How To Close Your First 1000 Customers | Startup Sales 101

Hey, this is Ashwin. My question is for Sam regarding customer discovery. I saw on a recent webinar that your calendar was booked with dozens of calls each day with potential customers for your new product. I'd like to know what kind of questions you ask in those meetings and how you use their feedback to influence the business plan and product for your new business.

Thanks. All right, so the question was basically the guy, uh, I did a, uh, like a little small talk for like a private group, and I showed my calendar about how basically on Tuesdays and Thursdays and whatever, like, I'll, I'll do like 10 to maybe 10 or 13, like 10 to 20-minute calls with customers. And they asked what questions do I ask? And so I do a few things. The first thing is, is if you haven't read it, there's this book called The Mom Test and it talks about like how to ask good questions. But I'm not asking questions that a lot of people ask, like, would you pay for this? I don't ask that. I don't ask like, would you use this? I never ask that stuff. So in my case, or all the time, not just in my case, but in this particular case of this business I'm starting, but in all cases, I'm not even asking them if they want the solution that I'm saying is the solution to the problem. What I'm looking for is I'm trying to get confirmation of, does this person have my problem? The, the problem that I'm trying to solve. And then I'm trying to figure out, well, if they don't have the problem, are they even the target market that I'm going after? And who, uh, like what type of like archetype of person, uh, demographic, psychographic, what type of person consistently do I notice has this problem? And so I'll give you some example questions. I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

HubSpot. Grow better. I don't want to talk too much about the business that I'm starting because I'm not ready to, like, reveal it yet. But it is working really well and we've done a lot. We've done a lot in revenue in a very short amount of time. All from these calls. But I'll basically, so I'm gonna use, I'm just gonna like use some vague language. So sorry about that, but that's what I'm gonna do. So I'll say, all right, have you ever tried to use blank before? Oh, you haven't, but you've wanted to? Well, why haven't you? And they'll tell me answers like, well, you know, just like no good one has ever presented itself or the brands that currently solve this, they seem a little old to me. They seem a little old school. And I'll say, tell me about that. Why do you think that they seem old school to you? Why do you think they seem archaic and not like new? And they'll tell me, they'll tell me all these types of reasons. And so in my head, I use that feedback to say, all right, I get this constant pattern of people saying, A, they want to use a product like I'm offering, but B, they haven't already. Because they— none of the offerings like appeal to them because they're not new and they want something that's a little— or because they're all old and they want something a little new looking. So anyway, what I'm constantly doing on these calls is I'm trying to get them to tell me if they do or do not have the problem that they're solve— that I'm trying to solve. And so the second thing that I then do is I try to close them. And when I close them, I kind of typically get them to sell me. And so typically what I'll do is Well, this product, if you used it, how much do you think it would help you? And oftentimes they'll tell me, well, it would help me by doing X, Y, and Z. And I'll say to myself, or I'll say to them, well, how much value would that bring to you? Like numerically, like what type of revenue, what type of time would it save you? Well, if I joined one of these things, it would save me this much money and this much time and it would help this, this, and this. And then at the end of the call I say, all right, well look, I'm offering this, I'm solving this problem. I have a product already. In the future, I'm going to charge blank. But right now, because you're early, I'm going to charge, you know, $500, which is like a fraction of what the cost is eventually going to be. If I, if I can make all this happen, are you in? You want to try it out? And by the way, I'll refund your money entirely if you're not interested. And oftentimes they'll say, yeah, I'm interested. And then I send them a link and typically I'm able to close like 80% of people. And so on these calls, the first half is I'm just discovery and I don't ever say, would you buy this? I don't say any of that. I'm just asking really broad open-ended questions to get them to describe if they do or do not have the problem that I'm solving for. If they don't have the problem, then sometimes I'll ask them why, and that will kind of indicate, yes, this is actually a problem we're solving or no, it's not. But if they do have the problem, then I get to I get them to tell me how they've tried to solve it in the past, what has worked and what hasn't, and why they aren't already using a solution that exists then. And then when they do that, they basically tell me the, the attributes that my, my solution should have in order to appeal a customer like this person. And then the second half of the call, over the last few minutes, sometimes I'll sell them and I try to get— I want to close the deal right there because if I can get them in, then I can get feedback quicker. And I don't ever ask, would you buy this? I just say, oh, well, you said you wanted this. I'm offering this. Do you want it? And if they balk at it, then I'm like, well, this isn't really that big of a problem. Like, this isn't— there's not that big of a need here. And so that's why I try to sell them. So anyway, that's how I do calls when I'm in the discovery phase of a business. I'll be on the call, different calls, literally 8 hours a day. And I think that's something that people do that's not right, which is they don't get on the phone with potential customers and they, they don't spend, they'll do like one call a week at most sometimes. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Pack my day. I'm literally back to back to back to back. And I usually have a script and I take notes and I use this stupid headset that has like, it looks like a gamer's headset and a microphone. And I'm walking, I go on walks while I'm, I'm doing this 'cause it helps me kind of stay focused and be loose. So anyway, all right, that's one question for today.