
Ask HN: How to actually “talk to your customers”? - cosmorocket
I find this thread https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14146850 very insightful and stressing some important common points in comments.<p>The most precious advice as I see is to “talk to your customers”.<p>How do I practically turn this advice into action?<p>Say, I have:<p>- an office with a computer and internet<p>- a map of the town and its suburbs I located in<p>- search engine to my service<p>- some details about the domain I’d like to work for<p>- zero contacts<p>Now, how do I actually talk to my potential customers? I can knock at doors of every office I find online and with a broad smile say a pitch then attack them with my questions? I don’t think it will work as I would like it to. More likely they will think I am trying to sell some bs and thus be quite skeptical and cold to me.<p>Should I try to approach bosses or common workers of companies?<p>Should I phone them, ask for an appointment, explain my goals and if they let me in, do the talk?<p>What is the right approach to talk to my potential customers?<p>Can you please share your experience and maybe books about how to do it properly?<p>Thanks!
======
goatherders
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 (and to you) is to stop thinking about your
needs (selling something, validating your product, etc.) and start thinking
about discovering their needs. You do this by asking questions and listening.

People love to talk about themselves and their businesses. You will get a ton
of positive response by picking up the phone (or sending emails) saying "I'm
new to this sector and I've been learning everything I can online and through
books and trade magazines. But I know I would learn more by talking to someone
working in the field. Could I stop by Monday morning for 15 minutes and learn
about your business. I'm interested in finding out how you came to even be in
this business, what parts are enjoyable, and what parts are challenging. Thank
you for your consideration."

~~~
na85
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.

~~~
conanbatt
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.

~~~
pryelluw
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.

~~~
manmal
Interesting idea! Are people not creeped out by that?

~~~
pryelluw
They signed up for it by using the network. Try it.

------
malanj
Here's a specific anecdote of how I did it in Palo Alto (after just arriving
in the US from South Africa):

The first day I was in Palo Alto (and the US), I had absolutely no contacts
and was severely jet lagged. I had just moved to the US to establish my
startup ([https://journeyapps.com](https://journeyapps.com)) in the US, raise
"Silicon Valley VC" and chase the dream ;) tl;dr - JourneyApps is a platform
for businesses to quickly developer mobile apps for internal use.

I walked down University Avenue, and spotted Palo Alto bicycles. I walked in
(very nervous) and asked one of the sales people if the manager is in. Jeff
(the manager), was there and asked what I wanted. I explained I'd just moved
here, and was working on a startup that eliminates paper forms.

He was kind enough to not kick me out, and (because it was closing time),
spent some time talking to me about how they sell bicycles and which paper
forms he uses. He also explained how much of a pain it is.

I kept delving into the details of his business, which he absolutely loves, so
he was keen to keep talking. After forming a good idea of what his world looks
like, I asked if he'd be keen to do an experiment with us. We'd make an app
that does bicycle sales on a tablet, and bring it to him in a day or two. The
experiment would be free, he just needs to tell us what works and what
doesn't.

He was really keen, and gave me copies of the forms he uses. Overnight we
built an app on our platform that acts like his paper forms. The next day we
rolled out in his store, and waited for bicycle sales.

The app worked, and we learnt a heck of a lot about US business culture, even
though it was just a "small family owned" bicycle store.

Eventually we raised the mythical Silicon Valley VC money and got our first
Fortune 100 customers, but the process stayed remarkably similar:

1) Find someone who's passionate about their business

2) Talk to them with genuine interest and learn about their world

3) Be upfront and open about which problems you think you can help with, and
which not

4) Over deliver.

~~~
conorcleary
Hi there,

I watched the Emerson video; very neat. Is JourneyApps something that I'd be
able to utilize as a third party to create solutions for clients I've had
previously and future opportunities?

Or, do you work one-on-one with all of your customers and develop only in-
house?

~~~
malanj
It (used to be) accessible to any developer on the internet as a platform :-)

Unfortunately, it's shifted to internal use (Journey employees, and enterprise
employees).

Also - Thanks!

------
rharris
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...](http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/)

* Which customers should you talk to first: [http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-adopters...](http://customerdevlabs.com/2017/03/20/who-are-early-adopters/)

* How to ask for conversations: [http://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-email...](http://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-emails/)

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

------
PaulHoule
It depends a lot on what you are selling.

If you go to a small retail business (say a cafe) when it is not the peak
hour, you might find the owner working there. It is usually not hard to get
them in a conversation, many of them will talk your ear off. (Sometimes this
even works for a supermarket or a large chain store.)

On that front, people usually like to be heard so if you do a lot of listening
that takes the pressure off you. Often a good sales call is 90% or more
listening to the customer talk.

I've gotten good prospects through LinkedIn and simlar means and have had very
good luck (much better than 80%) at sending a message or email and getting an
appointment for a phone call.

If I have any challenge here it is that there are people out there who really
like to talk and talk and you can easily wind up having an absurd number of
calls over a long period of time and get no sales. However, almost always in
B2B sales you will need to make several calls over a period of 2-3 months. Big
companies lke IBM can tolerate a sales process that runs longer that, but you
can't.

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

~~~
ddingus
You want both, just deal with them them differently.

Who does the talker know? Introductions and referrals are often worth some
chatter.

~~~
PaulHoule
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.

~~~
ddingus
Truth

Well said and agreed

------
kolinko
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 Francisco, and went to any meetup I could
find through my contacts, on Meetup.com, and Startup Digest

\- I try to follow news as closely as possible (e.g. there is iOS dev weekly
newsletter), and look for opportunities to engage in the communication. Even
without mentioning the name of my project (which is AppCodes.com -- a
shameless plug here :D )

\- Sometimes I write to bloggers and people who write about my subjects about
something I work on, to honestly gather their feedback, and of course to ask
if they want to know more about my project. It's always personal.

After a few years of doing various projects, I noticed that it almost always
takes around 6 months for the word to go out that I do things, and people
start coming back to me by themselves ("are you still doing X?"). With time,
finding connections is easier, but not faster - it always takes exactly 6
months :)

~~~
e5an
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 consideration for any product is going to
be "Is it free...?"

Of course if you already figured that out; but saw that people were thinking
"Why the hell am I not making any money on the App Store, maybe I need; like;
SEO?" and are likely to give it a try- even if they don't like it, even if it
doesn't work, you still got $15 out of that customer which is 10x what they're
making on each customer who downloads their $1.99 app; so- good on you.

~~~
robryan
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.

------
roguecoder
If you have no network, the first thing to do is build a network. You can do
this by building something people sign up for, getting leads, by talking to
your neighbors, by talking to organizations, by giving talks or by sitting out
in the park with a sign that says "Talk To Me About JavaScript", but you can't
build something people are going to use without knowing the people who are
going to use it and the best way to find those people is by asking people
you've already met.

~~~
pryelluw
Talk to me about Javascript. I love and will steal the hell out of it. Great
comment too. Best in thread. :)

------
CyberFonic
Well .... it really depends on what you are selling. You said service, but
doing what? In what domain?

Ok, that wasn't helpful. So let me try to break it down, without knowing
anything about what you are selling.

I will assume that your service is to solve some problem in a particular
business domain. From that you can decide on who would have the problem you
are solving and how critical it is for them. Hair on fire is good. Nicer
typography on the menu - meh. Nevertheless, you can sketch your ideal
customer. Potentially only a very small proportion of your town's business
population is a possible prospect. Once you have identified the businesses,
you could look at who in those businesses would be most motivated to do
something about getting you to solve the problem(s) you have identified and
are capable of solving.

Then you go an talk to the people you have identified. You listen more than
you talk and refine your approach.

For a far more detailed approach you could read "Four Steps to Epiphany" by
Steve Blank. Customer Development Method might be exactly what you need to
help you maximise the productivity of your time when you are out of the
office, talking with prospects.

If you provide some details about your business then some HNers might be able
to give you specific advice.

Good Luck.

------
kbyatnal
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.

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

~~~
jaf656s
If you do this I recommend you don't mention the gift card until after the
meeting.

I might meet to chat for 10 minutes but if you told me you'd give me a $5 (or
even $50) gift card in exchange for my time, I probably wouldn't.

------
erikb
No 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.

~~~
mattmanser
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.

~~~
erikb
You forgot the affiliate link to the $200 course where they explain how they
did it. ;-)

------
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?

------
chiph
Too early to try and sell them on anything. Call them up.

"Hello, this is cosmorocket, and I'd like to learn more about your industry.
Can I stop by sometime and ask you some questions? Perhaps shadow you for a
little while? I'll bring coffee and danish."

Just watch and listen. If you see them get frustrated by something, give them
a moment then ask "So, what just happened?"

------
fnordsensei
From experience, it's much easier to recruit from a list of people who've
already said that they'd be willing to talk to you than doing cold calls. Cold
calls work, but expect a way lower response rate than if you find a way to
pre-assess your customers.

For example, I've worked with clients where we would insert an NPS question at
some strategic point in the digital parts of their service. Not at a point
where it would be intrusive, but rather, for example, at the very end of
completing a bank transfer. Make it very small: 1) The NPS 1-10 scale, 2)
Field for free comments 3) Checkbox to the effect of "is it OK if we contact
you for more questions?"

This serves the dual purpose of finding people who are willing to talk to you,
as well as giving you an idea of what they think of your service at the
current moment.

You can now contact the people who put less than 9 on the NPS scale to do two
things: 1) find out what you can do to improve the service, and 2) take care
of the complaints they might have and improve your relationship to the
customer in question directly, potentially turning a negative impression into
a promoter.

Obviously, if the product doesn't exist yet, you will have to find a different
way to reach your potential customers rather than inserting it into the
existing service.

------
jakobegger
I have no suggestions where to find people to talk to (that really depends on
your field).

But on the topic of how to talk to people, I really want to recommend the book
by Dale Carnegie 'How to make friends and influence people'. Ignore the corny
title and read it. This book has changed how I talk to people.

The biggest takeaway for me from that book was that people love to talk about
themselves. Make the conversation about them; focus on their situation instead
of on your product.

------
jaf656s
Your problem with figuring out how to talk to customers is that you don't know
who you are trying to talk to.

First you need to figure out who you want your customers to be.

If your answer is local coffee shop owners, then it's easy to make a list of
customers and you can call them, email them, or visit them in person.

There are many places on the internet that give free advice on how to do cold
calls, emails, visits, etc. Steli Efti writes about it a lot on the close.io
blog. There are numerous questions asked and answered on quora.

Start at those two places and once you know more of the basics, you can start
learning more specific skills.

But if you don't know who to talk to, then you are trying to solve two
problems at the same time: who to talk to and how to talk to them.

Solve one problem first, then the other.

Once you know who to talk to, then you can start talking to them to see if
they have the problem that you are trying to solve.

If the service or product you are selling doesn't solve their problem you are
not going to be able to sell it to them.

It's much, much easier if you are trying to sell to a customer base (market)
that you understand well or already know some problems they face.

Then you can talk to them and verify that you are correct and they have the
problem that you think they have.

~~~
raminassemi
> But if you don't know who to talk to, then you are trying to solve two
> problems at the same time: who to talk to and how to talk to them.

Great point

------
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.

~~~
thr0waway1239
>> 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.

~~~
ivv
From personal experience of doing a bunch of interviews and surveys over the
years, after about 6, you'll start hearing patterns. If you are new to the
subject you are researching, doing some reading and talking to about six
people will get you to a point where you'll be able to evolve the questions
you are capable of asking, or formulate hypotheses for testing.

"How To Measure Anything" has a great chapter on how talking to only a few
people can reduce uncertainty with a pretty amazing accuracy, but I don't have
a copy handy.

~~~
thr0waway1239
I hadn't heard about that book. Thanks for the recommendation.

~~~
ivv
Here's another place where I remember reading about 5 users, took me a couple
of days to find it: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-
test-w...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-
with-5-users/)

------
vijayr
I'm no expert, but I've tried this so far and it worked a bit:

Wrote to a bunch of strangers. Made it a point to stress that I've nothing to
sell (not yet at least) and just want to talk and pick brain. Promised not to
take more than 15 mins and never did. Most people never replied, a handful of
them did and I had lovely conversations with them. One even became a friend (I
referred her to the place I work) and we still keep in touch, even though the
original reason I talked to her didn't work out. When I thanked one person,
she simply said "no need, just promise me you'd do the same if a stranger
reaches out to you".

From my limited experience, it is more or less a numbers game, unless you are
willing to spend enormous amount of time looking for that specific set of
people who is the perfect fit to help you. There is no guarantee that they
would though (why should they? Everyone is busy with whatever they are upto
anyways)

~~~
MasterScrat
> Wrote to a bunch of strangers. Made it a point to stress that I've nothing
> to sell (not yet at least) and just want to talk and pick brain. Promised
> not to take more than 15 mins and never did.

I did the same thing but in person. Went to an airport hall where tons of
people are just bored waiting. Said clearly at the beginning of the discussion
that I want feedback on my project and won't ask for money or personal info.

These were the hours where I learned the most from my potential customers.

------
wand3r
You should consider your idea if you are building it for a group you literally
know 0 people who are part of it.

The advice is good but often it means talk to your users. You can use it to
validate your idea, but it is helpful to validate your product.

If you are building something be damn sure it's something people want this is
hard if you don't know those people

------
tmaly
On 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.

------
weixiyen
Wouldn't even talk to them. Try to find ways to observe in a passive manner
instead.

If you are making software for restaurants, go sit at the restaurant during
peak and off hours, and be keen about what's actually going on, down to the
minute detail.

If the problem you are solving is in the kitchen, see if you can offer a hand
doing dishes for free and observe at a detailed level what everyone else is
doing and what their problems also are.

Asking questions in survey format could potentially work, though I doubt it.
It could also be high barrier if you are basically a nobody trying to talk to
restaurant owners.

The worst thing that can happen is people telling you they have a problem they
don't actually have, and you create an imaginary problem to solve that nobody
cares about.

~~~
mooreds
This is similar to the 30x500 method. There are a lot of places where people
are talking online. Make sure you have a grasp of that before you talk to
someone face to face. It is far easier to discern patterns when you can look
over many conversations quickly.

If you don't think there's a group of people online discussing the problem you
are trying to solve, then you either haven't looked that hard, don't know the
domain, or have a golden opportunity to build the community and have that be a
source of leads and content. Depending on your demographic, Reddit, Facebook
or forums are good places to look.

------
MrsPeaches
Highly recommend the Mom Test which is exactly about this.

[https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone/...](https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone/dp/1492180742)

~~~
andreasklinger
+1 for the recommendation

Easily the best book on how to do non-biased interviews

------
marcus_holmes
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

~~~
danielbarla
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.

~~~
hermitcrab
> 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.

------
jonwachob91
Read the book "The Mom Test" ->
[http://momtestbook.com](http://momtestbook.com). Even if you just read the
first chapter, it'll help you out a lot.

To properly talk to customers to identify if there is a need for your
product/idea requires for you to not bias them by telling them what you are
working on. You should be able to talk to your mom about your idea without her
ever knowing that you have an idea for a product.

------
startupdiscuss
Say a little more about what space you are in.

Let me assume that you have a consumer product -- an app, or a piece of
hardware. There are things out there that do something vaguely similar, but
you think yours is better.

Go to the comments sections of various chat boards that are discussing the
current way of doing things. Make note of the complaints.

Ask the people there if they will chat with you for 5-10 minutes about a
product idea.

Be polite.

------
Mz
I will recommend the book "Wishcraft." It is not specifically about this, but
has a lot of good general advice for just getting things done.

You might also find the UX book "Don't make me think" generally useful. I am
mentioning it because it does talk about how to get effective feedback on your
website. If you are doing an online thing, you may find it very pertinent.

------
raheemm
I sent 100s of LinkedIn emails saying 'Im a software entrepreneur interested
in learning about the problems/challenges in your industry. Would you be open
to chatting? I have nothing to sell and only want to learn.'

Then I'd call them up and chat.

At first I'd setup calls only with those who responded.

Then I began calling up people even if they did not respond.

Most people are happy to talk about problems.

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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.

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kardos
Take up Uber driving and use it as an opportunity to pitch your idea/service
to riders:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14166730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14166730)

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jonbarker
Is it talk with potential customers (market research) or talk with existing
customers (customer service and support)? Seems like it should be the latter.
If you have no customers, then consider a new product, right?

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venture_lol
Try not to look at your customers with as walking dollar signs :)

Think of what you can do to support what your customers need to do rather than
think of how you can get your customers to fill your pocket :)

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rietta
I answer their phone calls and have a conversation. Seriously,. Don't over
think this.

I see the zero customers part. I would update my content marketing game until
someone called me.

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Avalaxy
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.

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kornakiewicz
> some details about the domain I’d like to work for

Improving here might be crucial.

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beamatronic
>> I don’t think it will work as I would like it to.

Yes! That is _exactly_ the point of the advice.

Go out in the field and you will learn something - because it will NOT be what
you expected!

I am excited for you! Good luck!

