Ideas for approaching "hard to reach" industries?
My product is built for the hospitality industry, more specifically coffee shop/restaurant businesses and their customers.
While customer validation is easy to perform, I'm repeatedly hitting a wall trying to perform partner validation, largely due to being unable to reach key people from the industry (mostly business owners) or have fruitful conversations due to their busy schedules.
I should point out that, while my product enables partners to improve their businesses a lot, there is no direct "pain point" I can address when presenting my product. For that reason, connecting with them is that much more difficult. At the same time, value brought to the customer is through the roof and everybody is screaming for it.
Any ideas on ways to approach and learn from people in those "hard to reach" industries?
Thank you.
Walk to coffee shops, put on a smile and ask to talk with the owner. :-)
The challenge is that my product targets busy venues for a specific reason, and more often than not, the owners are not there. Which means you get to speak to someone who does not make the decisions or you get an email to the person who is. Email is good, but challenging to have good conversations and learn.