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A word to the wise for anyone on HN thinking of following the advice in this post... Be careful not to venture into the realm of "sugging" (selling under the gu

A word to the wise for anyone on HN thinking of following the advice in this post... Be careful not to venture into the realm of "sugging" (selling under the guise of market research). If you're going to interview people in a market as part of your customer discovery and development process, then by all means do it. However, try to resist the urge to sell them your solution at the end of the interview. You'll likely find that people drop their guard when you ask them for their opinions and ideas, which could lead to a business relationship at some point in the future (when they're ready). You won't even need to "sell them" per se. If you've discovered a real problem, they'll get back in touch with you. The saying from the VC world applies in research as well - when you ask for money, you get advice, when you ask for advice, you (sometimes) get money.

danhodgins 15y ago
This is bang on. I would not advise trying to sell your solution at the end of a customer development interview, and perhaps not for weeks or even months after. If you truly solve big pain points the time will come to ask for the sale, but it's not after the first conversation. Simply enjoy the conversation, ask them to tell you about the biggest challenges in their business, and most people will open up and give you some of the most valuable feedback you can get as an entrepreneur. It's much more valuable than sitting in your basement and running an Adwords campaign to a landing page. The depth, richness and quantity of feedback you get might surprise you. You might even consider asking your prospect if you can publish a transcript of the interview on your blog. Publishing your customer development interviews (with your prospects' permission) will give you near instant content for SEO (get it transcribed with SpeechPad if you like), added value in the form of information for other prospects in the industry, and insight into how they express their pain points that you can inject back into your pitch and marketing messages.

danhodgins 15y ago

This is bang on. I would not advise trying to sell your solution at the end of a customer development interview, and perhaps not for weeks or even months after. If you truly solve big pain points the time will come to ask for the sale, but it's not after the first conversation. Simply enjoy the conversation, ask them to tell you about the biggest challenges in their business, and most people will open up and give you some of the most valuable feedback you can get as an entrepreneur. It's much more valuable than sitting in your basement and running an Adwords campaign to a landing page. The depth, richness and quantity of feedback you get might surprise you. You might even consider asking your prospect if you can publish a transcript of the interview on your blog. Publishing your customer development interviews (with your prospects' permission) will give you near instant content for SEO (get it transcribed with SpeechPad if you like), added value in the form of information for other prospects in the industry, and insight into how they express their pain points that you can inject back into your pitch and marketing messages.