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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”?

#101

Post by pbreit »

PeterisP wrote: post #73
pbreit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 itch…

Certainly the best itch to scratch is one you think a lot of other people have as well. You definitely do not need to find itches in other domains.

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

#102

Post by pbreit »

vecter wrote: post #70
pbreit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been pitched a bill splitting app. It's an itch, not a real problem. For all of the positive examples of companies that were "built to scratch an itch", there are thousands or tens of thousands of failures where the itch turned out to be a tiny market worth nothing, or no market at all.

OK, maybe "itch" isn't the right word. The more painful the itch, the better. I would agree that bill splitting apps are completely stupid. But I've never felt bill splitting was very itchy.

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

#103

Post by PaulHoule »

ddingus wrote: post #93
blazespin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to be careful to separate those who will buy your product versus those who will talk about the industry.

You want both, just deal with them them differently. Who does the talker know? Introductions and referrals are often worth some chatter.

Also the focus changes as your company grows.

Early on you are doing business development, which involves developing product-market fit and figuring out how you sell your product.

Later on you get into straight sales, where you have a playbook that you can give new salespeople that has a proven strategy for selling your offering. At this point you are interested in scaling and optimization, and qualifying customers (knowing if they are real buyers) is really critical.

If you are not a natural born salesperson it is more important to get comfortable with it than it is to carefully qualify people. Later on when you find talking to people is easy but you're frustrated about wasting time, you will reach this point where qualifying people will seem really urgent.

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

#104

Post by tmaly »

cubecul wrote: post #35
ayuvar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you prioritize which 'frustrations' to work on? Processing existing customer feedback has always been a problem even at large, established places I've worked for - chasing the new customer and adding features is always sexier than a general feeling of unease that requires a lot of prying to get to the root of. Often in my experience most customers don't seem to know what the exact problem is, or can't put it i…

My experience is a little different (mgmt consulting) but the problem is largely the same. The one piece of advice I have for your last line is to ask the simple questions - "What do you mean by....", "Can you tell me more about...", "Can you walk me through..." are all very powerful. If you have nothing to go off of but a rough sense of which part of their day is causing them frustration, you can ask "I heard that (…

I have used a few of these statements. You could almost write a book on just this subject.

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

#105

Post by vecter »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #95
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.

>especially first time entrepreneurs I disagree. We know that most first time entrepreneurs will fail. Not b/c of a terrible idea but because of lack of experience. Someone's first venture should be relatively easy, not necessarily a great idea or even an idea that can raise funding. You mentioned in another comment a bill splitting app, definetly an itch, nothing unique, and in itself will never become something spe…

Why would you even waste time building a bill splitting app if it never had potential in the first place? Yes, you would have learned something, but that in and of itself isn't a justification for making a poor decision. You could have both worked on something with true substantial potential and learned something at the same time, as opposed to work on something with no possibility of success and learn something. In fact, you'll probably learn much more doing the first thing than the second.

I've built a bill splitting app. It was stupid and I learned something, but I wish I had been smarter and built something that [might have] solved a real problem with that time instead.

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

#106

Post by vecter »

pbreit wrote: post #102
vecter wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been pitched a bill splitting app. It's an itch, not a real problem. For all of the positive examples of companies that were "built to scratch an itch", there are thousands or tens of thousands of failures where the itch turned out to be a tiny market worth nothing, or no market at all.

OK, maybe "itch" isn't the right word. The more painful the itch, the better. I would agree that bill splitting apps are completely stupid. But I've never felt bill splitting was very itchy.

And therein lies the problem. "Itch" is too vague, subjective, and low of a bar for starting a real business around.

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

#107

Post by hermitcrab »

rharris wrote: post #34

I 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…

I have read the first one of those links previously. I thought it was very insightful.

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

#108

Post by hermitcrab »

danielbarla wrote: post #72
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 v…

> 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

Yep. Been there, got the t-shirt.

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

#109

Post by ddingus »

PaulHoule wrote: post #103
ddingus wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want both, just deal with them them differently. Who does the talker know? Introductions and referrals are often worth some chatter.

Also the focus changes as your company grows. Early on you are doing business development, which involves developing product-market fit and figuring out how you sell your product. Later on you get into straight sales, where you have a playbook that you can give new salespeople that has a proven strategy for selling your offering. At this point you are interested in scaling and optimization, and qualifying customers (…

Truth

Well said and agreed

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

#110

Post by Spooky23 »

onion2k wrote: post #69
Spooky23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Aren't the statements " the account exec bullshitted his way in " and " Just treat people well " a little contradictory?

I probably made a poor word choice here. This particular person was a guy who could talk to anyone about anything. Literally. He had personal relationships with gas station attendants, political people, business people, etc. Ansolute magic.

He charmed his way past the various gatekeepers and got to the guy he was looking for. There was nothing deceitful about it.

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