What if your customers are big companies? As in fortune 500? How do you talk to them? There will probably many different people with different opinions.
Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
81–90 of 116 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#82No contacts, no domain experience -> you need 5-10 years to build these. Contacts+Experience are also a longer way to say "business value".
You have two ways to build it. One is always coming from the outside, hoping for nice/stupid people to explain it to you, hoping to get shitty contracts to make some kind of money. This way will be the slave road.
The alternative is becoming an excited new employee at a customer or another provider for your customers and work there for 5-10 years. You have rights (like laws working in your favour), you have regular income, you are at the table where things happen and get some tips from people who work in that area for 10+ years, and hell, you may even save a few bucks that later can be used to found a company.
Yes, you'll be your bosses bitch, but only to some degree, because of laws. Customers will be much, much more cruel. If you can't bow to a boss, you certainly won't be able to handle customers yourself.
If you neither have rich parents nor business value, don't attempt to build your own business. People just say that because they are part of the economy that makes money from the sacrifices you take on your own, or at least have rich parents themselves and therefore don't even know that it can be a problem if one is behind rent payment and lacks $20k in funds.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you leveraging social media to warm up the leads? Find and target them with ads and follow up with a phone call or visit. Works pretty well.
Interesting idea! Are people not creeped out by that?
They signed up for it by using the network. Try it.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you leveraging social media to warm up the leads? Find and target them with ads and follow up with a phone call or visit. Works pretty well.
You are right and it is proven effective. :) Tried that and still doing it.
Yeah, I use it with clients and always blow them away with the results.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#85No contacts, no domain experience -> you need 5-10 years to build these. Contacts+Experience are also a longer way to say "business value". You have two ways to build it. One is always coming from the outside, hoping for nice/stupid people to explain it to you, hoping to get shitty contracts to make some kind of money. This way will be the slave road. The alternative is becoming an excited new employee at a customer…
I respectfully disagree.
I know two different entrepreneurs who set up internet businesses in domains completely unknown to them and simply walked into all the businesses they wanted to target and signed people up in the first weeks of operating.
Restaurants + B&Bs were the domains.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#86Cart is ahead of the horse. Getting out of the office to talk to potential customers has NOTHING to do with selling. It has to do with learning about the sector you THINK you want to be working in. In other words, you need to accept that your foundational knowledge is largely made up of information that made its way to you by going through your filter of preconceived notions and biases. My advice to my sales team (an…
What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.
SMEs do, particularly if you're local IME.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#87Some practical tips on how to position your 'ask' and develop relationships with the people you're developing for:
https://medium.com/@citizencode/cold-call-to-co-creation-7a0...
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#88I hear you. There's a lot of guidance on the importance of talking to customers, but a dearth of information on how to do it. Fwiw, I've become mildly obsessed with this topic, and have written up a couple articles that may help: * How to talk to customers: http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-custom... * Which customers should you talk to first: http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-ad…
Thanks for posting these. I have been trying to find more on this topic.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#89On an earlier idea I had, I wanted to do something with tech recruiters. They were always calling me or emailing me, so I thought it would be pretty easy to talk to them since they were coming to me. I build a script that I semi memorized based off the template in the Running Lean book. I adapted it for this industry. I also have a paper form where I could fill in the answers.
I would schedule a phone meeting or in person meeting, and I would run through the script. After the meeting I would quickly write down all the answers off the top of my head while it was still fresh.
I did this for about 30 interviews, and then I created an answer matrix in a spreadsheet. My goal was to try to see if there were any common problems among the majority of people I talked to. The answer ended up being a big NO, but I did not write a single line of code in this process. It did save me a ton of pain in the long run doing this up front.
Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?
#90Cart is ahead of the horse. Getting out of the office to talk to potential customers has NOTHING to do with selling. It has to do with learning about the sector you THINK you want to be working in. In other words, you need to accept that your foundational knowledge is largely made up of information that made its way to you by going through your filter of preconceived notions and biases. My advice to my sales team (an…
What industry are you in that this is common, or even accepted? Nowhere I've worked would have answered yes to a site visit by a random salesperson.
I've done it a ton of times!
Engineering software, process, tools.
Stopping by to learn about a company, share experiences, maybe buy a lunch isn't a bad thing.
It is regional. There are parts of the nation very hostile to this. They don't even have receptionists.
For those parts, working social media, holding events, making calls works to get that appointment.
In all cases, general networking is needed. Give and get.