
Ask HN: How do you talk to customers? - magic_man
How do you go about getting to those customers. You might have few contacts in your target area, but it might take more than a few customers.<p>Do you just call company x,y,z and hope to get to person x or what specific steps do you take to get in front of your customer?
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danielfoster437
My company has been able to reach our target customers just by asking-- in a
human way. Be nice, listen to your customers' needs, go out of their way to
help them and if your solution solves a major problem, they will connect you
to other customers. And it's ok to say you're a young company that needs
help-- people like helping.

All you have to do is ask.

The same goes for cold calls-- be genuine.

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JSeymourATL
> How do you go about getting to those customers...

There are 100s of ways of getting customers. It starts by understanding WHO
exactly your target customers are-- and knowing what their world looks like.

Here's the best book on targeting, planning & executing a solid sales
strategy-- Mike Weinberg's New Sales, Simplified >
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-
simpli...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-simplified)

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kom107
As someone with 10+ years of mad success in sales/marketing/hacking growth,
from my own startup to Fortune 500 level in several verticals, here's what you
have to do:

1\. Yeah, sometimes you just gotta cold call. Even better, show up. Ever watch
the original Wall Street? Bud Fox calls Gekko every damn day. To get in front
of your very first customers, you need to be doing this too. Go to where your
ideal customers are and start talking with them (tangentially) about your
product.

2\. MAJOR CAVEAT: This first conversation should NOT be about you, product
features, design, how much VC you've landed (or want to land). No 'push
notifications' here guys. You should be listening to your customer, asking
them about what problems you THINK they have that you THINK your product will
solve. If it's not the type of product to obviously solve a problem (maybe
you've not figured out what problem it solves or it's something that's more
for fun), let the customer play with it and ask the customer high-value
questions while they use it.

3\. Here's the secret to successful sales in one sentence: it's not at ALL
about you or the product. Remember that, listen, and your customers will start
giving clues away about how to sell to them. If you get good at asking the
right questions, it's like calling the Nintendo cheat hotline back in the day:
the wins come really easily once someone tells you how to do it (I'd like to
publicly apologize to my parents for the 1998 phone bill right now).

4\. Always, always, always track the conversations. Every one. Even that 2
second one getting coffee this morning. Look for patterns (what worked, what
didn't, similarities between cohorts at different stages in the buying cycle,
what questions you asked that elicited the most helpful responses, etc). As
Paul Graham says, to get your first users, you have to do things that don't
scale. However, assuming you do this successfully, you'll need to rapidly
build systems that do scale, so doing this extra work now will pay off like
mad. Moreover, these conversations should help you find opportunities for the
next iterations of your product. In the book Traction, the authors talk about
doing sales and product iteration concurrently, and they're 100% right. If you
do one without the other, you're going to struggle.

5\. BE where your customers are. Remember when you had the hots for someone in
high school? What would you do? Everyone, and I mean everyone, tries to put
themselves near where this person is--maybe you sit nearby in class, or try to
pass them in the hall, whatever. Same stuff with landing customers. Pretend
like they're your crush, find out everything you can about their industry,
their job (what they REALLY do and worry about, not just their title and
organization), maybe some things they enjoy. It's okay to be a little creepy
when prepping and strategizing sales--more info is better, because it helps
you develop a more holistic picture of your ideal customer, and that narrows
down the channels you should try to succeed. Just don't be obvious about your
prep. Remember: the will to win is important, but the will to prepare is
vital.

6\. Sales come from emotion. One of the biggest problems I see when engineers
sell is that they use language that makes sense to them and is technically
correct, but makes the customers feel stupid. Metadata to you is a 'wikipedia
for your most important software' to the lay person. Make sure you emphasize
the BENEFITS to the potential customer--they don't actually care about the
feature. If you have a sciences background, you will probably screw this up.
That's okay, just keep working at it--if you are cognizant of this and work to
correct it, you'll be doing sales like the sales pros in short order.

This is definitely not inclusive, and each bullet point deserves its own book,
but in my experience, they'll deliver the most value for where you are at now.
Write letters, send emails, show up early and late, go to where they are, and
keep the conversations about THEM. Sales are based on trust and likability
(and it helps, but isn't necessary, to have a best-in-class product). You can
do it.

It's funny you ask this, because I'm trying to find a job leading
sales/marketing/growth at a startup company (Series A or after) right now
(started applying hard yesterday). Email me and I'll do a no-fee consult
(email's in my profile); if anyone else in the community has questions, feel
free to reach out as well. Even if you're not in my target company
demographic, I believe in good karma. Good luck guys.

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somd09
Checked out your profile, looks like there's no contact information. I'd like
to contact you, is there any way I can get your email?

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kom107
Hey--sorry, forgot I hid it for a while. Anyway, it's kate (dot) mcginley at
gmail. Talk soon.

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tmaly
I used the write up on customer development interviews in the Running Lean
book as a starting point. As another person stated below, its all about
listening.

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jasdeepsingh
Would love to see some responses here from the HN community.

