Cold Call to Co-creation.
The most important resource you have when building a product is the participation of people you’re building for. When you start a project removed from those people, you will find yourself developing relationships from scratch. On average, you’ll need to reach out to 50 different people in order to gain enough insight to answer one question. To get to a point where you can start co-creating, you’ll need to cold-call/cold-email hundreds of people. For those of us running small businesses, it’s important to do this efficiently. Here are the steps we take: Identify, Select, Engage and Re-engage.
To get to a point where you can start co-creating, you’ll need to cold-call/cold-email hundreds of people.
Identify
Have a specific person in mind who you think would like to help you get through a particular challenge/question. No doubt, you have several questions and want to engage with a bunch of different people, but focus on one type of person and one challenge/question at a time. The more specific you can get, the easier it will be to select people and to introduce them to your work. You’ll know your person-type is narrow enough when you can imagine sending 50 people of that type the same email asking them to speak/work with you (example below).
Select
You can find people in public, work with recruiters online, or use consumer research firms, but this article is about DIY cold-calling/emailing. When efficient, this is an economical and valuable way to connect with people and start building relationships that will lead to co-creation.
The internet is full of public contact information for people who want to help you. If you’re creating a tool for neuroscientists, you can find 50 emails in a related member directory. If you’re creating a tool for gamma-knife surgeons, you can find people who advise related professional associations. If you’re looking for people who like Postmates, you can find Alexis on Twitter. Most of the time, you’ll get pretty far with an online search of “<persona> lists” or “I <feeling> <analogous product>”.
The internet is full of public contact information for people who want to help you.
Once you find the information, you can use automation tools to help collect it in a uniform way. This bookmarklet converts HTML tables to csvs (which will help with mail merge in the next step). If you’re having to click through 200 links to get to the phone/email, consider paying FancyHands to do it. If you have some coding skills, use Nokogiri for pulling information out of HTML when it’s not in table format.
Engage
Once you have contact information for 50 people, it’s time to prepare what you’ll say. As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of people out there who want to help you. There will also be people who cannot help. When you reach out to people, here are some things to keep in mind to ensure positive feedback:
- Only send email to people who you think may be interested in helping you
- Tell them how you found their contact information (link to site where it is public)
- Explain what you’re doing at a high-level and why you want their insight
- Describe how an analogous conversation helped you
- Provide an example of a question you will ask them
- Give a specific but not tight timeline when you can receive their input
- Don’t offer money or any promised pay-off
Below is an example email template that I sent to 50 HERS raters using Mixmax’s mail merge.
Hi {{first_name}}-
I’m an engineer at Citizen Code. We’re working on a couple of side projects geared toward helping to mitigate climate change. Right now we’re in the middle of a research phase on an energy efficiency product, and I’m interested in speaking with raters in the North East who use some form of HERS software.
I came across your email in a bit of a roundabout way today. I follow NEEP on twitter, got this tweet, and then wound up on http://www.nehers.org/ and then saw your information. I’m guessing that you’d have valuable insights on the project I’m working on. I spoke with a few other raters last week and their input was extremely valuable. If you’re interested in helping me, I’d like to ask you a few questions — about 20 minutes on the phone. Simple questions like: what’s the hardest part of your work etc. Let me know if you’d be willing to help in the next couple of weeks.
Thanks very much-
12 hours after sending this email, I had completed two interviews and had six more scheduled. I had also received one un-prompted referral to another HERS rater to interview. At the two week point, I had completed five interviews. In this case, there were no major changes after 12 hours and our ratio of 50 emails to answering one question checked out.
Re-engage
Earnestly reaching out, listening, and wanting to work with people as you create is an amazing start. That said, there will still be a lot of relationship building that needs to happen before you can truly engage in co-creation. Do the best you can to make the initial interview inspiring. Be thoughtful about your questions, and put your interviewees/co-creators in a position where they want to stay in touch. When the interview is coming to a close, if they seem interested in what you’re doing, point them to your social media or a place where they can find updates on your project. Then — actually post updates! You can also create mailing lists for different projects or create meetups for people to get together. The take away here is to continually look for and provide ways for people to join you as you create.
Given what we see, you can go from cold-call to co-creation in a matter of weeks with one dedicated person and the help of the Internet. Identify with precision, Select efficiently, Engage empathetically and Re-engage religiously.
Need help building a network of co-creators from scratch? Tell us what you’re working on — contact@citizencode.io.
