The Absence of “Yes” Over Time Equals “No”
Last week I spoke with a startup founder who was struggling with one of the most common problems faced by early stage companies.
None of his sales leads were actively saying “Yes” to him.
This founder created a product for the financial sector, and he had been pitching it to banks. He came to our Product Office Hours asking for advice on how to manage the interminable sales cycle of big enterprises. While he was getting meetings, his audience at these meetings kept telling him that they would have to meet with others before making any decisions.
Despite multiple follow-ups, those secondary meetings kept getting pushed out month after month. He was not getting a “Yes,” or even anything concrete.
Maybe you’ve been in that situation before. It’s a refrain I’ve heard many times, often in reference to investors, and landing those first big customers for entrepreneurs.
So I offered my friend a maxim that I’d heard years ago when talking about angel investors: The absence of “Yes” over time equals “No.”
The ugly truth here was either no one understood the value of what he was selling, or no one believed in the story, and they didn’t have the heart to say no.
When you’re faced with this situation the question becomes: How do you get to Yes?
It turns out that the processes of making products and selling products have a lot in common. The best salespeople have a deep understanding of their customer’s problems and goals, and they know how their product relates to those problems and goals. They offer a clear value proposition that has been tested and refined with multiple customers.
As entrepreneurs, it’s our responsibility to have that deep understanding of our customers’ problems. It’s what will help us craft a product (not just a sales pitch) that has a clear and resounding value proposition for those customers.
From here, the selling is easy, because we’ve already done the hard work of making a desirable product.
This crafting and refining of our product’s value proposition — what your product is and why it is meaningful to a customer — is called Customer Development, and it bears striking similarities to good UX research.
The most important part is listening. Don’t let your own smarts get in the way of listening.
The founder, in this case, was a subject matter expert in banking. He was confident that he knew the problem and excited about his product vision. He had had several sales meetings to pitch the product, but he had never had a meeting with bankers to learn more about the problem he was trying to solve. His own knowledge, instead of informing the direction of his research, was getting in the way of listening.
When I described the process of generative user interviewing to him he kept going back to “So I’ll show them my product and get their reaction.” No! Don’t show them your product at all!
Ask them about their problems first.
The only way to get to “Yes,” is to offer your customers something that makes them want to say Yes!” And the only way to do that is by gaining a deep understanding of their needs and goals, and their existing behaviors in the problem space: that is, (surprise, surprise) Customer Development.
No ideas are too precious to change if they’re not what the customer will respond to. Do the right thing. You won’t regret it.
If you have any comments or similar stories, I’d love to hear them!
There are lots of resources available on Customer Development and UX research. My favorites are “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development” by Patrick Vlaskovits and Brant Cooper, “Just Enough Research” by Erika Hall, and “Lean Customer Development” by Cindy Alvarez.
You can also sign up for a 1 hour conversation with Pivotal Labs Product Managers and Designers at most of our offices around the world.
Change is the only constant, so individuals, institutions, and businesses must be Built to Adapt. At Pivotal, we believe change should be expected, embraced and incorporated continuously through development and innovation, because good software is never finished.
