CHAPTER SIX

Finding conversations

Now that you know how to ask good questions and fix bad meetings, you know enough to have good customer conversations. Take this opportunity to go flex your conversational muscles and talk to some people. 

If you’re scratching your own itch with this business, you likely already know your customers. Great! Go talk to them. Now that you’re armed with The Mom Test, they won’t be able to lie to you even though they know you.

But if you don’t already know folks, where do these conversations and meetings come from?

Going to them

Drumming up good conversations from cold leads is hard. It’s doable and sometimes you have no choice, but it’s far from ideal.

The goal of cold conversations is to stop having them. You hustle together the first one or two from wherever you can, and then, if you treat people’s time respectfully and are genuinely trying to solve their problem, those cold conversations start turning into warm intros. The snowball is rolling.

Cold calls

What does it mean if you reach out to 100 people and 98 of them hang up on you? Well, nothing, except that people don't like getting cold calls. No surprise there. More importantly, it means you’ve now got 2 conversations in play. Unless your plan is to sell your app via cold calls, the rejection rate is irrelevant.

I know one team who successfully used cold LinkedIn messages to reach C-level execs of several major UK retailers. They were ignored by practically every exec in the country, but you only need one to say “yes” to start the intro train.

Beyond hard hustle, you should also stay open to serendipity. There are lots of ways you can get lucky when you’re in the mood for it.

Seizing serendipity

I was mulling over the idea of building tools for professional speakers and found myself at a friend-of-a-friend’s engagement party. I heard someone across the room say “my talk in Tokyo next week” and made a beeline over to her. She left the party thinking I was a nice guy who was super interested in her career and I left with a bunch of useful customer insight and a commitment to use the prototype at her next talk.

If it sounds weird to unexpectedly interview people, then that's only the case because you're thinking of it as an interview instead of a conversation. The only thing people love talking about more than themselves is their problems. By taking an interest in the problems and minutia of their day, you’re already being more interesting than 99% of the people they’ve ever met.

Find a good excuse

I was chatting to an aspiring entrepreneur in a cafe. Among other things, his product helped cafe owners educate potential customers on the origins and backstory of their beans. He had been hitting the pavement for the past 2 weeks and getting turned away from cafe after cafe. He wanted to talk to me about his customer interview process. Ten minutes into the conversation, I cut in: “Who have you talked to so far?” “Nobody—I don’t know the owners and the staff won’t help me.” “Have you talked to this cafe?” “No, I don’t know them.” A waitress walked by and I flagged her down. “Excuse me, can I speak to the owner?” “Umm.” “Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. This coffee is amazing and I wanted to ask him about the story behind the beans.” The owner wasn't around, but with a good excuse in hand, we were soon chatting with the manager. And the manager, in turn, gave us the owner’s contact details and said he’d be in on Tuesday. 

You’ve go the ultimate excuse if you have a PhD student on your founding team. “Hello, I’m doing my PhD research on the problems around X, it would be a huge help if I could ask you a couple questions for my dissertation.”

Immerse yourself in where they are

I wanted to build tools for public speakers and conference organisers. I knew a few at the lower and middle tiers, but none of the big names who charge $5-50k per talk, who I thought might be a good customer segment for obvious reasons. I hit the conference circuit and gave free talks everywhere I could. 

Permanently on the road, everywhere I went was an opportunity to meet new speakers, do favours for event organisers, and learn what they care about. By immersing myself in the community I met a load of people and soon had all the connections and conversations I could handle (I ultimately decided that big speakers and big conferences were a bad customer segment and walked away—not every conversation has to end in finding out your idea is awesome).

Landing pages

Joel Gascoigne did a classic "landing page" test with his startup Buffer, describing the value proposition and collecting emails. But contrary to popular understanding, it wasn't the metrics or conversion rate which convinced him to move forward. Instead, it was the conversations which resulted from emailing every single person who signed up and saying hello.

I'm skeptical of the quantitative validation of landing page metrics. But they are certainly a great way to collect emails of qualified leads for you to reach out to and strike up a conversation with.

Paul Graham recommends a generic launch for the same purposes. Get your product out there, see who seems to like it most, and then reach out to those users. 

This is starting to bring the customers to you instead of going to them, but still involves sending a mostly cold email. Next we'll look at how to run with this principle to make our lives even easier.

Bringing them to you

When you are finding ways to sneak into customer conversations, you're always on the back foot. You made the approach, so they are suspicious and trying to figure out if you're wasting their time. Instead, we can look for ways to separate ourselves from the crowd so they can find us. Beyond saving you vast sums of time and frustration, bringing people to you also makes them take you more seriously and want to help you more. How can you plant a flag your customers can see? What can you offer them that will make them want to talk to you?

Organise meetups

For marginally more effort than attending an event, you can organise your own and benefit from being the centre of attention. 

Want to figure out the problems HR professionals have? Organise an event called “HR professionals happy hour”. People will assume you’re credible just because you happen to be the person who sent the invite emails or introduced the speaker. You'll have an easy time chatting to them about their problems.

Nobody ever follows this recommendation, but it’s the first thing I would do if I got moved a new industry or geography. It’s literally the most unfair trick I know for rapid customer learning. As a bonus, it also instantly bootstraps your industry credibility.

Speaking & teaching

Teaching is under-valued as both a learning and selling tool. Let's say you're making better project management software. In that case, you probably have both expertise and a strongly held opinion about how things could be better. That’s the magic combination for being an effective teacher.

Spend the time to teach. You'll find chances at conferences, workshops, through online videos, blogging, or doing free consulting or office hours.

You'll refine your message, get in touch with a room full of potential customers who take you seriously, and will learn which parts of your offering resonate (before you’ve even built it). Then simply chat up the attendees who are most keen.

Industry blogging

If you have a reasonably sized and relevant blog audience, lining up conversations is a total non-issue. You just write a post about it and ask people to get in touch. Of course, not everyone has a relevant audience. That’s one big reason to start blogging to your customers today.

Even when I had no audience, I still found blogging to be helpful. When I sent cold emails from my blog email address, folks would often meet with me because they had checked my domain, seen my industry blog, and figured I was an interesting person to talk to. In other words, the traffic and audience were irrelevant. Blogging about an industry is also a good exercise to get your thoughts in a row. It makes you a better customer conversationalist.

Get clever

I once heard a brilliant hack from a guy who wanted to sell to top-tier universities like Stanford and Harvard. But first he needed to understand their problems (difficult) and be taken seriously by the decision makers (even more difficult).

His solution was to organise a semi-monthly "knowledge exchange" call between the department heads of 3 top universities to discuss the challenges around his topic of choice. Furthermore, it was set up as a conference call where any other universities could dial in and listen to the best practices of the big 3.

By simply organising the call and playing host, he immediately absorbed all the credibility of the top universities and got direct phone access to a pile of great leads.

Every business is different. Don't just copy what someone else is doing. Consider your own situation, and then get clever.

Creating warm intros

Warm intros are the goal. Conversations are infinitely easier when you get an intro through a mutual friend that establishes your credibility and reason for being there.

7 degrees of bacon

The world is a relatively small place. Everyone knows someone. We just have to remember to ask.

I was talking to a team of recent graduates who needed to reach McKinsey style consultants. They were pulling their hair out. We were in a coworking space full of other young entrepreneurs, so I just stood on a chair and yelled, “Excuse me! Does anyone here know anyone who works at McKinsey? Can we talk to you for a second? We’ll buy you a beer — you could really help us out!” They bought 3 beers, had 3 quick chats, and left with a diary full of intros.

This is even easier for consumer products. Not everyone knows folks at McKinsey, but everybody does know, for example, a recent mom or amateur athlete or theatre enthusiast.

Industry advisors

I relied heavily on advisors in my first company. We didn't know the industry and nobody took us seriously. Our 5 advisors each had around a half percent of equity and basically just made credible intros. I met with each once per month, so I ended up getting a fresh batch of intros weekly without it being a huge time burden for any of them.

On a bit of a tangent, you'd be surprised by the quality of the folks you can get to join your advisory board. The first conversation with a good advisor looks similar to the first conversation with a flagship customer: you get along and are talking about a space you both care about. You can sometimes poach killer advisors from your early customer conversations.

Universities

I'm jealous of founders who are still in (or recently out of) university. Professors are a goldmine for intros. They get their grant funding from high-level industry folks they're on good terms with. And since they’re investing in research, those industry folks are self-selected to be excited about new projects. 

Professors are easy to get in touch with if you don't know them yet. They post their emails and you can just wander into their office.

Investors

Top-tier investors are awesome for B2B intros. Beyond their own rolodex and company portfolio, they can usually pull off cold intros to practically any industry. Investors can also help you close higher-tier advisors and directors than you'd be able to wrangle on your own.

Who has bought in to your idea already? Who could they connect you to?

Cash in favours

Remember all those people who brushed you off by saying, “Sounds great, keep me in the loop and let me know how I can help.” 

Now’s the time to call in those favours. Yes, they might not have actually meant it, but who cares? Reply back to that ancient email and tell them you’re ready for an intro to that guy they know. Use the format in the next section to make their lives easy and reassure them that you aren't going to waste anybody's time.

You’ll get ignored a lot, but again, who cares? You aren’t trying to minimise your failure rate; you’re trying to get a few conversations going. The person you’re being introduced to won’t know the backstory anyway, so it’s a clean start from there.

I wouldn’t make a habit of doing stuff like this since it’s a bit annoying and can burn bridges, but sometimes you’re backed into a corner and need to get started somehow.

Asking for and framing the meeting

Sometimes a proper meeting can't be avoided. For example, you might want the full hour or need to talk to someone senior outside of your peer or networking group. But since you don't necessarily have anything to sell, it's unclear what the meeting is for. In those cases, the right explanation and framing can do wonders.

If you don’t know why you’re there, it becomes a sales meeting by default, which is bad for 3 reasons. First, the customer closes up about some important topics like pricing. Second, attention shifts to you instead of them. And finally, it’s going to be the worst sales meeting ever because you aren’t ready.

Symptoms:

• “Um. So….”
• “How’s it going?”

There are a lot of bad ways to frame the meeting, both when first asking for it and once it begins.

Questions like, "Can I interview you" or "Thanks for agreeing to this interview" both set set off alarm bells that this meeting is going to be super boring. I don't want to be interviewed; I want to talk and help!

The common, "Can I get your opinion on what we're doing?" sets expectations of neediness and that you want compliments or approval.

No expectations at all are set by, "Do you have time for a quick coffee/lunch/chat/meeting?" which suggests you're liable to waste my time.

The framing format I like has 5 key elements.

1. You're an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. Don't mention your idea.
2. Frame expectations by mentioning what stage you're at and, if it's true, that you don't have anything to sell.
3. Show weakness and give them a chance to help by mentioning your specific problem that you're looking for answers on. This will also clarify that you're not a time waster.
4. Put them on a pedestal by showing how much they, in particular, can help.
5. Ask for help.

Or, in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask

The mnemonic is “Very Few Wizards Properly Ask [for help]." Here's what it might look like before you have a product:

Hey Pete, 

I'm trying to make desk & office rental less of a pain for new businesses (vision). We're just starting out and don't have anything to sell, but want to make sure we're building something that actually helps (framing). 

I've only ever come at it from the tenant's side and I'm having a hard time understanding how it all works from the landlord's perspective (weakness). You've been renting out desks for a while and could really help me cut through the fog (pedestal). 

Do you have time in the next couple weeks to meet up for a chat? (ask)

Sometimes the 5 parts will be combined into just one or two sentences, or they can be in a different order. For example, the next email sounded a little too pitchy and I was worried he would delete it as sales spam before getting through the first two sentences. As such, I moved my admission of weakness as early as I could get it:

Hey Scott, I run a startup trying to make advertising more playful and ultimately effective (vision). 

We're having a load of trouble figuring out how all the pieces of the industry fit together and where we can best fit into it (weakness). You know more about this industry than anyone and could really save us from a ton of mistakes (pedestal). 

We're funded and have a couple products out already, but this is in no way a sales meeting -- we're just moving into a new area and could really use some of your expertise (framing). 

Can you spare a bit of time in the next week to help point us in the right direction over a coffee? (ask)

People like to help entrepreneurs. But they also hate wasting their time. An opening like this tells them that you know what you need and that they'll be able to make a real difference. 

Once the meeting starts, you have to grab the reins or it's liable to turn into them drilling you on your idea, which is exactly what you don't want. To do this, I basically repeat what I said in the email and then immediately drop into the first question. If someone else made the introduction, I'll use them as a voice of authority:

Hey Tim, thanks so much for taking the time. 

As I mentioned in the email, we're trying to make it easier for universities to spin out student businesses (vision) and aren't exactly sure how it all works yet (framing & weakness). 

I think Tom made this intro (authority) because you have pretty unique insight into what's going on behind the curtain and could really help us get pointed in the right direction (pedestal)… (introductions continue)

I was looking at your spinout portfolio and it's pretty impressive, especially company X. How did they get from your classroom to where they are now? (grab the reins and ask good questions)

These conversations are easy to screw up. As such, you need to be the one in control. You set the agenda, you keep it on topic, and you propose next steps. Don't be a jerk about it, but do have a plan for the meeting and be assertive about keeping it on track.

It’s worth noting that this is how I set up meetings from warm intros. The main goal is to clarify what I need and how they can help. Cold approaches are a totally different beast and are much more of a gamble. Again, the point of cold calls is to stop having them. Find a clever ways to generate warm intros and tell those people how they can help. You’ll have a much easier time.

To commute or to call

One of the solutions to the time cost of these conversations is to move them onto Skype or phone calls. In most situations, I don’t think the added volume is worth the information you lose by not being in the room. I get confused enough by what people are telling me in person. Losing access to their face and body language feels like shooting myself in the foot.

More subtly, calls damage the delicate power dynamic of these conversations. When someone is having a coffee with you, there’s the potential to chat as friends. You can just shoot the breeze about the industry for a bit. You can keep it casual. They’re enjoying the conversation

The same is decidedly not true on the phone or Skype. People try to squeeze calls in between other activities, wondering how quickly they can “finish with business” and hang up. Folks on the phone are super annoyed when you “just want to chat”. So you need to make the whole thing more formal, which is one of the exact mistakes we’re trying to avoid!

Phone calls end up sounding more like scripted interviews than natural conversations, because they are. It’s a constraint of the medium.

Plus, nobody becomes friends over the phone, which means you aren't going to get the warm intros and future meetings you need. Setting up a call feels like less overhead in the short-term, but that’s because you aren’t yet able to see all the time-saving and business-saving benefits of in-person relationships with your customers. 

That being said, some other great people in the field like and recommend phone calls. Use whatever works. But I will say that you should start in person. It’s too easy to use surveys or phone calls as an excuse to skip the awkwardness of meeting in person rather than as a considered trade-off.

The advisory flip

In terms of mindset, don't go into these discussions looking for customers. It creates a needy vibe and forfeits the position of power. Instead, go in search of industry and customer advisors. You are just trying to find helpful, knowledgable people who are excited about your idea.

With that mindset switch, you'll know why you're there. And instead of it being a customer-learning-but-I-really-want-to-do-sales meeting, it's a let-me-find-out-if-you-are-a-good-advisor-by-asking-lots-of-questions meeting.

Willpower is a finite resource. The way to overcome difficult situations isn't to power through, but rather to change your circumstances to require less willpower. Changing the context of the meeting to "looking for advisors" is the equivalent of throwing out all your chocolate when you start a diet. You change the environment to naturally facilitate your goals.

You don't need to explicitly tell them you're looking for advisors. In fact, I wouldn't unless you already quite like them and it happens to come up in conversation. It's really about orienting your state of mind to give you a helpful internal narrative and consistent front.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the sales-advisor switch also puts you firmly in control of the meeting, since you're now evaluating them. Even if the topics of discussion are basically the same, you (and they) will notice the difference.

How many meetings

Every meeting has an opportunity cost. While you’re sitting in a bus on your way there, you aren’t writing code or generating leads or drinking wine.

If you’re running a sales-driven business (especially enterprise sales), the opportunity cost of early conversations is low since many of them will become sales leads. You’re doubling up on learning and dealflow. 

The UX community (who knows their customer conversation!) says you should keep talking to people until you stop hearing new information. 

In my experience, that could take as few as 3-5 conversations if you have a relatively simple industry and a focused customer segment. If you’ve run more than 10 conversations and are still getting results that are all over the map, then I’d guess that your customer segment is too fuzzy and could stand to be tightened up.

This isn’t about having a thousand meetings. It’s about quickly learning what you need, and then getting back to building your business. You should be able to answer almost any customer question and move onto new ones within a week.