[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you get companies to talk to you abou...
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Ask HN: How do you get companies to talk to you about their
problems?
I do product development for a team that's creating solutions for
life sciences & pharmaceutical companies that work with real-world
data. This is a new industry vertical for us, so we don't have a
bunch of existing customers we can go interview to understand what
to build. It's already a reasonably crowded space, but the few
pharma teams we've talked to express frustration with the speed and
price of existing offerings. That said, I need much, much more
information from users of existing offerings in our space to be
able to form a product strategy that I have strong conviction in.
I was reading Airbyte's company handbook[1] the other day, and it
mentioned the co-founders did 45 discovery calls with customers
using existing ELT tools in 3 months! I would kill for that kind of
access to teams in our target market. _How did they do that?_ Is
that just the power of the YC network, or is there something I 'm
overlooking? My background is not in sales or BizDev, but I can
pick up that skillset (or hire for it) to get these calls. Should I
just start finding people in the pharma space, add them on
LinkedIn, and request an informational interview? Are healthcare
conferences good for getting these kinds of calls? Open to any
advice or guidance - thank you! [1]
https://handbook.airbyte.com/company/our-story (Fantastic doc, BTW)
Author : Centigonal
Score : 110 points
Date : 2023-03-02 19:35 UTC (1 days ago)
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Find a group of employees all around the same level, get them
| drunk, sit back and listen. Now the problem is reduced to the
| more general case of how to befriend strangers, idk, partner with
| someone gregarious and attractive
| gumby wrote:
| > This is a new industry vertical for us
|
| Words of experience: if you want any sort of business from a new
| vertical, hire some people (even one if you are tiny) from that
| vertical. These folks will have the vocabulary and the experience
| with the pain point and hopefully an adequate network so you can
| talk (with your new hires!) to some people who do or don't (also
| extremely important to talk wit) have actually experience the
| pain.
|
| Those first interviews form the root of a tree: if you sounds
| sensible and like you actually understand their pain, some of
| your interview subjects can refer you to others to talk with.
|
| If you try to go in cold with zero experience in the new
| vertical, even if you do talk to someone you won't really
| understand what they are talking about. You may understand the
| words they are saying (except for jargon you don't know) but you
| won't know what they are _really_ saying.
|
| For example "yeah, when we develop a new assay it's a pain
| getting our regulatory attorneys to sign off on it" but what they
| really mean is that the cost structure of checking with the
| regulator is absurd, or the regulators are nonfunctional due to
| congress, and so the real problem isn't something anything
| internal could fix. Or maybe all they mean is that the lawyers
| can't read LaTeX documents :-). While someone in the industry
| would already know how to parse the answer.
| helsontaveras18 wrote:
| What's your budget for this research?
| convolvatron wrote:
| the primary advice is to use your network. if you don't have one
| then that's a nigh-insurmountable headwind.
|
| look for architects and solutions people, or CTOS/CEOS of smaller
| companies. someone who isn't so far up that they don't understand
| the day to day trouble, but someone far enough up that its part
| of their job to think about strategy and keep track of what's
| going on in the market.
|
| market yourself. put up blogs, go to meetups, and hang around on
| technical forums. if you have a little bit of a rep that opens up
| a lot of doors. try to use these as opportunities to vet your
| value prop directly as well as building recognition.
|
| know your vertical. I know you said this isn't something you can
| do...but this is a major handicap. consider hiring specifically
| for this. this isn't just product design, but knowing who to talk
| to, knowing what the workflows and pain points are.
|
| work for people. I have the same issue as you, and am strongly
| considering taking up contracts with my potential customers to
| really get into it.
|
| don't believe any single person. people come up with all kind of
| weird shit. look for patterns.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Yes as you suggested you want expertise in sales. Sales is all
| about relationship building, meeting with clients, showing them
| what you have and discussing what their biggest pain points are.
|
| If you want expertise in this you want expertise in sales. I co-
| founded a company years ago with myself as the tech lead and my
| partner in sales. The sales was what actually drove the founding
| "Hey i speak to so many companies that need tech expertise in Y".
|
| What you're asking is the very basic element of the profession of
| sales and that's what you seek. Hire away!
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I work in a different vertical industry and I can tell the
| company perspective: they will die for pennies and ignore the
| value that comes from outside if someone important in the company
| will not benefit from it, one way or another. Regular people are
| not allowed to talk to external companies (you can get terminated
| for that) and the people that are in positions to talk are
| usually very political, very incompetent and very morally corrupt
| (sometimes fully corrupt, like taking paybacks or bribes). This
| is known by others, so external contacts are avoided in general
| and they try to build stuff inhouse instead, even if it is poor
| quality because they pay IT poorly so they don't attract and
| retain good people.
|
| I was a few times in VP level discussion with huge IT companies.
| Our VP was basically asking for impossible things that he was
| willing to pay for, otherwise "regular stuff" was just a matter
| of money, "for free if possible".
|
| I don't know how much it helps you, just telling why it is
| difficult to penetrate some of these companies and what is the
| thinking on the other side. Make a VP happy to bring in your
| solution - that is your chance. I am not telling to bribe anyone
| because I am completely against it, but be aware that some of
| your competitors will. It is a cutthroat world.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| I would recommend that you consider going to conferences, and
| listen and talk; don't be pushy on sales. You'll find
| conversations.
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| I used to sell hardware and software for all the brands like hp,
| cisco etc.
|
| I went from newbie to top performer within 3 months, this
| includes lead generation and closing the sales, depending on the
| campaign.
|
| First it depends if you are getting a request by them or if you
| are cold calling, both have pros and cons. Cold calling is great
| if youre selling networking devices, you can specifically target
| hotels, campuses and such.
|
| One thing, generally, do not even try with government entities
| they have long standing contract and crazy regulations, theres no
| decisionmaker there , unlike in private companies.
|
| Rule number one: You must get the head of IT on a call, email
| will not work, and nobody else, you do not need the cfo , cto or
| such, the it dept head is your target.
|
| You have to get to him via secretary or other workers, you need
| to find out their numbers, you need to be creative, pretending
| you know him already "whats his name again?", then save to your
| crm and next time you call and ask for him by name.
|
| If he has no time to speak, ask for a convenient time, they are
| chatty if you know your tech.
|
| Now, the head of it has time and you have him on the phone, its
| showtime!
|
| Do not pitch your stuff, let him speak. Find out his
| infrastructure, software and such, and the contract renewal
| times. Ask how frequently they replace servers, ask them if they
| are happy with the hypervisor ware etc.
|
| We all know that hard and software always has some issues and
| inconveniences, find their pain points.
|
| Then find out when they could consider a change, contractual
| obligations.
|
| Now you pitch your product, offer a free trial, convince them how
| good support will be.
|
| And then you ask them if theynare interested for more info and
| total cost of overship/implementation when the time comes.
|
| Mention to them that its always a good idea to present 2 or more
| proposals to the cfo(this means youre doing the work for them,
| theybappreciate that, believe me, they must justify to cfo).
|
| Price does not matter, support and reliability and ease of
| integration and use is all.
|
| And them schedule a call when the time comes, follow up with an
| email, dont bombard them with spam.
| ozfive wrote:
| I'd like to know this also!
| ilc wrote:
| Why not work WITH one or more of those companies?
|
| Partner with some firms, and you get the testimonials you need,
| and the expertise. At the "cost" of less profit upfront.
|
| What does partner mean? It could be as little as telling them
| they can give input into the new product so it meets their needs
| better, to some discounts. But I have seen this approach used
| from the other side of the table, and it CAN work. Just make sure
| you are ready to back your side.
|
| But I'm just an engineer. What do I know about marketing?
| mijail wrote:
| Discovery calls are the initial stage in a selling process. I am
| biased but "selling" to a customer provides a much more honest
| picture of the things they truly care about then a generic
| customer interview. Despite most folks aversion to sales, if you
| have a compelling story and can narrow in to a general area of
| pain (which you have already) most people are very willing to hop
| on a call and tell you exactly the things you need to know. Be
| sincere, open to their expertise but be willing to challenge and
| ask prodding questions. This helps test their conviction and set
| the weights of what will get them to influence internally to
| purchase - the true kpi of most products. You might feel goofy
| since they you don't have anything to truly sell yet. Rest
| assured, your buyers will be very willing to cooperate if you
| deliver and you will stand out from the crowded majority of those
| who don't.
| btown wrote:
| This is absolutely true in less regulated/IP-paranoid
| industries. I work with (a specific vertical of) small business
| owners who will talk your ear off about their problems, exactly
| as you said (though then there's the at least tractable problem
| of filtering through the noise!). But life sciences and
| pharma... your potential users' livelihoods and even freedom
| may be on the line if they say too much. You'll need to be seen
| as trusted, not just someone with a compelling story, no matter
| how compelling. Which means it's very hard to break in.
| throw_away1525 wrote:
| There are already some very good replies in this thread. This is
| also an absolutely fantastic question.
|
| The book New Sales: Simplified by Mike Weinberg is a decent intro
| to sales that you would probably get a lot out of. You can only
| learn sales by doing but this book will help you get your feet
| wet - there are a lot of absolutely awful sales books out there
| but this one is good. 45 calls in 3 months is very easily
| achievable, by the way, even just doing cold calls from LinkedIn.
|
| I'd like to add one thing. It's not a direct response to the
| questions you asked but I hope it can help you once you figure
| out how to start making calls. I used to sell engineering
| software to heavy industry customers. I found out very quickly
| that if you called a customer on the phone (or were on Google
| Meet or whatever) and asked "anything wrong? anything I can help
| with?" they would tell you "oh no, everything's great here!". Go
| visit them in person though, and ask for a tour of their plant,
| and all of the sudden they're pointing to all sorts of things
| saying "oh yeah, that new 10 million dollar unit they just put in
| won't start, we can't figure out why!" and guess what, the
| software we sold could help them figure out how to start it. I
| work remote now and I love it, but for sales? Nothing beats
| meeting in person.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm not with Airbyte, but in previous companies we interviewed
| customers, and asked them to refer us to other people they know
| -- "the crankiest, most opinionated, most unfiltered domain
| expert you can think of, please" was more or less how we phrased
| it, which often elicited a chuckle and an immediate recognition
| of who that person is in their life. Those are the best people to
| talk to -- opinionated experts with no reason to sugar coat it
| for you.
|
| If you don't have customers, you have to prime the pump. If you
| have a board of directors, or investors, ask them for referrals.
| If you have a mailing list or newsletter, that's a great place to
| look too. If you have people who attend conferences, that's
| another place.
|
| You can also just swallow your pride and "cold-call" (or email,
| or DM) people, asking if you can have a few minutes of their
| time. If you are polite and respectful, you get a surprising
| number of positive responses. If the call goes well, ask them to
| tell you who their favorite cranks are, and go from there.
| ericalexander0 wrote:
| Read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. First you'll have
| to learn to compel customers to talk with you, then it's all
| about becoming comfortable with rejection, and grinding out the
| numbers game.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Added to the reading list! I don't love it when media takes a
| Machiavellian approach to human interactions and that's the
| initial impression I got when I looked at the blurb for book,
| but I should and will give this a chance and absorb the content
| before passing judgement. I appreciate the recommendation,
| thank you!
| yamtaddle wrote:
| _Influence_ is presented as a kind defense-against-the-dark-
| arts, but can definitely be used in reverse to inform
| approaches to sales.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| If you don't have existing healthy networks, you're going to have
| to bootstrap your network. Have you brainstormed ideas about what
| value you can deliver to them in the conversation? Not promises
| of future products, but actual insight and ways of thinking about
| their problems that yield value to them.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| The shortcut is to bring in a sales person who's worked in that
| particular industry for a while. They'll have a network and
| already have had many many conversations on biggest pain points
| with customers.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Or just go work in the field for a while and actually build
| your network, gain experience, look for pain points amongst
| those in your field, and build a business that actually has a
| chance to solve problems affecting people
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| One rule you might want to add to your book: make sure you don't
| talk to developers, they never pay for anything.
| tomlue wrote:
| I think we're doing the same thing? Want to work together?
|
| Some documentation https://docs.biobricks.ai
|
| A LinkedIn post
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomluechtefeld_bioinformatics...
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Is that just the power of the YC network.
|
| I recently did this for a company because we got connected by one
| of their investors.
| brudgers wrote:
| You don't talk to companies about their problems.
|
| You talk to people about theirs.
|
| Decision makers if you want to solve problems people will pay to
| solve, even though these may not be the important problems.
|
| Spending too much money is not a good problem to try to solve.
|
| You want to solve problems where cost is not an issue.
|
| Good luck.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Go to tech meetups. Heck, host a tech meetup. Build those
| connections and work them.
|
| Put another way: Take advantage of the power of free beer.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Sounds like The Mom Test could be a good read (although targeted
| mainly toward start ups) and Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hansen
| for conducting user interviews.
|
| And yes, speak to everyone and always ask them for a referral to
| one (ideally two) other people if it went well with them.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I'm partway through _The Mom Test_ right now. I like the
| approach of starting with the problem space, not with "do you
| like my solution pretty please?"
|
| I think it's a really good resource for knowing how to talk to
| possible customers about their problems, but I haven't gotten
| much from it around how to get in the room with those
| customers.
| pier25 wrote:
| Domain knowledge is the most valuable knowledge. If you have it
| (or someone in your company) then you understand an industry, how
| it operates, its problems, its priorities, etc, and very probably
| you know people in it.
|
| Without it, it would be very difficult to start a successful
| business.
|
| It's like wanting to start a business to help restaurants without
| knowing anything about restaurants.
| braindead_in wrote:
| We're currently working on a Chatbot for PMs and have had roughly
| 30 discovery calls in the past month. As part of the Upekhha
| accelerator, we utilized the founder network there and also
| reached out to our alumni networks and past colleagues. It was a
| great chance to catch up with everyone! We're now planning on
| doing some cold email outreach to our target segment.
|
| I'm happy to talk to folks here as well. Please feel free to
| reach out to me here or via email (in my profile).
| chevman wrote:
| If you want to try to scale this beyond just yourself, you can
| also look at various 'market research' type agencies. Tons out
| there that will literally do customer/SME surveys/interviews for
| you.
|
| Everything from online, in person, video call, etc. They
| summarize all the findings and give you detail too if you want
| it.
|
| I think most of the outreach/lead gen happens via LinkedIn. I'm
| fairly knowledgeable in my industry vertical and get hit up by
| these companies literally every day - usually try to do 1 or 2
| live interviews a month. Generally they'll pay in the $800-$1200
| per hour range for this type of expertise.
| ary wrote:
| We had a similar problem in terms of engaging with our target
| audience. This might feel a little silly, and I was initially
| somewhat skeptical, but our investors pushed us to read and
| integrate "The Mom Test" into our thinking. It worked.
|
| https://www.momtestbook.com/
|
| You may think that the approach doesn't apply to your market,
| customers, ideal user, etc., but I assure you that it does.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It's a ton of extremely hard work figuring who you know that
| knows someone and so on, trying to get someone to intro you to
| someone else, failing most of the time, and so on. The nice thing
| is once you get the ball rolling a little bit, it seems to roll a
| little bit easier.
|
| Now, _another_ difficult thing is that if you are at a company as
| a product manager(etc), spending a couple months stalking people
| on linkedin, writing emails, taking fruitless calls etc, and
| making no discernable progress, it is unlikely to be tolerated by
| your manager, the CEO (if small company), dev team (if folks are
| already staffed etc). So, set expectations, figure a way to show
| work even if it 's not "progress", keep reminding people on a day
| to day basis, pull some people in for random calls and hit them
| up for folks in their network, and so on.
|
| Good luck. This problem (the org one) is the reason most products
| don't work. There isn't sufficient work done up front because
| it's messy work which doesn't yield progress in a predictable way
| so otherwise good product people write awful PRD's (or
| equivalent), they know they are awful, but they just aren't given
| the time to do all the work. On the flip side, if you have domain
| knowledge and experience in the target industry, you might well
| be able to write out a doc describing the exact right thing to
| build in about 3 hours.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I found the mom test a really helpful book for how to get that
| conversation and also how to have the conversation:
| https://www.momtestbook.com/. The TLDR is you do the best you can
| to outreach and get a cold convo, and if you do it the right way,
| the cold convo person becomes your lead into warm intros, and you
| never have to do cold outreach again.
| mindcrime wrote:
| One could write a book on this. In point of fact, there are a lot
| of books on this topic. I'd suggest you consult _The Four Steps
| to the Epiphany_ by Steve Blank, the series by Jeff Thull that
| begins with _Mastering The Complex Sale_ , and _The New Solution
| Selling_ by Keith Eades.
|
| As for some specific, tactical gambits you can use, here's one
| I've gotten some mileage out of: browse LinkedIn for people who
| _used to_ work for companies you want to find out more about.
| Cold contact them, explain that you 're researching $COMPANY and
| that you were hoping they could share some insights. I find that
| this is often better than contacting current employees, because
| the ex-employees don't get that defensive "guards up" thing from
| this kind of engagement, since you're not - by definition -
| trying to sell them anything.
|
| Then, armed with whatever information you glean from these calls
| (which ideally will include some suggested names of people to
| contact!) you can make contact with the target $COMPANY.
|
| Even better, if the call with the ex-employee goes really well,
| they may offer to (or be willing to, if prompted) actually make
| an introduction to somebody they are still in touch with at the
| target. This can go a long way towards greasing the wheels and
| getting an "in" there. It won't always happen, but it does
| sometimes IME. Or if they aren't willing to actually make an
| introduction, they may at least agree to let you name-drop their
| name, as in "Hey, Bob, I was talking to Susy who you used to work
| with, and she mentioned your name as somebody I should talk to
| about X..."
|
| Just don't do the "name drop" thing without _explicitly_ getting
| permission from the person in question first. Doing otherwise is
| unethical and if the person you ping happens to call their good
| friend Susy and she says "I did talk to that guy, but I
| certainly didn't give him permission to use my name" then you're
| going to find yourself persona non grata real quick.
|
| Anyway, if you read some of the books I mentioned above, one
| common theme you'll see revolves around doing a lot of research
| on your target companies before making contact. Doing that takes
| more effort, but it's also more likely to pay off, since people
| are more likely to respond to people they perceive as offering
| legitimate value as opposed to people sending blast spam.
|
| Note: but don't do the generic thing of trying to make it _sound_
| like you did your research without actually having done any!
| Think about how you feel when you get messages that start with
| something like "Hey, Centigonal, I've been researching
| Centigonal Inc and I love what you guys are doing in your space,
| and I think I could help you generate an extra 10,000 high
| quality leads every month..." Blah, blah, blah. To me, those
| things are 100% "auto delete on sight" since the person not only
| obviously didn't do any research, but on top of that they lied
| about it. Dishonesty is not the best way to initiate a
| relationship.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Thank you for this detailed response! I'll get started on those
| books. Steve Blank's _The Startup Owner 's Manual_ was actually
| already on my reading list - would you recommend _The Four
| Steps to the Epiphany_ over that one?
|
| I appreciate the idea on contacting ex-employees - will give
| that a try!
|
| The focus on research and honesty makes sense to me. Honestly,
| researching companies is one of my favorite parts of the job,
| so no issue there.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Steve Blank 's The Startup Owner's Manual was actually
| already on my reading list - would you recommend The Four
| Steps to the Epiphany over that one?_
|
| Not necessarily. In many ways TSOM is just the newer edition
| of TFSTTE. But not in _every_ way. There is some content that
| is unique to each. I usually tell people I 'd recommend
| reading both eventually, but I'm not sure the order matters.
| And the core essence of what he's saying stays the same in
| both books.
|
| If there's an easy way to summarize the difference, I'd say
| TFSTTE is oriented more specifically towards a model where
| your product is a "enterprise" B2B product and probably is
| going to be sold in a high-touch fashion. TSOM is more
| oriented towards Web based SaaS services and the like. So
| definitely related, but yet different books in the strict
| sense, IMO.
| epirogov wrote:
| Almost always, when I tell a manager the truth about what I see,
| he also answers me with some part of the truth about the company.
| But you have to be careful with this method, almost any manager
| is afraid that after realizing the truth, you still have to
| reconfigure yourself or do something about the unwitting witness.
| jacobjjacob wrote:
| Your comment feels like a valuable insight but I'm having
| trouble understanding the second sentence. Would you mind
| clarifying what you mean? Thanks!
| Werewolf255 wrote:
| Be careful with this method, lest you learn enough of the
| truth to be a threat to your manager or the company.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| If you have (or can get) budget for it, you could just hire a
| third party. By day I do B2B product and market research at an
| agency. This kind of research is bread and butter for lots of
| people at lots of agencies.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| My (possibly wrong) opinion is that the most inspired products
| come from people who actually work in the business process that
| you are trying to improve, somehow teamed up with inspired
| developers and application designers.
|
| Even this formula isn't enough without magic dust, to create
| something amazing.
|
| I'm a developer and also worked as a recruiter for many years,
| and over the source of that time wrote three complete recruiting
| systems purely to serve my own needs as a recruiter. It took
| three full rewrites over ten years until I really both understood
| the problem space properly and hit on the right software design
| that enabled me to really fly around in my recruiting job.
|
| Hard to imagine a team of people coming to me as a non-developer
| recruiter asking what my problems are and coming up with an
| inspired solution.
|
| But maybe an inspired solution isn't your goal - maybe you just
| want do what management says: "build something".
| phphphphp wrote:
| You don't go in cold, you go in warm. Building a product in an
| industry you aren't familiar with is very difficult and _even if_
| you can get companies to talk to you, you 're not going to be
| well positioned to truly understand what they're saying. You need
| to start with the relationships (either by developing them, or
| hiring people who already have these relationships). Pick any
| startup in your target industry and look at who they've hired:
| they'll be filled with industry stalwarts who provide the domain
| knowledge and relationships required to understand what's needed.
| If you want to sell into life sciences, time to hire some
| experienced VPs from your competitors.
|
| Airbyte isn't a great example for you because businesses using
| ELT tools are radically different to pharmaceutical companies:
| pharmaceutical companies are working in a very slow moving
| industry that requires a great deal of careful consideration. As
| people in technology, we get caught up in the belief that because
| we can build incredible masterpieces that we're owed the time and
| expertise of others that we need to realise these incredible
| masterpieces... We're not. You have to approach this from a much
| more humble position, you're going cap in hand, you're not a
| hero, you're begging for scraps.
| bitlad wrote:
| PS. It is airbyte the OP talks about
| phphphphp wrote:
| Muscle memory. Thank you, fixed.
| clarge1120 wrote:
| This is great advice.
| throwaway738272 wrote:
| This is great advice. I'd add that either you have a very
| strong network with people from the industry that want to work
| with you or you have a solid idea/hypothesis of how to solve
| problems that the industry have.
|
| Having the network without a solution to a problem doesn't
| work, because big companies have even more access. And everyone
| is trying to use interviews to try to find new ideas. The
| experts will just be bored because that's the nth person trying
| to interview them.
|
| But it'll it's also hard to break into an industry when you
| don't know anyone but have a great idea.
|
| It seems that you have access to people that you can discuss
| about problems. But you have to bring them and a few ideas how
| to deal with them while listening to their critics.
| peyton wrote:
| Hit up distributors. Pharma has kingmakers.
| milesward wrote:
| Find consultants, systems integrators, and other teams that
| support the customers you want already; and then make friends :)
| bitlad wrote:
| To be honest, if you have hard time companies to talk to you as
| an established org. You will have a hard time selling too.
|
| When you are creating something like this from scratch, then you
| have to do outbound just like a sales guys.
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