Hey guys.
This is Steli Efti with Close.io.
I want to answer a question that was recently asked from Quora on lean methodologies.
The question is basically, “What’s the best way to get initial market feedback on
a startup idea?”
The person that asked that question elaborates that they had a bad time and a hard time actually
getting people to meet with them in order to validate their idea and give them feedback.
The person writes, “I just like to speak to people that I think could be a good fit
for five to ten minutes to learn more about their business.
I’m not having much luck cold emailing these people and asking them to stop by and meet
them for a few minutes.
I’m thinking about the next step is probably going to be to show up there in person.
But I’m afraid that this might seem too spammy.
What are some approaches?
What are some ways that I can actually get a chance to meet with businesses, get their
feedback and validate my idea and follow the lean methodologies for my business?”
So I’ve spoken about this before, kind of the lean sales methodologies.
I’ve also written about it, quick plug, on The Ultimate Startup Guide to Outbound
Sales.
But here are some thoughts that I wanted to share and I thought were worth sharing with
you guys.
Number one, I mean there are a couple – there’s a simple framework, right?
Number one, ask yourself, “Do you really, really, really don’t know anyone that would
fit into your customer profile?
Do you not know anyone a former business colleague, an employer, a friend, a family member, nobody
that fits your profile?”
If the answer is really no, you can’t meet with anyone within your immediate network,
ask yourself, “Is there somebody I know that might know somebody that might know somebody
that might know somebody?
Is there a way for me to get referrals?
Am I like one or two steps separated from the initial market I want to survey?”
Is there really nobody that you know that you could ask, “Hey, dad,” “Hey Bob,”
“Hey, neighbors,” somebody?
Hey, here’s – I’m trying to think about – I’m trying to work on this new idea.
I’m thinking about all these ways to actually solve a very specific problem and I’m looking
for speaking to people that are on the X, Y, Z industry.
Do you know anybody that you could connect me with?
If you really can’t find anyone, then what you might want to do is you might want to
do – what this person is basically doing is you might want to cold call a bunch of
people.
What I’m assuming is that the message in that cold email is way too general.
It seems like the person is asking if people would have – that they want to work on that
idea in a very broad field and they would love to interview them for five to ten minutes.
If the person would have some – a little bit of time to actually sit down and chat
with them, about their business and their business needs.
That’s obviously way too general.
There’s no value that you could ever create for me by just saying, “Hey, Steli.
I’m working on something in the sales space.
Would you have 10 minutes to actually validate this idea with me and give me feedback?”
The answer is no usually.
I’m super busy.
I would love to meet with everyone who wants to meet with me but I just don’t have the
time.
So I have to prioritize.
So what is in it for me?
Why should I actually meet with you?
Now a lot of people in the Quora comments made suggestions on like how to make this
worth their while, how to make it worthwhile to people that actually meet with you.
But here’s the kicker.
The simplest value that you can offer me is to give me an outlet for me to talk about
my problems.
People intrinsically want to vent, want to talk, want to argue, want to communicate the
issues, the challenges, the problems they have in their business.
If you give them a chance to do that, that’s value enough.
So there’s one of two choices.
Either people don’t have the problem that you’re trying to address and by people not
responding to your email, your cold calls, you showing up, you asking anybody you know
if there’s anybody they know that has that problem.
If you shout out in the forest and there’s no echo, there’s nothing coming back, that
might be everything you need to learn about this market business or your specific idea.
If there’s nobody that wants to talk about this problem, it might just not exist or it
might not be important enough for people to give them enough reasons to want to talk about
it.
But if you do, if you very specifically highlight to me, not just, “Hey Steli,” and then
something in the sales space and I would love to talk to you about.
But what if you actually say, “Hey Steli, I’m doing something in the sales space.
I have noticed that you are doing a lot of content marketing to drive leads into your
sales funnel for Close.io.
I have some ideas on how to actually take content marketing and promote it in a much
more powerful way and I think that your content would be awesome for that.
Can you take five minutes to like bounce off these ideas and validate that what I have
in mind could be really valuable to you and your business?”
That’s different.
Now you have my attention.
Now I want to talk about it because content marketing is top of mind.
It’s something I worry about, something I work on daily and something I care about.
So it’s both relevant to my business and to my interest in something I’m curious
about.
So I totally give you the time in the hope that I will get something in exchange.
Maybe you built something that’s going to help you.
You’re going to bring up some cool ideas and it might be a completely different thing
for somebody else.
Somebody else might not need a solution.
Somebody else might just have a problem that sucks and for you to say, “Hey, I want to
fix that problem and I want to talk five minutes with you about that problem, why it sucks
and how it sucks exactly, so I can figure out if I can stop this problem,” many people,
if they truly have that issue and feel that pain, they will want to take the time to talk
about it.
If they don’t, they don’t have that problem.
Now the way that you described your question, your challenge made me to believe, led me
to believe that you’re probably asking them too generically.
So try to be a lot more specific.
Actually tell them exactly what problem you’re trying to solve and maybe even point into
how you try and resolve it without giving everything away.
But maybe just saying – instead of saying, “I’m trying to solve a problem in your
business,” maybe you say, “I’m trying to solve that content marketing problem,”
or something a bit more specific to make it a lot more real and make it a lot more useful
to people, so they resonate and respond to it.
Now once you actually do that, if you still don’t get any responses, that might point
you to a bad direction.
But I want to throw out some more ideas on how you can actually get people’s attention
to sit down, talk to you, open up and give you real feedback and valuable feedback to
validate your idea and give you enough reasons and validation to actually go and build something.
So obviously look at your immediate network.
Look at introductional referrals, the people you know.
Can they introduce you to somebody they know?
A lot of times or sometimes what I’ve seen people do successfully is to actually just
offer a survey and tell people, “Hey, I’m surveying people in this very specific vertical
market or position.
I’m trying to learn more about the market and what I’m going to do is once I’ve
learned more, I’m going to aggregate the results and actually share the results with
you.
So you will learn a lot more about the things that your colleagues and peers and other companies
in your market are worrying about right now.”
So that’s kind of the value that you offer.
Then when you meet with them, it’s not just like, hey, my name is Steli and I just like
to ask you questions for 10 minutes for my selfish own interest.
But it’s like hey, I’m actually assembling a survey.
I’m going to put together a report.
I’m going to share these lessons only with the participants of that report and you’re
going to learn valuable insights about the market, by doing that.
That’s kind of another way to actually offer value for people and make this a bit more
real, a bit more professional, rather than just like, hey, I have a few questions for
my own self-interest.
Are you going to take time out of your busy day to make my life better, right?
So surveys and reports are something that I’ve seen people use effectively to actually
get a lot of customer feedback and do a lot of lean development, lean startup development.
Then one last thing that I want to point out is that it sounds like you’ve done a bunch
of cold emails and now you’re considering and contemplating to actually show up at people’s
offices.
That might be really big of a jump.
How about a side step in between where you still try to do a bunch of cold emails but
you actually narrow down and perfect your message?
But you also do a bunch of cold calls.
Like cold calls obviously a bit more interruptive in their nature.
So you’re going to be – if somebody picks up the phone, you’re going to be able to
actually influence them and pitch them and use the human emotion to make them feel like,
“All right.
I’m going to give you three minutes right now.”
But it’s not as intrusive that it’s actually showing up right next to my desk and making
this like a “I have no choice” kind of a deal.
Not to say that that can’t work and depending on what kind of businesses you want to talk
to, it might be the only thing that works, right?
So as an example, if you want to do customer validation with the restaurant owners, good
luck emailing – cold calling them.
Showing up in person is probably going to be the best way.
But then conversely if you want to get customer validation from VPs of marketing at large
organizations, good luck showing up in person in front of their office.
That’s really not going to work most of the time.
So think about the option of doing cold calling before you actually show up at people’s
office.
I hope those were some useful thoughts.
I have a lot more.
I’m going to link up to a bunch of other stuff that I’ve written about lean sales,
how to actually validate an idea with the power of hustle and actually asking people
for money even before you build things and lots and lots of other things.
I’m going to link up to that but I hope that that was useful to actually get you to
that next level where you actually get a chance, get the attention and time of people to really
learn about your market, your prospective customer, and figure out and validate if what
you are thinking about building is worthwhile building at the end of the day.