Ask IH: Is customer development hard for you?
I've read a couple of threads and noticed a pattern that some people here struggle with different forms of customer development like finding first customers, validating ideas, growing customer base etc.
I would like to understand if such difficulties are common. I would really appreciate if you answer following questions:
- Is customer development hard for you?
- Why is it hard? What stops you from making progress?
- What do you need to start making progress?
I appreciate all your responses. I love working with entrepreneurs and looking for new ways of how I could help.
Hey @bestan
I think it's always hard (=much effort) if you don't have a "shut up and take my money" kind of product.
Which means: they have the problem, they KNOW they have the problem, its their #1 "hair on fire" problem not just a minor glitch, they understand your message, your solution hits a home-run in terms of solving that problem + your price point is reasonable
With any of the above assumptions which they answer with "No" its getting harder and harder.
For me personally the hardest part about customer development or reaching out to potential customers is getting them to think "Oh, interesting. This is worth my time." Especially during the validation phase (see my post from yesterday https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-KoxYqaLySOfr5cmoLOY ) only a tiny ammount of people are kind enough to invest their time in even replying to you. Not even thinking about getting on a call. So either you play the numbers game and send another 50 mails to get 2 responses or you go over warm intros or you play with your messaging to hit the "oh interesting, I have that problem" nerve.
Whats stopping me? Mostly its the time effort which is needed to reach out, follow up, keep track and of course swallow the rejection ;-)
What I would need is a VA who thinks like me and I can freely trust to do the outreach, gather info and responses and get back to me with a prioritized list of problems and contacts who are open to get on a phone call. In sales of an existing product this might be the lead generation and lead qualification phase.
Problem with that during idea validation:
a) Anything I can learn from the target market is valuable in the future. Most of the time its only "between the lines" or in a side note of the other person. So any outsourcing will reduce my personal information and knowledge. Resulting in less understanding and less good decisions.
b) In the validation phase its not worth much to me. I even considered a VA for such tasks - but with the drawback of a) and the cost for just poking around an idea it seemed not worth it. And we're talking about a price tag below $500,- here...
Thanks for sharing, super great stuff. I personally relate to a lot of things you've mentioned, but I never considered VA. Did you ever hire one? If yes, then what was your experience and how did you get them in the right mindset?
I hired several VA's for special repeating tasks which had a clear definition of done. Once they were up to speed I was very happy.
But I never hired a permanent VA for general tasks like the one I mentioned. For idea validation you are probably better served if you hire some kind of business student who is by himself interested in entrepreneurship, business, marketing and can think on his/her feet and just get stuff done. I can only imagine how hard it is to find somebody like that in the usual VA-places.
You might be interested in a recent post about VAs: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-KoPDh4-E5t8XURdJrhH
My current problem is how to find people for customer development. I've just posted a question about that - I'd really appreciate any help! https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/where-to-find-people-from-established-startups-for-customer-development-83c62d96be