The main way to do so is to listen to the potential customer and not even mention your idea or that you are working on something. You must first understand their true problems, not your idea of what their problems might be, which many technical people especially do and rush into building a product that people may not even want. Ask them about their problems in their daily life and if you keep hearing the same thing over and over and it aligns with your idea, then build the product. Even if it doesn't, a repeatedly mentioned problem is still one that could have a good solution.
[1] www.talkingtohumans.com
Do you have a sample conversation you can share with us? Seems kind of weird to cold call and ask what their problems are?
This is not a sales call, just ask for 20 minutes of their time saying you want to interview people in the field of use, and most people will give it to you. You can always have more interviews later so don't worry that 20 minutes is too short. Interestingly enough, people will be more motivated to keep doing interviews because it's like "someone is listening to their problems for once!" Then you can slowly start to sell the product, as you build it along. It is the common loop of build -> test -> repeat. The testing portion is not just unit tests and other technical tests, it is also the human tests on the other side, because what's the point of building if no one is using it? There is more info in the above cited book, it really changed how i think about customer discovery and sales.
1) they want to appease me, especially if they're family or friends 2) they like the idea in their minds but that may not be exactly what you have in mind 3) their idea is the same as in your mind, but they don't have the propensity to buy.
You want to listen to what their true needs are instead of shoehorning your product into their problem. You want to build the product from the ground up so to speak. Sometimes, you guess their needs completely right and your product is exactly what they're looking for. However, this is extremely rare because the odds that ex nihilo you got something that fits their needs exactly is 1/infinity. This does not mean that you cannot tweak your existing product to fit their needs, but it is simply better for both you (no prior sunk cost) and the customer (can get something that actually solves their problems) in the long term.
I think I'm still not understanding how you are making a cold call, over the phone, to a complete stranger, and somehow getting them to start talking about problems they may have without there being a purpose (from their point of view) to why they're talking to you in the first place.
First, pick the target audience you are either part of, or familiar with. In my case, I chose new and aspiring managers.
Second, learn about their pains. Talk to them, see what they discuss on Reddit, Quora, and wherever else they gather. In my case, I see questions about communicating and dealing with difficult people and dealing with various corporate processes.
Third, figure out what they pay for. Some groups buy books. Some pay for SaaS. Some prefer webinars, screencasts or courses. The options are endless, but the focus should be on what the customers already buy, not what we can easily make. In my case, new managers often buy books.
Four, pick one pain and fix it. Now you don't really need validation in the conventional sense of the word because now you _know_ what the people want and you _know_ what they pay for. I picked the communication challenges new managers face because I have studied this topic extensively before.
Five, implement. In my case, I started writing a book, even though I have never written a book before. But I know there are people I can help, so there is a chance that I actually will. My progress so far (shameless plug, accept my apology and please remove it if you consider it inappropriate) https://www.thenewrole.com/
This process is a somewhat simplified version of what a marketing expert Amy Hoy talks about. I suggest you check her website https://stackingthebricks.com/ if you are considering starting a side business.
Hope this is useful! :-)
Some people make money with "talking" to people and want to be paid for answering any questions,even if you want to help them.
Some people are rather protective of their knowledge, too.
When I first made it public I submitted it to ProductHunt and tweeted at marketing folks, with large follower numbers on Twitter, to please try it and help promote it. There was traction but not nearly as much as fast as I had hoped. In fact, just the other day I created an Indiegogo campaign to gauge the interest in paying for the service. At this time, there are 3 contributors for $12 each. Without a big surge it obviously doesn't seem poised to stay alive... for the public. However, like I said, I'll continue to use the service privately, freely. So, it's validated and minimally viable for myself; unfortunately not for the public.
Let's say I'm doing some kind of SaaS for accountants. I would meet with dozens of accounts with a sales pitch for "x software". This will quickly help you figure out if what you're planning on building is actually valuable.
Anybody that takes you up on the sale gets to be an early tester.
So I'll implement a quick version of the idea that gets the point across to others and roll it out to generate feedback. People will likely utilize it in ways you didn't expect or point out flaws in concept or execution- this is good because even if it doesn't validate your idea it could point you towards developing something else.
This works for smaller features within a project as well. Just roll out a rough cut of it, get feedback, and refine. The product I'm working on (https://www.jqbx.fm) has a live chat feature so it's easy for me to roll out a feature to a subsection of users and ask them about it directly. But even if it's as basic as sitting behind someone at your laptop it's almost always worth your time.
I liked to tell as many different people about my ideas and get their feedback for if it is dumb or not. In that list of people will at least be a couple who would be in the intended audience.
If the idea is at least positively received, I might make an MVP if it is easy enough, if it isn't, I'll probably abandon it.
If the MVP is stable enough, I'll probably point Facebook or Google Ads at it to drive traffic.
If any traction is gained, I look at the numbers to see if it is worth it to finish building it, or just leave it as it is running.
I'm not sure if the Google/Facebook Ads are still a good traffic driver, but they used to be.
I happen to hate searching for such answers, and end up creating MVPs only to realize not enough people want to use it. But I think even before MVP, one must pursue getting some early adopters excited to try it (even if it is for free). For my next project I plan to be thorough (hopefully).
You can get sucked into to creating a product that your customers love, but which can only be sold at a loss once the cost of acquiring the customer is taken into account. After making something that nobody wants (to pay for anyway), this is probably the biggest mistake made by entrepreneurs.
https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/your-ideas-dont-suck-your-fe...
Step 2: Talk to at least 10 potential customers to assess the idea. Make sure most are people who don't feel obligated to be nice to you.
* Google Adwords Keyword search tool
These two help in calculating demand of a service or product.
* If you've got contacts, Random Sampled Survey