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Notes #

• [Sean’s thoughts] This is primarily about talking to customers but many of the same lessons also apply for running a sales process
• “How to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you”
• Customer conversations are an excavation – you can’t be blunt
  • Don’t say “do you think this is a good idea” since you will force their answers
• The goal is to learn about customer’s lives and problems, not for them to tell you what to build
• Remember, lukewarm responses tell you that someone doesn’t care
• In general, the more specific someone you’re talking to is (e.g. let me buy this now vs. I’ll totally buy it when it launches) the better
• In the early stages the real goal is learning, revenue is a side effect
• People want to help but hate wasting their time – show them exactly what they can help on
• Have a plan for the meeting and stick to it by asking good questions
  • Don’t let them derail you by drilling into your idea
• The point of cold intros is to stop having them. Find a way to get warm intros instead
• Remember everyone makes mistakes and bad conversations can be fixed
• Don’t expose your ego (e.g. “I quit my job for this…what do you think” – people will think you might be lying)
• A meeting was successful if you got one of the following
  • Facts – concrete specific facts about what they do and why they do it
  • Commitment – They are showing they are serious by taking repuation risk, giving up more time, or giving you money
  • Advancement – They are moving to the next step and you are getting closer to a sale

The Mom Test #

• You shouldn’t ask your mom if your business is a good idea, but you shouldn’t ask anyone if your business is a good idea
  • A bad question invites everyone to lie to you
• The key is just don’t ask leading questions
  • "Would you ever buy is leading, you are bringing up "
• Don’t keep pushing a customer for a yes
  • Understand their subtle no cues
• Attack generic answers by asking specific questions
• The best way to approach a customer discovery conversation is to never talk about your idea
  • Eventually you do need to mention your idea, but you don’t want to do this too soon

1. Talk about their life instead of your idea
2. Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
3. Talk less and listen more

• People will lie to you if they think it’s what you want to hear
• You have to understand people’s goals
• Have customers walk you through your full workflow
• It’s easy to get someone emotional about a problem if you’ve walked them there already
• For B2B pitches: You can ask “where does the money come from”
• End every conversation with "who else should I talk to"
• Is there anything else I should have asked?

Avoid Bad Data #

• Ignore compliments, fluff, and ideas (often comes when you get excited and start pitching)
• One way to recover: “Sorry I got excited by that and started pitching. Mind if I ask how you’re dealing with this at the moment?”
• To go from fluff “this happens all the time” to specifics, ask “when was the last time that happened?”
• When people start giving you feature requests if they are excited that’s generally a good sign!
  • But get to the why behind the feature request - Always understand the core motivation behind the suggestion
• Always dig deeper (“that’s the worst part of my day” – dig deeper)
• Avoid seeking approval
• If you slip into pitch mode just apologize
• Always try and talk less and listen more

Asking Important Questions #

• You can’t just ask trivial questions, you have to ask ones that matter for your business
• A question is an important question if the answer could completely change or disprove your business
• The worst thing you do if you’re getting lukewarm responses is to try to pitch them more
• Sometimes customer conversations aren’t very useful
  • Of course someone will pay you for something that brings them more money
  • But the risk is in the product! Not the market!
  • You still should have some customer conversations in this case, but you don’t need to validate the problem as much
• Pre-plan the 3 most important things you want to learn from any given person (customers, investors, etc.)

Keeping it casual #

• Definitely start with friendly first contacts if you have them
• If you run into people in public just ask them your most important question – you don’t have to set up a meeting
• Setting up formal meetings is often an anti-pattern
• Conversations should be fun for both people – if it feels like they’re doing you a favor by talking to you it’s probably too formal
• Early conversations you can learn within 5 minutes if a problem is real and important
• Once you go more sales-oriented you’ll need about 30 minutes

Commitment and Advancement #

• Once you learned the key facts about the industry and customers, it’s time to zoom in and start revealing the idea + product
• Advancement is moving the relationship to the next stage in sales
• Meetings either succeed or fail
  • A meeting only succeeds when it ends with a commitment for next steps
• Always ask for a commitment (either an intro to their boss or to buy)
  • If you get rejected, that’s a good learning too!
• Committment is important because it shows if people actually care about what you’re doing
  • If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting the meeting was pointless
  • A commitment could be a clear next meeting, a trial period, intro to peers or teams (reputation risk), or financial commitments (LOI, pre-order, deposit)
• After every meeting, analyze whether that was a good or bad meeting and why
• “I would definitely buy that!”
  • Push for an LOI
• To fix a bad meeting (no next steps or wishy-washy outcome) you need to either force an advancment or a rejection
• It’s not a real lead unless you’ve given them the chance to reject you

Finding Conversations #

• Can cold message. If you get 2 yes messages out of 100, you just got 2 yes’s
• Seize serendipity. People love talking about themselves and their problems if you don’t make it seem like an interview
• Find an excuse to talk to people (e.g. I want to tell the owner how much I like the product, I’m doing research for a book, I’m doing research for a PHD dissertation)
• Immerse yourself where your customers are
• You can organize your own meetups
• Create warm intros and get intros through friends
• Investors are also great for intros
• Framing the conversation is really important
  • You want to have a clear goal for the meeting (don’t want to waste someone’s time)
  • Say what stage you’re at (and if you don’t have anything to sell, just say that)
  • Show weakness and ask them for help on the specific problem you’re searching fo
  • Put them on a pedestal by showing them how much they, in particular, can help
  • Explicitly ask for help
  • There’s a good cold message example in the book with this
• Starting with in-person chats is often easier
• Don’t go in these calls looking for customers, it creates a needy vibe
• Have enough meetings to fully understand your customers
  • Sometimes 3-5 is all it takes
  • Sometimes it takes 10 or more
  • The goal is to quickly learn what you need and then get back to building your business

Choosing Your Customers #

• Figure out exactly which customer you’re going to serve
• Even if you are serving “advertisers” you want to slice that down to the specific type of advertisers
• You’ll broaden your segment later, but you need something narrow to start

Running the Process #

• All people should rotate and go to customer conversations
  • If one person goes, then them telling you what they learned becomes them telling you what to do

1. Prepping
   • Know your current list of 3 big questions
   • Make it a point to face the scary questions
   • If you already know your customer, know what the next steps for a commitment would look like
   • Do basic due diligence on who you’re meeting with
   • Know what you’re trying to learn from the conversation
2. Reviewing
   • Set aside time to review your notes with the rest of the team
   • Make sure your learnings are on paper and not just in your head
   • Talk about the meta-conversation itself
     • How did you do? Were there any questions you missed? Etc.
3. Who Should Show Up
   • Everyone on the team making big decisions (even technical decisions) needs to be involved in at least the occasional customer conversation
   • Meetings go best when there are at least 2 people in them – one taking notes and one talking
   • Don’t send more than two people unless it’s group on group
   • Hiring out customer learning rarely works
4. How to write it down
   • Taking good notes is key
   • When possible, write down direct quotes
   • Add symbols to your notes for shorthand
   • Put a big star on items you promised for next steps

• Talking to customers is a tool, not an obligation. If it’s not going to help or you don’t want to do it for whatever reason, just skip it
  • This is better than giving half-effort to check a “talked to customers” box