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Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

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Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#51

Post by goatherders »

andai wrote: post #24
quirkot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree largely with goatherders. Perhaps the question you should be asking is "how can you go listen to your customers"

Yes indeed! I would add on to this, instead of asking "how can I make $X?", ask "how can I provide $X of value to people?". You provide value by meeting people's needs. So it is very valuable to learn about those needs!

Exactly. Everyone wants to buy but no one wants to be sold. Clients need a navigator on their journey to find a solution to their problems. They care about that. I tell my team the answer is never "no", its either "yes" or "not yet.". Most salespeople want only yes because they care about their needs. They become great salespeople when they realize their job is to serve their clients, not themselves. The OP should view his research the same way - stop thinking about your dreams of building something and start thinking about helping people. The sales will solve themselves if you get to that place in an authentic way.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#52

Post by conanbatt »

na85 wrote: post #39
goatherders wrote: post #10

Cart 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.

Honestly, I agree with you.

Its true what the op says that there are people that naturally want to share and mentor what they do. Now that you can easily find them or that there are signs of it you can find as a stranger..

Im running a b2b business, and even though i have personal contacts in the area, im frequently stonewalled to even start a basic conversation, let alone a product sales one.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#53

Post by conanbatt »

goatherders wrote: post #49
na85 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 run the sales division of a nine figure web hosting company.

The fact that you work in a "9 figure web hosting company" might be a cue of why you can start a conversation, because of the brand of a company. Im sure Airbnb can get into a broker house any day to have a chat. Do you think it would be easy for you to walk into Uber in the next few days and someone tell you what you should be building that they would buy?

Im honestly asking, i do b2b, please tell me some secrets :)

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#54

Post by goatherders »

conanbatt wrote: post #53
goatherders wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run the sales division of a nine figure web hosting company.

The fact that you work in a "9 figure web hosting company" might be a cue of why you can start a conversation, because of the brand of a company. Im sure Airbnb can get into a broker house any day to have a chat. Do you think it would be easy for you to walk into Uber in the next few days and someone tell you what you should be building that they would buy? Im honestly asking, i do b2b, please tell me some secrets :)

Before that I ran my own semiconductor brokerage abd the approach was the sane. "what about your job sucks?" "it sucks when I plan a build for Monday and 49 chips show up but 1 doesn't arrive until Wednesday. So my customer is mad that we are behind schedule and I pay mt staff to stand around.". So I started selling complete kits. One vendor, One PO and one box of components that arrives on time with everything in it.

Doesn't matter that I now have a known brand behind me. Customers want the same essential thing: That you care about their success. I still answer my cell in the middle of the night during an outage because clients want to know i care and feel their pain because my company is impacting their ability to be successful, to pay employees, to pay bills, to feed their families.

The point is the same throughout and hits at my philosophy. I don't sell servers or hosting or support. We sell good days. We sell a developer wowing his or her boss. We sell an absence of worry that a client will be pulled away from time with their family to solve a web issue. We don't sell RAM and processors. We sell good days.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#55

Post by pryelluw »

conanbatt wrote: post #52
na85 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I agree with you. Its true what the op says that there are people that naturally want to share and mentor what they do. Now that you can easily find them or that there are signs of it you can find as a stranger.. Im running a b2b business, and even though i have personal contacts in the area, im frequently stonewalled to even start a basic conversation, let alone a product sales one.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#56

Post by kbyatnal »

beamatronic wrote: post #8
kbyatnal wrote: post #4

I'm working on a consumer product. Here's what I do. - Include an invite for a quick 10-15 minute chat in the welcome email (more people than you would think actually take up the offer) - Ask them why they signed up (this is key to help you determine what problem people want you to solve) - Ask them their biggest frustrations about the solution so far And just take it from there.

Give them a $5 Starbucks card at the end as a thank-you.

I think it's unnecessary (and somewhat tacky)

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#57

Post by Spooky23 »

conanbatt wrote: post #53
goatherders wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run the sales division of a nine figure web hosting company.

The fact that you work in a "9 figure web hosting company" might be a cue of why you can start a conversation, because of the brand of a company. Im sure Airbnb can get into a broker house any day to have a chat. Do you think it would be easy for you to walk into Uber in the next few days and someone tell you what you should be building that they would buy? Im honestly asking, i do b2b, please tell me some secrets :)

Persistence pays.

I was an account manager intern at a VAR in college and was really shocked to discover this. I sold about $50k of training to a big company based on a cold call. One time a guy called looking for advice on sharing files on NT4 and ended up in a conversation about licensing -- I sold him an EA. Another time I was in a wingman role for a site visit with an account exec. On the way back, we stopped at a really large company, the account exec bullshitted his way in, and we ended up chatting with their local IT director for about an hour. We started getting RFPs a few weeks later.

There's no secret. Just treat people well, talk to them and find out what problems they have. If you can't solve them, refer them to someone who can.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#58

Post by ivv »

Maybe I can answer the question "where to find people to talk to." I'm in consumer research; here's what's worked for me.

If you need b2b: LinkedIn, conference and trade show lobbies (you don't need a ticket to hang out in the lobby), email lists you can buy online. There are also companies that maintain lists of experts with every imaginable background you can speak to for an hourly fee; not cheap but worth it.

If you need consumers: survey panel companies will let you field a simple survey to people who match your criteria, who you can then recruit into a phone/Skype call. You can also recruit people yourself through well-targeted Facebook and Twitter ads. Craigslist works well; set up a short survey to prequalify people.

Money is a great accelerant. You will always find people who would talk to you for free, but offering to pay them for their time and expertise makes things go a lot faster. Plus, if you are on the shy side, money changes the dynamic. You are now not asking for a favor, but are offering to engage in a business transaction.

Six people is often all you need to start seeing some common themes.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#59

Post by thr0waway1239 »

ivv wrote: post #58

Maybe I can answer the question "where to find people to talk to." I'm in consumer research; here's what's worked for me. If you need b2b: LinkedIn, conference and trade show lobbies (you don't need a ticket to hang out in the lobby), email lists you can buy online. There are also companies that maintain lists of experts with every imaginable background you can speak to for an hourly fee; not cheap but worth it. If y…

>> Six people is often all you need to start seeing some common themes.

That's interesting. I am curious how you came up with that number. Getting six people to give you their opinions is much easier than doing any kind of extensive research.

Re: Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”?

#60

Post by flyosity »

na85 wrote: post #39
goatherders wrote: post #10

Cart 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.

You pay them to talk to you, whatever their hourly rate is. Not a big secret.
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