel anytime and there is also a money back guarantee that makes this deal completely risk free with low commitment.

Here’s another example (refer to the image below) of a $1 trial from JumpManual.com that offers training courses for basketball players to improve their vertical jump.

JumpManual.com offers a $1 trial for 7 days access to their complete training library.

Once the trial is over, you get to keep the product at a 73% discount or cancel anytime.

The discount makes this offer even more enticing. There is a high likelihood that the discount and the value that the product offers will motivate the buyers to make the $66 payment and keep the course.

Here’s one more example of a $1 trial from SaleHOO.com which is a directory of wholesale suppliers and dropshippers.

This is again a 7-day trial where you get full access to the directory.

Once the trial is over, you are charged an annual fee of $67 to continue access.

And while we are at it, let’s look at one more example, this time for a physical product.

YogaBody.com offers a $1 trial (for 1 month) for their Yoga Trapeze product (original cost $199).

So you only need to pay $1 plus the shipping fee to get this product.

This trial allows you to use this product for 30 days and if you are not satisfied, you can send it back at no additional cost. If you are satisfied and want to keep it, you can make the remaining payment.

So as you can see, trials can work for physical products too.

7. Snackcrate – A Smaller Sample as a Tripwire

Product samples can work great as tripwire offers too. Let’s see this in action.

Snackcrate is a subscription service that sends its customers snacks from various countries on a monthly basis.

In order to get more customers, Snackcrate offers a starter subscription box as a tripwire.

As you can see from the image below, this box costs only $5 and comes with over half a pound of snacks. So customers get to enjoy amazing snacks at an insanely low cost making this a super attractive offer.

To encourage customers to continue, Snackcrate also offers a discount for the 2nd month.

From the 3rd month onward the regular price of $26 is charged.

Customers are free to cancel their subscriptions at any time.

8. Shawn Thomas – Low-Cost Flash Sale as a Tripwire

Flash sales where you offer a product/service for an extremely low rate for a short period of time can make for a great tripwire offer.

The following image is an example of a popular course by Shawn Thomas (author and entrepreneur) that you can get access to for as low as $8 for a limited period of time. The actual cost of the course is $48.

As you can see, this course gives you access to a multitude of ebooks, videos, and articles making this an irresistible deal to pass up on.

Also, the deal is available only for a limited time that creates a sense of urgency that will motivate people to buy this as soon as possible.

9. Disney Movie Club – 4 Movies for $1 Tripwire Offer

In order to encourage you to join, the Disney Movie Club offers 4 movies of your choice for as low as $1 along with free shipping!

Anyone who is considering joining the Club will find this offer silly to pass up on.

Disney more than makes up for this low-cost offer because as per their membership terms, once you join (using this offer) you need to buy five more movie titles in the course of 2 years at a regular rate.

This again sounds very nominal as anyone who is into Disney movies, will certainly buy more than 5 titles in over 2 years.

Use CartFlows to Create Successful Tripwire Funnels

As we saw in this article, there are various strategies that go into making a tripwire successful and one of them is using order bumps and upsells to promote related products/services to customers who take up your tripwire offer.

If you are wondering how you can add these to your tripwire offer without hiring an expensive programmer or buying expensive software, then worry not.

You have an extremely easy to use and affordable solution available in CartFlows.

What Is CartFlows

CartFlows is a complete checkout optimization plugin for WordPress that integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce.

With CartFlows, you can easily build complex sales funnels including landing pages, checkout pages, order bumps, upsell/downsell pages and thank you pages with the click of a button.

The following image is an example of a checkout page created using CartFlows for a Free plus Shipping tripwire offer.

As you can see, this page also features an order bump right above the ‘ Call to Action ’ button.

You can create such pages easily using CartFlows as this plugin gives you access to prebuilt templates (for landing, checkout, upsell and thank you pages) that can easily be edited using your favorite page builder be it Elementor, Divi or Beaver Builder.

Once the page is designed, you can add additional functionalities like order bumps right from within your WordPress dashboard as shown in the image below.

You can also add Upsell/Downsell pages with ease and decide where you want them to appear in your checkout flow (sales funnel).

The following is an example of an upsell page created using CartFlows.

We encourage you to take CartFlows for a spin today and see how it changes the way you do business online.

You can download the free version of CartFlows from the WordPress repository here .

Wrapping Up

You are probably good at driving traffic to your website and even at generating leads using a lead magnet.

But if you are not able to get those leads to convert into customers, then all your effort is going to vain.

As we saw in this article, a tripwire could act as a bridge helping you convert leads into customers, whom you can then upsell to maximizing your profits.

So if you have never used tripwire marketing before, then it’s high time you give it a try even if it is only for a short period of time.

Use the strategies and tools mentioned in this article to create your own tripwire offer and see how it increases your conversion rates and your profit margins.

We are certain you will fall in love with this marketing tactic.

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What Is a Tripwire and Why Does My Business Need It?

Like spring turning into summer and summer turning into fall, you can count on the fact that at one time or another, your business will experience a mini plateau… or slow season, if you will… sometimes there’s a really good reason for this (like a global pandemic shutting businesses down and forcing people to stay at home). But other times, it just… happens… seemingly for no rhyme or reason.

Nothing has changed. Your marketing tactics and targets are still the same. And you’re still receiving the same A+ feedback from current clients and customers. But new business? Not a chance.

So what gives?

The truth? Probably nothing. Ebbs and flows in a business are to be expected but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a few tricks up our sleeves to get us back to generating a strong and steady income.

One of our favorite tricks is the TRIPWIRE .

What Is a Tripwire?

Sounds pretty suspicious, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, this standard business tool has no tomfoolery in sight.

A tripwire is a super low-priced offer, a can’t-say-no, gotta-grab-it-now product or service. You’ll usually see these types of offers priced at $9, $7 or for the low, low price of only $1 (in our best infomercial voice).

Don’t think you’ve ever seen one? Think again. Remember when Columbia House sold 12 CDs A PENNY?!

The gist is simple:

Offer something so affordable that people can’t resist—and then nurture and upsell them in your funnel.

While tripwires are great tools for reigniting your sales, they don’t only have to be used when you’re ready to send out an SOS. Instead, they should be used as a simple step in your funnel that helps warm your audience and get people past the initial purchasing hurdles.

5 Examples of Tripwires That Convert

We already mentioned the ingenious tripwire that helped Columbia House to grow into a billion-dollar company but maybe you’re stumped thinking about what irresistible offer your business has. Here are 5 ideas you can take and customize to fit your customer or clients’ needs:

• Customizable Templates and Workbooks ( bonus points if they relate to your lead magnet! )
• Swipe Files (like the one AutoGrow offers for only $7)
• Trial Memberships For $1, or even FREE (because who doesn’t love trying something for nothing… or next to nothing?)
• Partial Products (Don’t give the WHOLE cow away for free… but a taste of the milk wouldn’t hurt.)
• Bundles or “Vault Access” For a Discounted Rate (You want people to say, “You mean I get ALL OF THIS… FOR ONLY THAT?!” Mind blown, purchase complete.)

So… Why Not Free?

It’s important to note that a TRIPWIRE and a LEAD MAGNET are two entirely different things. Your lead magnet is a freebie that gets people to initially sign up for your email list or dish out their contact info. A tripwire, on the other hand, helps to turn leads into first-time buyers.

According to DigitalMarketer.Com, “if someone takes that $7 “front end” offer they are 10X more likely to buy the main product.”

And there’s also this —-> People tend to devalue FREE .

Crazy, right?

A lead magnet works because people understand that the value they are receiving is in direct correlation to the sacred contact info they are sharing. In a post about tripwires, CrazyEgg.com shares something marketer Ramit Sethi once said after trying to give away FREE copies of his otherwise $2,000 course, “People value what they pay for…You’re not doing [prospects] a disservice by charging them, you’re actually doing a profound service for the people who want to take action.”

He stated that when people paid for digital tools, they were more likely to actually use it than if it was free.

4 Steps to a Successful Tripwire

Are you still with us here? Surprisingly, setting up a tripwire doesn’t require as much work as launching a brand new product or service. In fact, your most successful tripwires will likely be “valuable knockoffs” of products you already offer. Here’s what we mean:

Step ONE: Take a look at your current sales. What’s working, what’s not and where do you have wiggle room to charge less for something while still making a small profit, or at least breaking even?

Step TWO: Identify a high-converting product that has wiggle room in its price point.

Step THREE: Using that product or service as inspiration, “slim it down” so that it overcomes any purchasing hurdles in regards to cost but still delivers a power punch of value. Alternatively, for products such as clubs, you can choose to keep your price the same but offer a trial membership.

Step FOUR: Set that baby up in a sales funnel—STAT. Add nurturing emails that position you as an authority and bring people to know, like, and trust you, and then upsell into your core offer.

Want help creating the marketing strategy and assets that will set you apart from your competitors and make your business absolutely unforgettable?

Schedule your free consultation today!

Whether you’re experiencing a lull in sales or are ready to add another element to your funnel, creating your first tripwire is exciting. Remember, it’s all about the low-price entry point. There’s a time and a place for your hundred and thousand dollar offers—but this ain’t it.

Keep it simple, keep it cheap, but keep it valuable! And if you know you need this but realize you just don’t have the time to do it yourself, let’s chat . We’d be honored to help you craft the perfect tripwire your audience can’t help but purchase without hesitation. We’ll get your profits flowing in no time!

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Technical Resource for Incident Prevention (TRIPwire) Portal

The Technical Resource for Incident Prevention (TRIP wire ) is the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) online, collaborative information-sharing and resource portal for:

• Bomb squads
• Emergency responders
• Military personnel
• Government officials
• Intelligence analysts
• Private sector security professionals
• Critical infrastructure owners and operators

Developed and maintained by the DHS Office for Bombing Prevention (OBP), TRIP wire combines expert analyses and reports with relevant documents, images, and videos gathered directly from sources to help users anticipate, identify, and prevent Improvised Explosive Device (IED) incidents. A secure, restricted-access information-sharing platform, TRIP wire is available at no cost to registered subscribers and features a publicly accessible homepage with valuable preparedness information for the whole community.

IED Threat Information Sharing: Bombing Prevention at Your Fingertips

Information on TRIP wire is provided to increase awareness of evolving IED tactics, techniques, and procedures, as well as incident lessons learned and Counter-IED (C-IED) preparedness information.

• Use the “What’s New” feature for coverage and analysis of the latest domestic and international IED-specific events and incidents.
• Leverage the wealth of explosives-related information and analysis to identify explosive hazards, including IED components, and potential tactics in high-risk operations.
• Access critical C-IED information, such as common site vulnerabilities; potential threat indicators; protective measures; and bombing prevention training, planning, and policy guidance, to enhance domestic preparedness.
• Review expert-validated profiles and cutting-edge terrorist IED videos to recognize operational tactics and to prioritize and improve protective measures or training scenarios.
• Submit a Request for Information (RFI) to the OBP Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team for detailed feedback on domestic IED incident, IED trend analysis, emerging IED tactics, and significant incident reports.
• Use the Domestic IED Incident Map and Reports to understand risks in your community.

Additional Information

For more information about TRIP wire , please watch the TRIP wire video or refer to the TRIP wire fact sheet. 

TRIP wire video

TRIP wire Fact Sheet

If you have any questions or would like to reach out to us, please send an email to [email protected] .

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Tripwire explained

Tripwire: Enhancing Cybersecurity with File Integrity Monitoring

Table of contents

Introduction, what is tripwire, how tripwire is used, background and history of tripwire, examples and use cases, career aspects, relevance and best practices.

In the world of cybersecurity, organizations face a constant battle to protect their digital assets from unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security incidents. One crucial aspect of maintaining a secure environment is ensuring the integrity of critical files and system configurations. This is where Tripwire, a leading file integrity Monitoring (FIM) solution, comes into play. In this article, we will explore Tripwire in detail, covering its definition, usage, background, examples, use cases, career aspects, relevance in the industry, and best practices.

Tripwire is a comprehensive security solution that provides file integrity monitoring, vulnerability management, and configuration assessment capabilities. Its primary objective is to detect and alert on unauthorized changes made to files, directories, and system configurations. By continuously monitoring and analyzing these changes, Tripwire helps organizations identify potential security breaches, Compliance violations, and system misconfigurations.

Tripwire operates by comparing the current state of files and configurations against a known baseline or set of predefined policies. It accomplishes this through the following key components:

Baseline Creation : Initially, Tripwire creates a baseline by scanning and cataloging the current state of files, directories, and system configurations. This baseline acts as a reference point against which subsequent changes will be compared.

Monitoring : Once the baseline is established, Tripwire continually monitors the integrity of files and configurations for any modifications. It uses cryptographic hashes, such as MD5 or SHA-256, to verify the integrity of files and detect any alterations.

Change Detection : Any changes made to files or configurations are detected by comparing the current state with the baseline. Tripwire generates alerts and notifications whenever unauthorized or unexpected modifications are identified.

Alerting and Reporting : Tripwire provides real-time alerts and detailed reports to security teams, enabling them to investigate and respond to potential security incidents promptly. These alerts can be integrated with security information and event management ( SIEM ) systems for centralized monitoring and correlation.

Remediation : To ensure the integrity of the system, Tripwire helps organizations restore the affected files or configurations to their trusted state. It also assists in identifying the root cause of the changes and implementing preventive measures to minimize future incidents.

Tripwire was initially developed in 1992 by Gene Kim, Dr. Gene Spafford, and Dr. Ron Ritchey as an open-source Intrusion detection system for Unix-based systems. It gained popularity due to its effectiveness in detecting unauthorized changes to critical files and directories. In 1997, Tripwire, Inc. was founded to commercialize the solution and provide enterprise-grade support and additional features.

Over the years, Tripwire evolved into a comprehensive security suite, offering a range of capabilities beyond file integrity monitoring. Tripwire, Inc. has expanded its product portfolio to include vulnerability management, configuration assessment, and Threat intelligence solutions. Today, Tripwire is widely recognized as a leading provider of security and compliance solutions for organizations across various industries.

Tripwire finds application in a wide range of industries and use cases. Here are a few examples:

Financial Institutions : Banks and financial organizations rely on Tripwire to ensure the integrity of critical financial data, transaction records, and regulatory Compliance . It helps detect unauthorized changes that could lead to fraud or compromise the integrity of financial systems.

Healthcare Providers : Healthcare organizations use Tripwire to protect patient data, comply with industry regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ( HIPAA ), and safeguard medical devices from unauthorized modifications.

Government Agencies : Government agencies leverage Tripwire to secure sensitive information, critical infrastructure, and ensure compliance with security standards such as the Federal Information Security Management Act ( FISMA ).

Cloud Environments : Tripwire plays a vital role in securing cloud-based infrastructure and virtualized environments. It helps organizations monitor and control changes to virtual machines, containers, and cloud configurations.

As the demand for robust cybersecurity solutions continues to grow, professionals with expertise in Tripwire and file integrity monitoring are in high demand. Career opportunities in this field include:

Tripwire Administrator : Responsible for managing Tripwire deployments, configuring policies, creating baselines, and analyzing alerts generated by the system.

Security Analyst : Utilizes Tripwire to analyze alerts, investigate potential security incidents, and develop strategies for enhancing the overall security posture of an organization.

Compliance Officer : Ensures that the organization adheres to relevant security standards, regulations, and policies by leveraging Tripwire's compliance-focused features.

Security Consultant : Provides expert advice and guidance on implementing Tripwire and other security solutions, conducts security assessments, and assists organizations in optimizing their security controls.

Tripwire continues to be a relevant and indispensable tool in the cybersecurity landscape. It helps organizations address various security challenges, including:

• Detecting unauthorized changes to files, configurations, and critical systems.
• Ensuring compliance with industry regulations and security standards.
• Identifying Vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that can be exploited by attackers.
• Enhancing Incident response capabilities through real-time alerts and detailed reports.

To maximize the effectiveness of Tripwire and ensure its successful implementation, organizations should follow these best practices:

• Regularly update Tripwire's baseline to reflect changes in the environment.
• Implement a robust change management process to differentiate authorized changes from unauthorized ones.
• Integrate Tripwire with other security solutions, such as SIEM and vulnerability scanners, for enhanced visibility and correlation.
• Periodically review and fine-tune Tripwire policies to minimize false positives and false negatives.
• Leverage Tripwire's compliance features to streamline Audits and maintain regulatory compliance.

In conclusion, Tripwire's file integrity monitoring capabilities provide organizations with a powerful tool to enhance their cybersecurity posture. By continuously monitoring and detecting unauthorized changes, Tripwire helps organizations identify potential security incidents, maintain compliance, and protect critical assets. As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, Tripwire remains a relevant and valuable solution for organizations across various industries.

References:

• Tripwire Official Website: https://www.tripwire.com/
• Tripwire Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripwire_(software)
• Tripwire Enterprise User Guide: https://support.tripwire.com/s/article/Tripwire-Enterprise-User-Guide
• Tripwire and Cloud Security: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/cloud-tripwire/

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Tripwire Marketing: Lure in More Customers With 12 Slam-Dunk Ideas

You’re unhappy with your conversion rate . People just aren’t buying what you’re selling. The solution might lie in tripwire marketing.

The term tripwire marketing might sound a little shady, like you’re trying to get one over on your customer. That’s not the case at all.

Marketing and advertising experts have been using tripwire marketing for decades in one form or another, and it works just as well online as it does in brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, it’s even more effective because you can more easily stay in touch with the customer.

What is tripwire marketing? And how does it work? Those are two of the many questions I’ll answer for you today.

If you’re interested in a particular topic, feel free to skip around. I’m going to cover the following:

• What Is Tripwire Marketing?
• How Tripwire Marketing Can Help Boost Your Conversions

Tripwire Funnel Examples

• Building Your Tripwire Strategy

How to Create a Tripwire

• What Is a Good Conversion Rate for Tripwire Marketing?
• Optimize Your Tripwire’s Conversions With  With Website Optimization Tools
• Start Now: 12 Tripwire Ideas

What is Tripwire Marketing?

Tripwire marketing is a conversion-acceleration hack that convinces target consumers to buy something small from you rather than a more expensive product or service.

There are actually two versions of tripwire marketing you can use to produce more conversions.

The first one involves luring in customers with low-cost offers.

Imagine for a moment that you sell online courses . You offer a monster e-course with dozens of videos, articles, and other assets, and it’s priced at $1,000.

That’s a lot of money for a consumer to spend on a company with which he has no experience. If you haven’t been in business long, you might not have strong social proof or other ways to speed up conversions and overcome objections.

To incentivize conversions, you might create a mini-course that supplements your primary course. It could include one or two short videos, a couple checklists, and a few articles.

Pricing this much smaller course at $20 or even $100 makes the product far more attractive to new customers. Most people are more willing to spend small amounts of money than a huge chunk.

You then set up a tripwire marketing campaign . The tripwire — your mini-course — serves as proof of concept. It shows your customers that you deliver what you promise. They become enmeshed in your sales funnel, so you can market to them via email and other means to convert them on the larger product.

The second tripwire marketing strategy focuses on consumer behavior.

Let’s say you run a subscription service for which you charge $30 per month. Customer A has been a loyal subscriber for six months, then suddenly cancels his membership.

That’s a tripwire.

You can then use email marketing to reel in Customer A. Reach out via email to ask what went wrong or if you can improve your subscription service in any way. Then you offer a can’t-miss deal, such as one month for $5 instead of the standard $30 — with the option to cancel at any time, of course.

Both tripwire marketing campaigns can produce incredible ROI , but let’s explore the reasons behind their often-impressive results.

How Tripwire Marketing Can Help you Get More Conversions

Your conversion rate is the percentage of people who, when presented with an offer, take you up on the deal. It’s that simple.

When you make your offer more appealing — such as creating a low-cost alternative to an expensive product — your conversions will increase. You just have to make sure you’re providing sufficient value to warrant further purchases.

I’ve talked about lead magnets on the Crazy Egg blog as well as on NeilPatel.com , and they still work. However, sometimes it’s better to offer a product or service at a low price point than to offer it for free.

Why? People don’t always value free.

Business Insider published an excerpt of famed marketer Ramit Sethi’s bestselling book, “ Your Move: The Underdog’s Guide to Building Your Business .” In it, Sethi says:

“People value what they pay for…You’re not doing [prospects] a disservice by charging them, you’re actually doing a profound service for the people who want to take action.”

Sethi says he used to give away free copies of his $2,000 course. He just wanted to help people. However, most never even logged in.

He makes a good point that, if you don’t put a value on a product, your prospects probably won’t, either. But when you charge even a nominal amount, you send the message that you assign value to your own product — and so should everyone else.

Tripwire marketing should become part of your overall conversion funnel strategy . It deserves its own place.

The tripwire itself can belong in a few different places in your funnel depending on how you use it.

For instance, many marketers use tripwires as a top-of-funnel strategy. They use SEO and content marketing to increase web traffic, then offer an insane amount of value for a low price. That’s a great way to convert people quickly.

You can also use it in the middle of the funnel, though. Let’s say you have an email list full of people who converted on your free lead magnet. Set up a drip campaign — a series of emails — that promotes your tripwire offer.

Finally, consider tripwire marketing for the retention part of your funnel. Bring customers back by offering a great deal on something of immense value, then slip them into another drip campaign — one designed to promote your more expensive product or service.

Building your Tripwire Strategy

There’s a reason I call tripwire marketing a strategy. It isn’t something you just throw together and toss into the air, hoping consumers grab it. Make your tripwire an integral part of your business.

Go back to the questions you ask yourself when designing any marketing strategy:

• Who is your target customer?
• What do they want?
• What’s preventing them from getting what they want?
• How can you provide a solution?

Once you answer those questions accurately, you can apply them to creating a tripwire product and marketing it effectively.

If you want to lure back customers who have stopped buying from you, use the tripwire as an excuse for them to come back. You might send an email that says, “Hey, I just launched this super affordable product I think you might be interested in.”

When the prospect converts on your offer, remind him or her that you still have the original product available.

Now that you’re familiar with tripwire marketing, let’s dig into some specifics. How do you create a tripwire that will boost conversions for your business ?

The best tripwire ideas come from specific needs or desires. Analyze data you already have based on consumer buying habits and other user behaviors so you know where to start.

Step 1: Examine your product or service line

What products do you already offer? How much do they cost? These two questions become integral to creating a tripwire because you need to know what motivates your audience.

Think about common objections to your products or services. Maybe your target market finds them too expensive, for instance, or perhaps you’re new to the space, so you haven’t built sufficient trust.

Step 2: Find the product or service that gets the most sales

If you sell multiple products or services, figure out which one gets the most sales. That should become the basis for your tripwire because your most popular item already creates demand.

Maybe you create and sell hidden object games that customers can download and play. Most games cost around $12, but your conversions are lower than you’d like.

Look for the games that get the most downloads. You can decide how many you want to focus on. These will become the basis for your tripwire in the next step.

Step 3: Create a new version that costs much less, but still contains value

I’m not suggesting that you should take a huge financial hit for your business. If you sell online games, don’t give them away for free just because nobody’s buying.

Instead, either create a new version of an existing product or service — think “product lite” — or bundle several low-cost items at a great discount.

The goal here is similar to that of a lead magnet . You want people to buy your product because it’s a great deal.

Step 4: Start an email drip campaign for customers who buy the tripwire item

When you sell a tripwire item, don’t stop there. Nurture your leads by communicating via email.

You want those customers to come back and spend more on your business. To do that, you must remind them of the value they received from your tripwire products.

Direct them to your blog, invite them to follow you on social, and end each email with a CTA for your more expensive product. Make sure it’s directly related to the tripwire.

For instance, if your audience bought a hidden-object game bundle for $1, don’t ask them to convert on an offer for first-person shooter games. You’re targeting the wrong audience.

Step 5: Feature your tripwire product throughout your website

Exposure is critical to the success of your tripwire marketing campaign. If prospects can’t find it, they won’t buy.

Consider adding the tripwire product to your navigation bar or header. You could also use a Hello Bar to capture your website visitors’ attention.

Don’t forget to emphasize the value proposition. It isn’t just what the customer will get, but the low price involved. Your CTA might look like this: “Get 4 of our best-selling games for just $1! Offer ends soon.”

Creating a limited-time tripwire can boost conversions even further. Consider rotating your offers if you have more than one so you can take advantage of urgency.

Step 6: Add a lead magnet to your conversion forms to capture more emails

Lead magnets, tripwire marketing, and email marketing can work together in harmony. In most cases, you want to focus on one CTA at a time. Giving your prospects a choice, however, can sometimes pay off.

Let’s say you have three products:

• Huge online course (main product)
• Mini course (tripwire product)
• Short e-book (lead magnet)

The tripwire creates a happy medium between free and expensive.

The same strategy can work for other industries, including SaaS. Your three options might include the following:

• Primary SaaS product

The free demo restricts features, so if your audience wants to try out the full package, they might convert on the $10 trial versus the free demo.

You’re not necessarily leaving money on the table, either. Those who try the free demo might still buy your product, and you can enter them into your email database.

Step 7: Follow up with tripwire customers to ask for their feedback

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to get direct feedback from your customers. I do this all the time.

I recently sent out an email to my subscriber list that asked for direct feedback. It looked like this:

Notice that I didn’t ask people to fill out a survey or answer a poll. I asked them to actually reply to my email and give me detailed feedback.

You can do the same. Sure, you might have to wade through hundreds (or even thousands) of emails, but you’ll get insightful feedback that you can apply to tripwire marketing moving forward.

What Is a Good Conversion Rate for a Tripwire?

There’s no set “good conversion rate” for tripwire marketing, but you can learn from case studies. For instance, one company generated a conversion rate of nearly 10 percent using a tripwire priced at $9.95.

More importantly, their upsell rate — the percentage of people who converted on the larger product — was 26 percent. That’s pretty impressive.

You might not have the same results, but you can keep fine-tuning your tripwire marketing efforts until you find the strategy that results in the most conversions.

Optimize your Tripwire’s Conversion s with Website Optimization  Tools

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) can play a hefty role in your tripwire marketing campaign’s success. You already have a powerful strategy to lure in more customers, but you need the tools necessary to understand your audience and better serve their needs.

Consider, for instance, how your website visitors behave when they land on your site. What pages do they visit first? How long do they spend? How far do they scroll?

You can get those results from user behavior reports , such as heatmaps and scroll maps. These tools allow you to visualize user behavior and capitalize on what you learn.

A heatmap, for instance, might show intense activity on your lead magnet form. Perhaps you could test replacing that area with your tripwire offer.

Don’t rely on guesswork, though. Continually A/B test the placement of your tripwire offers on your website to pinpoint the best locations.

Start Now: 12 Tripwire Marketing Ideas

There’s no reason to wait when it comes to tripwire marketing. Get out there with your offer and start earning more conversions.

If you’re struggling to come up with tripwire ideas, here are 12 that might resonate with your audience.

• Content upgrade
• 15-minute consultation
• Cheat sheet or checklist
• Instructional video
• Trial period
• Email consultations
• Partial product
• X downloads
• X products for $X

Any of these tripwires can work, but the right one depends on your business model.

You can see tripwire marketing in action at DesignCuts.com . It’s an extreme example that proves the methodology works.

DesignCuts offers bundles of creative assets at steep discounts — usually 97 percent or more.

This might just seem like a regular marketing strategy, but it’s not. DesignCuts wants you to buy these steeply discounted bundles, but it also wants you to buy individual products from its marketplace.

As you can see from DesignCuts and similar businesses, tripwire marketing can work as a foundational strategy as well as a supplement to your other marketing efforts.

What is tripwire marketing?

It’s a way to convince your target audience to buy a product from your business at a low cost. The action triggers a marketing campaign designed to convert those buyers on more expensive offers.

You can also use tripwire marketing to bring back customers who have disappeared into the ether. Remind them you still exist and why they bought from you in the first place.

I’ve provided 12 tripwire marketing ideas, but you can get creative and come up with your own, too. Focus on your target audience’s pain points .Then hit them with a product at a price point they can’t refuse.

Make your website better. Instantly.

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How to Make Tough Decisions as a Manager

There’s no formula for the difficult moments managers face, but there are questions you should consider.

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Imagine you’re a new manager, and one of your team members consistently underperforms. But there’s a catch: your struggling employee is a personal friend of your CEO. When performance review time rolls around, should you be honest and give them a low rating?

There are no simple answers for the tough decisions that managers face. Harvard Business School professor Joe Badaracco says that hard and fast rules only go so far in these sorts of situations. Instead, managers must use their best judgement to find a solution.

Badaracco is a business ethics expert and the author of the book, Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work .

In this episode, he explains how to approach what he calls “gray-area decisions.” First, gather as much information as you can, taking different perspectives into account. Then, consider the consequences of the different possible actions you can take, the values of your organization, and your own personal values.

Key episode topics include: leadership, managing conflicts, dismissing employees, managing people, managing employees, tough calls,

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original Cold Call episode: Managing in the Real World: How to Make Gray-Area Decisions (2016)
• Find more episodes of Cold Call
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts – hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Imagine you’re a new manager and one of your team members consistently underperforms, but there’s a catch. Your struggling employee is a personal friend of your boss. When performance review time rolls around, should you be honest and give them a low rating or should you avoid conflict and give them the same rating they’ve been receiving for years? There are no simple answers to the tough decisions that managers face. Harvard Business School Professor Joe Badaracco says that in these sorts of situations, hard and fast rules only go so far. Instead, managers must do the more difficult thing. Use their best judgment to find a solution. In this episode, Badaracco explains how managers can approach what he calls gray area decisions. First, gather as much information as you can and take different perspectives into account. Then consider the consequences of different possible actions, the values of your organization and your own personal values. If you’re a new manager facing a tough dilemma, this episode is for you. It originally aired on Cold Call in November 2016. Here it is.

BRIAN KENNY: You’re fired. These are two words no one ever wants to hear, and with the exception of reality TV, it’s not usually how the message is delivered nowadays. Today, in an effort to be fair, most organizations have a process that involves personal improvement plans, mentoring and monitoring, even counseling, before taking such a drastic step of severing employment. Yet still the decision to fire an employee is rarely clear cut. And for the person being transitioned, quotations, the rationality used by their manager for that decision is most assuredly questionable. So, what exactly does or should go on in the mind of a manager deciding the fate of an employee? Today we’ll hear from Professor JOE BADARACCO about his case entitled “Two Tough Calls.” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call .

SPEAKER 3: So, we’re all sitting there in the classroom.

SPEAKER 4: Professor walks in.

SPEAKER 5: And they look up and you know what’s coming. Oh, the dreaded Cold Call .

BRIAN KENNY: Joe Badaracco is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on what counts as sound reflection for busy men and women who have serious responsibilities and face hard practical problems. He’s the author of many cases, articles and books on the topic, including the recently published Managing in the Gray. Joe, thanks for joining me.

JOE BADARACCO: Glad to be here, Brian.

BRIAN KENNY: So, I really enjoyed reading this case and reading parts of the book, and I think many people, anybody who’s managed a team, can relate to the challenge that you’re going to talk about in this case. But maybe you could start just by setting the case up for us. Who’s the protagonist and what’s going on?

JOE BADARACCO: Sure. The case is an unusual case, it’s written in the first person, so you’ve got to give the protagonist a name. So, let’s call her Susan. But you’re really hearing Susan’s voice and you’re hearing Susan tell her story. So, she was a computer science graduate, this is her first job, full-time job. She’d had a couple internships at Microsoft. She was a very talented programmer.

She also had a lot of management potential, so she was spotted early as somebody who could move up pretty quickly at this online retailer. She got two promotions pretty fast. She found herself managing a team of 14 people. Some of them were about her age. They were techies like her. Some of them were older than her, and some of them were not performing anywhere near the standard she expected. And it came time for her to give reviews, and she wanted to give reviews to several people that would’ve basically triggered lots of problems. I’ll talk in particular about a guy named Terry. So he had been brought into the company because he was a scuba diving pal of some of the executives.

BRIAN KENNY: Oh, we’ve all encountered a Terry.

JOE BADARACCO: And from Susan’s point of view, he was basically contributing nothing to the team. She’d worked with him, she’d tried to find some things for him to do, but her view was his contribution was basically zero. Now, under the performance evaluation system, it was one to five, and he’d been getting 3.5 for a number of years, and that was fine.

BRIAN KENNY: Pretty good.

JOE BADARACCO: But she thought he deserved a 2.5. In this company, 2.5 meant that you were basically on a greased shoot out the company. It was accompanied what’s called a PIP, a performance improvement plan, which a lot of companies have. But this was really a tripwire. And once you were on a PIP, as soon as you came in late or something like that, you got a box and you were out. So she wanted to give him what he deserved, the 2.5. She floated this idea among the people she worked for, and they said, you’re kind of young in the job, you’ve been doing well so far. Why make some waves? Are you sure you’ve got enough experience to judge him? Doesn’t he deserve another chance, given that he’s had threes and three point fives?

BRIAN KENNY: And he’s a good scuba diver.

JOE BADARACCO: Apparently an excellent scuba diver. Yeah.

BRIAN KENNY: Let me stop you there.

JOE BADARACCO: Sure.

BRIAN KENNY: Because I want to want to pull the reins back in a little bit, and I guess one of the things that I’m curious about is why you decided to write this case, why you chose to write it in the way you did?

JOE BADARACCO: Well, after the incidents described in the case, the young woman came here to HBS to get an MBA. So I had her as a student. And I don’t recall how we got to talking about this case possibility, but it seemed really promising, because as you pointed out, many of our MBA students have already been in positions where they’ve had to let somebody go. Many of them in the last few years have had family members that have been fired or laid off, and some of them will actually admit in class that they personally have been laid off. So it’s a very real subject. And this was somebody who’s a contemporary of our MBA students facing one of these tough calls.

BRIAN KENNY: Tell me a little bit more about Susie. Is that what we’re calling her?

JOE BADARACCO: Yeah, Susie, Susan. Sure.

BRIAN KENNY: So, is she a millennial? Does that factor into this?

JOE BADARACCO: Well, I think she was kind of a millennial, but I think she was basically herself and she prided herself on being very direct to the point of being blunt. She thought that in organizations, people were rarely treated honestly, that there were lots of games played that people told you you were doing well when you weren’t doing so well and so forth. She said she was going to be blunt, she wanted people to be blunt with her.

She was also, as I mentioned, younger than some of the people she was managing, and some of the people she was considering letting go. And as you sort of read her first-person narrative in the case, some students sort of like her, they see her as a practitioner of what’s called sort of extreme transparency. And others say, this is kind of a arrogant, aggressive individual who’s a little bit too full of herself. And then what’s interesting in class is some students, often women will say, you wouldn’t say the same thing about a male protagonist in this situation. So that’s another issue that comes up in the case.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, you talk about her technical proficiency, which has given her some affinity with the technical team, which is pretty important. It allows her maybe to get things done a little faster because she kind of understands what she’s asking people to do. So, she’s a AA, hard-working type person, and she makes her hiring decisions pretty specifically based on her own personality type.

JOE BADARACCO: Exactly. She wants people who she said, come out of college hungry. They love to have goals, they’re willing to work 80 hours a week, and she is too. And she says to them, “Look, all you need to do to be successful here is to tell me what I need to do to help you be successful and complete the mission that our team has.” So, it’s a complicated picture. In many ways, there are things that are admirable about her, but there’s other things that kind of put people off.

BRIAN KENNY: So, what are some of the things as a manager that Susan needs to think about? I mean, it doesn’t seem like she’s in a place where she can just sever that relationship and have Terry move along. There’s a process that she has to go through both intellectually as well as managerially.

JOE BADARACCO: Yeah. Well, let me mention, first of all, what’s the central idea in my book that’s just come out. And it can be summarized essentially in a single sentence, and it says, “When you face one of these difficult decisions, a gray area decision, first of all, you want to work through it as a manager.” That means you get the best information. You can look at things in a couple different ways. If there’s expert judgment, in this case HR that can be brought to bear, talk to the senior people, which she did. You get the best information and judgments you can. That’s what it means to work through it as a manager.

But then in the end, it’s a judgment call and you’ve got to approach it as a human being. You’re going to make that call, you’re going to live with the consequences. And so it’s in that context that some of the questions in the book are really quite relevant, and these questions, by the way, aren’t mine. They’re not Harvard Business School’s. Basically, they come from a multi-year effort to try to look at how great thinkers over the millennia have advised us to look at really hard problems. So you look hard at the consequences, full consequences as objectively as you can. You think about what you believe your core human duties are. So what does she owe Terry? What does she owe the people on her team? You think about the values of your organization. You think clearly about what you can live with. Because you will live with it, and you’re also going to be held accountable in your organization.

A lot of people think if you’ve got one of these difficult decisions, you just trust your judgment, you trust your gut. You look at your moral compass. And what I really emphasize in the book is, the first thing you’ve got to do is the best analysis you can as a manager, okay? If you can use big data analytics, whatever it is, wring everything you can out of what you can learn. Then you make a judgment as a human being. But again, that’s not gut feel. That’s after you think through consequences, your duties, what’ll work. It’s only at the very end that you finally trust your judgment after it’s been tempered and shaped and guided by the preliminary steps.

BRIAN KENNY: You mentioned before the obligation that Susan as a manager has to Terry. Does Terry have an obligation back to Susan to do the job well? Does that make the whole decision much-

JOE BADARACCO: He certainly had an obligation to the company and the team to pull his oar, and he wasn’t doing it.

BRIAN KENNY: And part of my question was sort of what’s at the core of it too, is that I mentioned in the introduction how most organizations have sort of an extreme set of processes that one needs to go through. Have companies gone too far in trying to make sure that they’re giving every opportunity for the employee to perform?

JOE BADARACCO: I think that’s a tough one. I don’t have any basis for generalizing on that. At the end of the day, even when there are elaborate systems and lots of steps and checklists, a lot comes down to the judgment of managers. When do you start putting notes in a file about someone’s performance? Certainly you need to inform them if they’re on thin ice or if they’re about to go on probation. What do you tell them? How candidly do you inform them? How helpful are you? A lot of these things come down to one-on-one judgment calls, sort of the character and experience of the person who’s making the decision.

BRIAN KENNY: In the book, you talk about this concept of moral imagination. So can you describe what that is and how it factors into these kinds of decisions?

JOE BADARACCO: Well, it has a lot to do with how you actually deliver the bad news and how you follow up after that. You’ve really got to put yourself as best you can in their shoes, as if you were the person being fired, or let’s say it was one of your kids or your parent, sibling, how would you want to be treated? That’s a way of bringing to the foreground a lot of these basic human considerations that can be lost if you’re simply angry at the person for not performing, or you’re just going through the company’s checklist on how to process people out.

BRIAN KENNY: You’ve discussed this case in class before?

JOE BADARACCO: Many times.

BRIAN KENNY: So, I don’t want you to give away too much, but what kind of reactions do you get?

JOE BADARACCO: Well, first, students really do engage in this. I’m talking here about MBA students. They either have been or expect soon to be in situations like this. Secondly, they have, as I mentioned earlier, a variety of responses to Susan, so that pulls them further into the case. Some of them make very sound comments, and I think one worth thinking about is this, it says, look, you’re managing a team, you’ve got a company, whatever. Should you really expect that everybody on that team is going to be an A player, or after coaching from you is going to be an A player? The point they make is that good managers learn to work with… They want As, they have some Bs, they live with some Cs. And that’s what managing in the real world is like. So there’s a really good set of discussions about not just what she should do, but whether she should do anything.

BRIAN KENNY: Joe, thank you so much for joining me.

JOE BADARACCO: You’re welcome, Brian.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School professor Joe Badaracco in conversation with Brian Kenny on Cold Call . He’s also the author of the book, Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Problems At Work .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review. When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next week.

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