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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”?

#71

Post by vecter »

DGAP wrote: post #33
vecter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "build a product to scratch your own itch" is one of the worst pieces of advice for entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs. The reason is that most entrepreneurs end up building businesses to scratch an itch, not solve a real serious problem. Source: been there, done that.

From where I'm standing, both of your statements are true. It's important to build for a need (itch), but you should be sure it's something important that customers are willing to pay for.

Not only that, but there should be a large addressable market.

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

#72

Post by danielbarla »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #61

Stop thinking about selling your idea to your customers. You're talking to them in order to understand the problem that you're trying to solve. The best book on this that I've read is "The Mom Test", well worth the price

I can definitely second the book recommendation. To elaborate a bit, one of the core ideas of the book is to avoid leading your customers by telling them what you're planning to do (which they invariably respond to with "that's awesome!"), and rather get them to reveal their real problems. This allows you to make sure your product is aimed at the real problems.

Another great skill is to understand the "commerce" of various interactions and commitments. Getting a "that's great, send me a mail when you guys are finished" sounds wonderful, but is actually "leave me alone, I'm busy". How to gauge the potential client's level of interest, and to actually seal various levels of commitment from them was a real eye opener.

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

#73

Post by PeterisP »

pbreit wrote: post #43
vecter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "build a product to scratch your own itch" is one of the worst pieces of advice for entrepreneurs, especially first time entrepreneurs. The reason is that most entrepreneurs end up building businesses to scratch an itch, not solve a real serious problem. Source: been there, done that.

100% disagree. Building something to scratch an itch is by far the easiest way to proceed initially. Many, many tools and services were built to scratch an itch.

The point is that "build a product to scratch your own itch" is a dangerous statement - you should be finding an itch that (a) a lot of people have and (b) that doesn't have an overabundance of scratching solutions.

The itches of typical developers fail in both of these criteria; typical developers are a small niche of consumers and they can scratch their own itches, so there are many solutions and if it's still itching, then probably simple scratching won't help.

You need to find itches in other domains. It might be your own itch if you have extensive background in some specific business domain and just happen to have development skills, but for most people you'll have to go out of your way to find and understand the itches that you couldn't possibly ever have - possibly because scratching them would be so easy for you that you wouldn't notice the problem if you had it, while they have been suffering for decades.

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

#74

Post by thewhitetulip »

This is how I did it for my first failed startup which did not go beyond the survey phase

1. Make a list of fb friends who would be interested, add them to a group, a secret one. 2. Try to validate the idea 3. use reddit to validate the idea 4. using HN is tricky because you can't guarantee that the post will get attention.

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

#75

Post by altharaz »

It depends on your market.

But if you try to build a company, I assume that you want to solve a problem.

If you solve a B2C problem: talk to friends affected by the problem, or launch a Meetup based on this problem. You'll get free feedbacks and people LOVE to talk about themselves.

If you solve a B2B problem: talk to friendly businesses affected by the problem, or go to events and conferences as a vendor with kakemonos talking about the problem you solve. If the problem you solve is really important, you'll get plenty of people coming to your stand to talk to you.

Once you'll have a few "leads", you will be able to refine the market segments that are the most affected by the problem you solve. THIS is really important: for B2C, you'll have to target this segment in your future ads, for B2B, you'll have to target this segment in leads generation.

Also:

- "Should I try to approach bosses or common workers of companies?" => Talk to the guy affected by the problem you solve. It might be the CEO, or a manager, or the worker.

- "Should I phone them, ask for an appointment, explain my goals and if they let me in, do the talk?" => Yes, phone is better than cold email. But be prepared, it's really harder than cold email.

- "What is the right approach to talk to my potential customers?" => Beginner script: Hi, my name is X, I represent Y, we solve THE_PROBLEM_YOU_SOLVE. Are you affected by this problem? Could we talk about this in person at your office?

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

#76

Post by robryan »

e5an wrote: post #26
kolinko wrote: post #9

For me, when I was a tool for indie iOS devs - still at the idea stage, I began talking to people online on iOS dev forums - iphonedevsdk forum, and reddit.com/r/ios /r/iphone, etc - I asked my friends who I knew were devs. I live in Poland, and my target audience is mostly US, so their feedback was slightly limited, but still valuable, because I could talk to them in real life - as soon as possible I went to San Fra…

First read I was thinking- 'well, maybe that's what you were, but don't be so hard on yourself...' realized you must have omitted the word 'developing'. As a former indie iOS dev, ( ie. a tool for Apple Computer Inc. ), my honest feedback is- if I was ever making enough on the App Store to afford a $15 monthly subscription, I wouldn't need the help; for the most part indie iOS developers don't make jack so our #1 con…

It would probably only take a few months to work out if the tool was going to drive a return for you, that is $45. I doubt the kind of customer they would want would be one that wasn't prepared to put down $45.

I realize it is a different target market but often SEO/search marketing/email/retargeting solutions can cost thousands of dollars upfront, without any guarantee of a return.

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

#77

Post by manmal »

pryelluw wrote: post #55
conanbatt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting idea! Are people not creeped out by that?

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

#78

Post by smokinhotdaisy »

pryelluw wrote: post #55
conanbatt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are right and it is proven effective. :) Tried that and still doing it.

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

#79

Post by clort »

flyosity wrote: post #60
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.

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

I worked for a market research company once (reasonably well respected, in their field) and we still had a hellish time getting employees to talk to us for money. Many staff are not comfortable with talking about their area of expertise (which is obviously related to the company they work for) outside of the confines of that company, or are certainly not going to accept cash for doing so off the books even if that is donated to a charity organisation. Additionally, many companies are not really set up to handle contracting out their already occupied employees (especially senior staff) for an hours salary.

Actually, thinking about it most of the reputation we had was in speaking to smaller owner-operated businesses where the owner or self-employed associates were free to speak to us and could gauge the benefit to themselves from doing so (our interviews were often on behalf of larger companies testing the market for product ideas, so they would get the satisfaction of providing feedback and even getting advance notice of what may be on offer)

anyway, what I'm saying is.. it can be difficult and time consuming to arrange that but it is possible to get somebody else to do the drudge work.

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

#80

Post by Uptrenda »

goatherders wrote: post #54
conanbatt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Got to say. That last paragraph was impressive. Wow.
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