One Question Friday: What Questions Do You Ask Your Customers When Starting A Business?

hey this is ash my question is for sam regarding customer discovery i saw on a recent webinar that your calendar was booked with dozens of calls each day with potential customers for your new product i'd like to know what kind of questions you ask in those meetings and how you use their feedback to influence the business plan and product for your new business thanks alright so the question was basically the guy i did a like a little small talk or like a private group and i showed my calendar about how basically on tuesdays and thursdays and whatever like i'll i'll do like ten to maybe ten or thirteen like ten to twenty minute calls with customers and they asked what questions do i ask and so i do a few things the first thing is is if you haven't read it there's this book called the mom test and it talks about like how to ask good questions but i'm not asking questions that a lot of people ask like would you pay for this i don't ask that i don't ask like would you use this i never asked that stuff so in my case or all the time not just in my case but in this particular case of this business i'm starting but in all cases i'm not even asking them if they want the solution that i'm saying is the solution to the problem what i'm looking for is i'm trying to get confirmation of does this person have my problem the the problem that i'm trying to solve and then i'm trying to figure out well if they don't have the problem are they even the target market that i'm going after and who like what type of like type of person demographic psycho demographic what type of person consistently do i notice has this problem and so i'll give you some example questions i can find this client in full have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data from every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets are doing databases hubspot grow better i don't wanna talk too much about the business that i'm starting because i'm not ready to like reveal it yet but it is working really well and we've done a lot we've done a lot in revenue in a very short amount of time all from these calls but i'll basically so i'm gonna set use i'm just gonna like use some vague language so sorry about that but that's what i'm gonna do so i'll say alright have you ever tried to use blank before oh you haven't but you've wanted to well why haven't to you and they'll tell me answers is like well you know just like no good one has ever presented itself or the brands that currently saw this it seem a little old to me they seem a little old school and i'll say tell me about that why do you think that they seem old school to you why do you think they seem archaic and not like new and and and and they'll tell me they'll tell me all these types of reasons and so in my head i use that feedback to say alright i get this constant pattern of people saying a they want to use a product like i'm offering but b they haven't already because they none of the offerings like appeal to them because they're not new and they want something that's a little or because they're all old and they want something a little new looking so anyway what i'm constantly doing on these calls is i'm trying to get them to tell me if they do or do not have the problem that they're solved that i'm trying to solve and so the second thing that i then do is i try to close them and when i close them i kinda typically get them to sell me and so typically what i'll do is well this product if you used it i how much do you think it would help you and oftentimes they'll tell me while it would help me by doing x y and z and i'll say to myself or i'll say to them well how much value would that bring to you like numerically like what type of revenue what type of time would it save you well if i joined one of these things it would save me this much money and this much time and it would help this this and this and then at the end of the call i say alright well look i'm offering this i'm i'm solving this problem i have a product already in the future i'm gonna charge blank but right now because you're early i'm gonna charge you know five hundred dollars which is like a fraction of what the cost is eventually gonna be if i if i can make all this happen are you in you wanna try it out and by the way i'll refund your money entirely if you're not interested and oftentimes you'll say yeah i'm interested and then i send them a link and typically i'm able to close like eighty percent of people and so on these calls the first half is i'm just discovery and i don't ever say would you buy this i don't say any of that i'm just asking really broad open ended questions to get them to describe if they do or do not have the problem that i'm solving for if they don't have the problem then sometimes i'll ask them why and that will kinda indicate yes this is actually a problem we're solving or no it's not but if they do have the problem then i get to tell them i get them to tell me how they've tried to solve it in the past what has worked and what hasn't and why they aren't already using a solution that exist then and then when they do that they basically tell me the the attributes that my my solution should have in order to appeal a customer like this person and then the second half of the call over the last few minutes sometimes i'll sell them and i i try to get i i wanna close the deal right there because if i can get them in then i can get feedback quicker and i don't ever ask would you buy this i just say oh well you said you wanted this i'm offering this do you want it and if they bulk at it then i'm like well this isn't really that big of a problem like this isn't there's not that big of a need here and so that's why i try to sell them so anyway that's how i do calls when i'm in the discovery phase of a business i'll be on the call different calls literally eight hours a day and i think that's something that people do that's not right which is they don't get on the phone with potential customers and they they don't spend we'll do like one call week at most sometimes and i'm like no no no pack my day literally back to back to back to back and i usually have a script and i take notes and i use a stupid headset that has like it looks like gamer headset in a microphone and i'm walking i go and walks while i'm i'm doing this because it helps me kind of stay focused and be loose so anyway alright that's one question try it