Sales is hard because it's less about building and more about listening. You need to figure out what customers actually need and that starts with talking to them directly. Here’s a framework I use, based on the Customer Development Ladder I wrote about in my upcoming book. It breaks down the process of learning about customers into four kinds of interviews. Each interview takes you one step closer to a sales call and the last step invites them into a sales process.
1. Exploratory Customer Development -
Start with broad conversations. Reach out to potential customers and ask them about their world: their challenges, goals, and frustrations. Don’t pitch your idea, just listen. The goal is to uncover problems worth solving.
2. Focused Customer Development -
Once you notice a pattern in the problems people describe, you want to make sure it's shared by a wide subset of customers.
3. Paper Feedback Demo -
Before building anything new, create a low-fidelity prototype (mock-ups, sketches, or slides) of how you might solve the problem. Share it with prospects and get their feedback.
4. Real Feedback Demo -
When you have a working version of your product, test it with those same prospects and ask for feedback. The goal is to see if the thing actually solves their pain. If it does, you can invite them into a sales process. “Looks like it might help, can we set up some time to explore what it would look like to implement at your company?”
This approach isn’t magic but it works. The best part is that it teaches you how to find customers and what messaging will resonate with them. Resources like The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick are great for learning how to have these conversations without bias.
Joe Rogan has a lot more subscribers and listeners than this guy, does it mean I should listen to his opinions?
Valuing someone by reach makes no sense at all. Most professors at MIT have no social media reach at all, I still value their opinions extremely highly.
In fact, valuing someone's opinion purely based on the size of their megaphone is partly why we're the world is in such a bad state politically (and in other ways) these days. E.g. people listening to social media influencers opinions on vaccines.
I think this is a fair take. The parent comment shouldn't have added subscriber count as one the qualifications. But for MKBHD's qualification, simply use point number 2.
I run a sales dev agency and your numbers are decent. Here are two things to try:
- message founders in the space with "I'm working on a new startup and could use your advice"
- after each interview ask them for a referral to someone who you could interview
This creates a referral flywheel and eventually will be a function that brings you customers. I have written a blog post on the topic but I don't think linking here is cool.
The reason I pay for tons of extra Google photos storage is it tags and uploads and pics of my kiddos to an album shared with all the grandparents. It's their favourite app in the world and I'm never allowed to cancel.
Stoicism mixed with CBT helped me get through some challenging anxiety attacks.
I think Seneca shared these 'tenants' in his letters to Lucilius (book: Letters from a Stoic) but I could have that one wrong. Either way, they've stuck with me:
1. Control your perceptions
2. Direct you actions accordingly
3. Willingly accept what is outside of your control
I use a Rode Videomic NTG and it does a pretty good job. It still picks up a little bit of the room echo but I've noticed that zoom does a better job of noise canceling when I use this mic compared to others.
