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Comment by cercatrova | Hacker News Reader

I get on the phone and call people even before building anything, especially with B2B products since their phone number is easier to find. Email works too but it's not immediate and it's easier for people to not reply than it is on the phone. I used a book called Talking to Humans (free) [1] that talks about how to validate ideas.

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

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If you aren't mentioning your idea or that you are working on something, what is the subject of the call? I think I'm not understanding how a cold call like this would work.

When you're validating an idea, you don't want to lead people on and get vacuous "yes"es, as in if I ask someone if they like my idea, they will most likely say yes, for one of three reasons:

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.

yes, the goal behind what you are trying to accomplish makes sense.

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.

I usually tell them that I'm doing research in the field and need first hand interviews, or something similar. If you can find a story or reason that is plausibly true about why you want to interview them, then that works as well.

But how do you get people to talk to you in the first place? How do you get potential customers to disclose their true problems? As an introvert I have ZERO clue about how to start the conversation, how to introduce myself, if I'm not telling them I'm working on something then what the hell do I say I am?

Where do you find the phone numbers?

Do you have a sample conversation you can share with us? Seems kind of weird to cold call and ask what their problems are?

For B2B, I use sites like http://www.findthecompany.com/. For consumer products, you need to find people who are in your target market and approach them. Questions can include something like what products (that are within my field of use) do you currently use, what do you like about them. what do you dislike, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you want to fix immediately, etc.

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.

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