When aspiring entrepreneurs come to me with their idea, my first thought is often. “That’s great! Do you already have a customer?”
Or, when they haven’t, it is, “Great, what feedback have you been getting from potential customers?”
Too often, the answer is “nothing yet” or “We’re not ready to ship it yet.”
All starting entrepreneurs have an idea. Way fewer of them have a concrete grasp on whether it will sell or not.
Some want to talk about their business. Others get on the phone and get a client.
Now, I’m not asking you to ship junk or be done with the product halfway there. And, there’s plenty to do to bring a company off the ground. People, technique, processes.
But, the most important thing to do is to learn whether or not there’s an interest in your product or service.
Does it have legs? Can you sell it?
It’s extremely unlikely you’ve gotten to truly understand your customers all by yourself.
That should be your primary focus in the beginning.
You need to know (Marketing 101):
Their needs and worldview.
What problems or aspirations are urgent enough for them to solve now.
How do they want to be helped.
This informs what your product needs to solve, its features, what you’ll package it as, its look and feel, and the communication around it.
In short, everything.
And like I said, most likely, you don’t understand these well enough yet.
To do so you’ve got to share, show, or sell your idea with or to potential customers.
That means having actual conversations with them about their lives. And, in a later stage, testing your product (prototypes) to see if it works and if they want to buy it from you.
However, many entrepreneurs resist this. Or try to get out from under it by sending out a questionnaire.
Why? I’ll give you 7 reasons why. And, how to approach it.
Why it’s hard
1. “We’ve got no time for this”
Of course, your attention is drawn to tangible things like the building, people, or machines.
The company doesn’t seem real without them.
And, to show off your business to others, it helps to be able to point at something physical.
But what’s really going on is that it seems scary and way less fun to them. So they come up with excuses.
“There is so much stuff to do before we’ve got time for it.”
“Or perhaps we can simply send out a questionnaire?”
Sure that is more efficient, but it doesn’t give you actual information.
You’re simply trying to figure out a way to not have to do it.’ve grouped these into 3 layers, based on what part of you is resisting.
SMART → “Dumb idea. Let’s think up a smarter alternative!”
SOCIAL → “I won’t be a part of the group!”
SAFE → “This could go horribly wrong!”
I’ve called them layers because they go from superficial to existential.
Perhaps you recognize the similarities to the three Voices coined by Otto Scharmer in Theory U: The Voices of Judgment, Cynicism, and Fear. You could also describe them as objections of the Head, Heart, and Hands.
2. “I’ll talk to them when we’ve got more to show”
Or, in other words, it’s uncomfortable to talk to potential clients when you are uncertain about your product.
Or, you feel your wasting their time, or wasting the credit you have with them.
But this is a double bind, a Catch-22, because you can only get certain about it by talking to customers.
To be good at it, you’ve got to practice being bad at it.
Even the best athletes in the world were bad at it once.
It’s attractive to simply keep talking with mates about it. It’s seemingly free because it can’t result in rejection. But it’s costing you time.
Real people can reject the idea. It might not be it.
Once you tell people on the outside about it, it becomes real. The clock of (imagined or real) social pressure starts ticking.
3. “Customers don’t know what they want”
Sure. Perhaps. But it’s still your job to figure out a way to make attractive what’s beneficial.
In a moment of frustration, you might even get a bit angry and simply want to force your product onto the market.
But that will result in a guaranteed no, ánd worse yet, no new information.
To learn from your interactions with potential customers, you have to be open to the idea that your idea isn’t ready yet.
That’s a little uncomfortable.
Plus, every time you talk to customers, the problem becomes more complex.
You hear no’s, maybes, or unrelated problems and doubts they have.
You start to get confused. Doubt will creep in.
It gets worse before it gets better. You have to follow through on it, to get to the other side.
4. “I prefer to ignore the work”
All projects are cool in the beginning. It’s more about the idea and you already get a bit of energy from how cool it’s going to be.
The aspiration of what-could-be feels like it’s already here.
But to get there you have to do it.
That grind of actually doing it is less appealing. Do you have it in you to get it done?
Starting to talk to customers will illuminate how much work there actually is to do.
Keeping that door closed allows you to keep the mess hidden.
5. “I don’t want it to fail”
Even worse than the work is the idea of failure.
Actually starting the project is what opens the possibility of failure.
It’s not just the wasted time that’s unappealing about it.
Way scarier about it is the knock to your ego when it might turn out you couldn’t do it.
Very attractive to stay in the beginning phase.
6. “What if they don’t care”
By talking to potential customers, you might hear “no” or even worse “I don’t care”.
It’s painful to hear that something that is important to you could be tossed away by someone else.
It hurts because it feels like they don’t value you.
Plus, it shatters your view of the world. How can something unimaginable to you be normal to them?
You thought the world and everyone in it worked a certain way and it turns out it doesn’t.
That’s disorienting and scary.
7. “It’s hard work talking to people”
It is. Empathy is hard.
Actually listening to people and imagining what life’s like for them is hard work.
You start to feel their doubts, fears, and pains.
Like your own weren’t enough for you to deal with…
And, once you empathize, once you connect, you become invested.
You can’t close that box back up.
Better to stay away and pass them the solution that I think will work for them.
How to look at all this
Ok, it’s hard. Much easier to not talk to customers. So how to look at it?
1.
If you're off the mark with your idea, you want to know as soon as possible!
It’s painful information, sure. But rip that band-aid off. If you’ve got a runway of 4 months (and there’s always some sort of runway or patience you have for the project), you want to hear in week 1 if this idea makes sense. Not after 3 months.
The earlier you know, the better the chance you can improve on your idea to make it work because you still have time/funds.
2.
If you think you have to lock yourself up in the garage until you’ve got the solution, every interaction is a step closer to failure.
But, when you see it as a long road of try, try, try again until you’ve got it, every try is a step closer to success.
3.
The garage metaphor also makes it a solo project.
But, if you see it as a shared project, as something you get to build together with the people who want to see that solution exist, you can’t fail.
It becomes a process of thinking of something and talking; creating and showing; laughter and enthusiasm.
The project will already have legs before the launch because you’ve got a bunch of fans on board. All invested in the project and happy to help you make a buzz about it.
4.
Remember, your product is not for everybody.
And, negative feedback is most likely when you’re talking to people who the product isn’t for.
But, of course, they don’t want it. You didn’t make it for them!
Now, feedback from the ones who it’s for, on the other hand…
5.
Before your actual launch, you’re testing with prototypes. These are not finished products.
Of course, to you, that feels like it doesn’t have everything it should have.
But, the point is to, as cheaply as you can, test a specific feature of the product. Does that element do the trick? Is that what they want?
It’s very expensive to build the whole stadium. Do you want to run the risk to find out people don’t care about sports in this town afterward?
6.
Because it’s hard, your competition faces the same struggle.
Just think of the leg up you’ll have if you manage to actually do it!
(or, how far you’ll fall behind if they do it first!)
7.
Remember that validation of your product or service is the most foundational information of your business.
You need to be the marketing genius in the beginning. That’s almost your WHOLE job!
All else follows from that.
It’s super efficient insurance to making expensive mistakes.
If you know what their need or want is, you know exactly what your product needs to do.
If you know how your clients look at the world, you can figure out the story you need to tell them so they can see what’s so cool about you, your brand, or your product.
If you know because you’ve tested, it makes every decision obvious.
Just think of how much smoother all sales will go.
It builds a better business!
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