Need urgent help on how to sell and talk to customers!

Hi Aaron,

You've asked a lot so I will focus on #1.

How do you talk to potential customers and get them from asking them about their problems to them paying you money?

You need to make it clear that you understand their problems and you are the one to solve them.

It sounds like you may have already started to get an idea of your customers problems, so the steps between that and them paying you are:

1. Getting the customer to understand the impact of their problems. This helps them move from "it's a minor annoyance" to "this is a major problem" so they realize they need to take action sooner than later. You do this by asking lots of questions, digging deeper as you go.

E.g.:

"How difficult is it for you to book new appointments?"

"You say it's not that hard, are there any periods throughout the year where you experience slumps?"

"It sounds like that that must a tough couple months. What are you doing to compensate for them?"

"I understand, working overtime and cutting part-timers staff is tough. Do you have a lot of turn over?"

etc.

2. Getting the customer to understand the impact of having their problems solved. It's important that the customer sees a real benefit to having the problem solved but you want them to come to this realization on their own.

Ask questions like:

"So, you said Nov and Dec are slow months. What would it mean for you if they weren't so slow?"

"How much more new business would it take to cover the extra inventory?"

"How much would you save not having to find and train new contractors?"

etc.

3. Presenting your solution. If you're meeting in person bring your laptop or any printed materials you have to show the customer. Review every point you discussed with them and collaborate on how your proposed solutions will help them. It's okay if you don't have anything to sell. Be upfront and offer them x months free or a discount if they're willing to pay you up front. It's important to ask for the sale, even if it's nominal, to validate not only your solution but also your ability to sell it.

Even if you are not able to make a sale you will want to have as many conversations as possible until you truly understand the problem from your ideal customers' perspective. This way you're solution will be as close as possible to what they're looking for.

I hope this helps.

I've likely missed stuff, as there are a lot of questions within this one post, but I've given it a shot. Hopefully others will jump in with other suggestions.

1. I like to look at it from the perspective of 'where do your customers hang out'. Figure that out, then that will help you develop ideas and create a plan on how to speak/communicate with them.

2. It's great to have a plan (cold calling and walking in), if you think that is right for your situation, by all means try it out. But you might find it doesn't work, then what? I know I wouldn't like to be sold to on the spot, and I personally don't answer calls from unrecognised numbers. But the point is, you need to figure out the best approach.

How confident are you that you are building what people want? Perhaps show them some screenshots and talk them through what it is and gauge their reaction. If you are super confident that you are building something they will use, then build an MVP. There are risks everywhere, you need to think about which ones you will take.

3. To be honest, I think you need to try some things out and see what works.

You are right to question stuff, like whether you need to blog. Lots of people churn out advice that may be irrelevant to your situation. And the world has changed a lot, so something like Instagram could be more relevant.

But you don't know until you try.

Patrick McKenzie is/was working on appointment reminders. He has plenty of presentations/videos and blog posts about finding the customers for it.

It will answer many of your questions.

Unless there's more to this story, I don't see how appointments has anything to do with Instagram. You need to go face to face with your customers and explain that you want to help them make money.

Hi Aaron,

I think it's good you are asking this question now, rather than after spending considerable time on building the product.

first, I'd stop working on the product for now. You have 2 fairly big problems you need to figure out first. If you don't figure them out now, time spent on this product could be wasted and is time not spent on a product that could be great.

1. You need to figure out how to reach your customers. If you can't find any customers now, how will you find enough to sell to once your product is built? No magic happens when you finish a product, it can be just as easily ignored by potential customers then as it is now.

You have some pretty solid ideas, so you should try them out. Go to stores, call people, DM them on insta, keep trying things until you can get people to respond.

2. You don't know if customers have a problem that your product solves. You can talk to them about their problems in the area you are solving and see if it resonates with them. See how valuable a solution is to them.

You don't need to have a finished product to find that out.

Keep in mind, this process can be very difficult unless you know quite a bit about their business. You can miss a lot of nuance, you can misinterpret them, you can unintentionally lead them to answers you want to hear. So try to do as much research as you can about the businesses you want to target.

If you figure out how to contact potential customers and you find out you are solving a problem they have, great!

You might also find out they have a different problem you can help with. Also great!

You might find out you STILL can't get a hold of anyone to talk to. Also great! You can cut your losses and figure out a market you CAN help (which is the order you should probably go in anyway: market before product).

Does this help?

Hey @GeroviVaper, You're trying to do too many things at once. Start with what you know about the market you want to serve. It seems to be small biz/ brick and mortar who skew slightly older (not into email or blogs but might do insta or FB).

You mentioned 3 ways of reaching out:

• Cold calling
• Dropping in
• Insta influencers

Each one can succeed but start with getting a conversation going to learn about their problem. That's the prime objective. Getting them to talk to you about their probs. You don't even know if that's really their big issue. It could be something else entirely.

The danger here is you sound like you already have a solution in mind (booking software) but can they tell you that's their big problem and confirm they are willing to pay to have it fixed. That's the crux of it.

Get out of your head and start talking to them:
Set a goal to figure out what to say and drop in or call X number of people to learn about their business.

Going from problem identification to pre-selling isn't one conversation. Ping me for a guide I'm working on that talks about this.