“A customer interview is not a discussion.” – Étienne Garbugli The solution or customer interview phase is another opportunity to deepen your relationship with early adopters. With sometimes as little as 30 minutes per meeting, you want to spend the bulk of your time exploring
Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about their problems. – Dave McClure, 500 Startups Founding Partner and Investor As you prepare to engage with early adopters to validate your target market, it’s important to remember that you need their help and, not the
Cold call efficiency has dramatically decreased over the years. Nowadays, with the increasing drive to inbound marketing, cold calling has a 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 success rate with cold emailing getting similar results. The more proximity and influence you have when contacting
It’s important to know where you want to go and build a network in this direction. – Martin Huard, Admetric Co-Founder and CEO Your personal network can help you gain credibility with the early adopter network. Contacts are in no way a replacement for having
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. – Unknown (Falsely attributed to Henry Ford) The earlier you are in your validation process, the more open-ended you need to be. As there are explicit and implicit needs, there are
There are many ways to find early adopters beyond your professional network. Although the people working for enterprises are often less active on social media than their small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) counterparts, you can still find early adopters on social media. Finding Early Adopters
Visit VCs for fun, to find the influencers. These guys always know guys who compete in that space. VCs love giving their opinions. – Steve Smith, CakeMail Co-Founder Investors, industry bloggers, journalists and market analysts often get contacted by startups and established companies trying to
