Finding Problems and Potential Solutions via Cold Emailing
I've been trying to find ways of creating solutions to problems potential customers may have. I'm thinking of cold emailing various groups of people and asking about their biggest problems. On the other hand I also wanted to ask if they had any suggestions for products they wish existed. Though I'm not sure about how to go about this. How can I find problems via cold emailing and then create solutions to those problems? If anyone has done something similar any tips would be great.
You are much better off starting a conversation on Reddit related Sub, IndieHackers or facebook group. Email research as such might be taken offensively (a lot of people treat their email as their private space) and it will result in biased answers.
What exactly do you mean by starting a conversation? Also how could email research lead to biased answers?
By conversation, I mean to start a topic/thread.
As of biased, only people willing to answer will answer. There is huuuge group of people that will never do surveys when prompted through email. You are better off using text messages (and Twilio for it).
How would I go about using text messages? If I did use text messages wouldn't that be asking the same questions just using a different technology?
It's similar, but people usually treat text messages differently than emails. Like, most of research is done through emails and you can see huge companies falling to the depth of forgotten sea just because they are following advice from 5% of their market.
I did this for a while. I don't recommend it. My response rate was actually pretty great (>50%), but the conversations, while interesting, didn't really lend themselves to finding addressable pain.
When you prompt people for problems, what they tell you in that moment isn't necessarily what they feel throughout the day. What they ask about on StackOverflow/Quora (i.e. real pain) is not what they'll complain to you about in that conversation (i.e. perceived pain).
You also just get a ton of different answers scattershot around. You're unlikely to hear the same thing twice just from the sheer number of possible complaints.
If I did this again, I'd probably try leading the conversation more toward pains I already know are out there, and toward a solution I've already come up with. That'd at least let me validate something.
Heya @NetworkGuy.
If you're part of those various groups and have things in common it's possible to use cold email to start a conversation.
You'll get better replies if you have some credibility and social proof about the people you're asking for their time. Figure out what's something you can offer in return. They might be interested in learning what the top problems their peers or their local competitors are facing.
Ping me and I'll send you over a framework I use for this kind of problem discovery.
I don't like this personally. You're not offering anything and you're asking them to do market research for you. You aren't bringing anything for them to the deal to make up for the invasion of a cold email. Why not reach out to your friends instead or join a chamber of commerce or something where business owners meet.
Well, by knowing about other people's problem, he might do something about these problems and create a project that can help the people
Just do it.
Be yourself, admit you're looking for new problems to solve, and just ask.
Your LinkedIn network may already be a valuable source of information.
Cold emailing would not be the right approach. You might end up spamming. It was decade back when people used to be happy on seeing new email, even the promotional ones.
Best would be starting a thread on community sites related to specific domain.