Sell More Faster

Chapter 2Finding Your First Customers

Figure 2.1 Find Your First Customers

Over 20 years of taking new technology to market and working across startups, like Bazaarvoice and Convey, focused on acquiring customers across many different markets, the simple axiom of “know thy customer” rings truer to me now more than ever.

I have been on both sides of this, having a lot of early customer acquisition success with early adopters and then scaling to the next wave of customers too early. Without doing the really hard, roll your sleeves up, work of asking the fundamental questions about the customer's struggle, why it matters and what business pain it is attached to, it is nearly impossible to calculate meaningful ROI that they are willing to pay for.

I believe what drives us to want to move fast and to shortcut this critical process is #1 the fear that our window of opportunity to be first will collapse and competitors will move in quickly, and #2 that somehow simplifying the proposition too much and narrowing too far will diminish the value of the offering.

Real immersion in your customer's struggle is the key. At this vital step in the journey your early adopters are willing to engage in helping you to articulate and clearly define a pain, challenge, or opportunity (PCO) that is not widely known or recognized. They believe that solving the problem will translate to out-sized results ...