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Getting your first customers – simplified customer development

October 10, 2017 by Chad Blenkin

Getting Customers

Sometimes startups come to me with this problem: we have created this great service, how can we get our first customers.

Those startups quite often need to put a hold on product development and focus customer development.

What they don’t actually know is:
– are they addressing a real, existing problem or a burning need?
– does their service or product actually solve the problem?

Answering those questions with genuine insight from real people is what customer development is.

Here is how to do it.

Find 10 potential customers from the target group and understand if the problem you are solving is a big pain or they don’t really care.

For each customer understand where they stand:

  1. Did they have the problem?
  2. Did they know they have the problem?
  3. Did they look for a solution?
  4. Did they hack a solution?
  5. Did they pay for a solution?

Achtung! Don’t ask them those questions. Have a conversation – not an interview – about the problem you are trying to solve and understand how they are solving it today. At the end, categorize them into the buckets above.

Once this is clear, the question is, how do I find those 10 potential customers?
Be creative, try different methods. Whichever method works best can later become one of your marketing/communication channel. Drop the one that doesn’t work. If you can’t find those first 10 customers, how are going to find 100s of them?

If your product solves the problem, the people that you identified as paying for a solution (the last bucket) are your potential customers. You can start selling it to them.

Filed Under: Blog

About Chad Blenkin

Chad Blenkin is an entrepreneur, marketer, and founder. Chad has over 15 years of experience providing advice to businesses across Canada in the areas of strategy, product development, marketing (digital and traditional).

Chad holds a BCOM from Royal Roads University in Victoria British Columbia.

Currently Chad is the working at GrowthLogic a full-service digital marketing and consulting agency that he founded.

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Chad Blenkin

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