How to talk to users/customers?
How to make Sales calls - A founder's Journey on communication Part-1
The best founders maintain a direct connection to their users throughout the lifespan of their entire company. They maintained a direct connection because they need to extract information from their users at all different stages of running their company.
Oftentimes, people think that, you know, they're the CEO or they're the CTO, they're the technical kind of product leads of the company. They can outsource this research to other people in their company. They can hire salespeople, they can hire heads of product. But at the core, the best companies are the ones where the founders themselves maintain a direct connection to their users. If you are the CEO, it is your job. It is in your job description to talk to customers. So, take the time to learn how to do it well.
All founders need to participate in this process as well. If you're the engineer, if you're the developer, don't think that you can escape this process just because you're the person who's coding. There's a pretty classic scene from the movie "Office Space," where there's an individual who says, "I'm the person who is the go-between between engineers and users. I know how to talk to people. I have people skills." And that is one of the things that you do not want to have happen at your company. You want to make sure that the founders and the core members of your company are the ones who develop the skills for talking to users. So, you do not have to hire someone like that to be the go-between.
3 common errors that we make when we try to conduct user interviews (The Mom Test)
1. Talk about their life, not your idea
The goal of the great user interview is to extract information from user,from the person you are talking to, the extracted raw data will help to improve the product or improve your positioning.
It is not to sell them on using your product,so at the core of a great user interview,you need to learn about their life,you need to talk about specifics around the problem area that you are trying to solve that user may be going through.
2. Talk specifics, not hypothetical's
Second mistake that we pretty much all make is we talk about hypothetical we talk about what our product could be, we talk about features that we want to build we we ask questions like "if we build this feature,would you be interested in using it,would you be interested in paying for it".
Instead talk about specifics that that have already occurred in the users life, this will give you stronger and better information in which product and company changing decisions.
You also want to talk in general about user's life,you don't want to just talk about the specific problem or the specific solution you are presenting.Try to extract information about the users,the path that led them to encounter that problem, ask them question about their life in kind of more broader way to extract context around how they arrived at this problem,learn about their motivations,learn about why they got themselves into that problem in the first place.
3. Listen, don't talk
Listen, and take notes.Listen them properly.
5 useful questions
1. What's the hardest part about [doing this thing]?
"What is the hardest part about doing the thing that you're trying to solve?"
The best startups are looking for problems that people face on a regular basis or that they're painful enough to warrant solving. This question can help confirm for you whether the problem that you're working on is actually one that real users feel is a pain point, feel is something that they actively want to solve in their life.
2. Tell me about the last time you encountered that problem?
The goal of this question is actually to extract context around the circumstances in which the user encountered that problem.
Try to extract as much information as you can about the context in which they began solving this problem so that as you develop your product, you'll be able to actually reference real-life examples of past problems that potential users have had, and you can overlay your solution on top of that to see if it would have helped in that particular circumstance.
3. Why was that hard?
The reason why you want to ask this question is because you'll hear many different things from different people.
The benefit from asking this question is not just to identify the exact problem that you may begin to solve with your solution to this problem, but you'll also begin to understand how you market your product, how you explain to new potential users the value or the benefits of your solution. In general, customers don't buy what. They buy the why.
Answers that you get from customers to this question of why. Why was this past problem that you encountered so hard may actually inform your marketing or your sales copy as you build out the rest of your product.
4. What, if anything, have you done to try to solve the problems?
If potential customers are not already exploring potential solutions to their problem, it's possible that the problem that you're trying to solve is not a burning enough problem for customers, for them to be even interested in your better solution to this product. So this question tries to get at the root of that issue. Is the person who encounters this problem already trying to solve this?
You want to ask this question for two reasons. One is to figure out whether the problem that you're solving or you're working to solve is even really something that people are already looking for solutions to. The second one is, what are the other competition out there? What will your product be compared against as you end up rolling out your solution and offering it to end customers?
5. What don't you love about the solutions you've tried?
This is the beginning of your potential feature set. This is how you ask the... This is how you begin understanding what the features are that you'll build out for your better solution to the problem. Now, note that this is not the question of, what features would you want.
This question specifically targets, what are the problems with the existing solutions that they've already tried? These are specifics and you can begin to kind of figure out what the differential between your new solution and the existing solutions already in the market will be.
Cold Calling B2B and B2C Skeleton
Succinct Script.
keep it as short as possible
Formula and Flow
Introduction
Benefits to the customer
call to action
Script duration : 30 Seconds
Define your call to action
Action 1 : Get the email-id
Action 2 : Fix a demo call
Voice Modulation
Friendly tone
Entire script should be approx. 30 seconds,
Call to action = We should be very clear what we want out of a cold call
References and Sources:
Communication Content - Eric Migicovsky - How to Talk to Users
How to Start Sales Calls So Prospects Don't Hang Up On You
15 Science-Backed Tips for Making Better Sales Calls