A short story about the difference between belief and experience to encourage developers to get out of their comfy chairs and go and talk to your customers.
At Lean Startup Circle Sydney, a number of the people were concerned about having to go talk to customers as a part of Customer Discover and Customer Development.
“Can we use a buddy system where someone else goes out and does that and we focus on what we do best?”, one asked the group.
“Yes you can,” I replied, “but you can’t be the founder/CEO/Driver of the business, and you make life much much harder.”
It is very difficult to build a product that customers care about, love, value and desire without talking to customers. You need to understand them, listen to them and care for them.
And I don’t mean emails, feedback tools or twitter. I mean face-to-face. Yep, actually looking them in the eye and talking to them.
Not negotiable.
Why do I have a strong feeling about this? Because you need to see how they feel, how they react, delve into the problem, understand how important it really is, know how it would fit into and change their life.
Yes, for an introverted, shy, sleep by day and code by night developer, this is tough. But if you are starting a startup you’re not just a developer anymore. You’re an entrepreneur. And the best entrepreneurs are the best sales people in their company. They have to be.
You have to sell to;
- Yourself to quit your job, mortgage your house, mortgage your mother’s house and pursue this with vigour for ten years.
- Your family who have to put up with living in a caravan and going without until you change the world.
- Your team members so they turn up each day with electricity beaming from their eyes and shooting from their fingertips.
- Your suppliers who you won’t pay for the first 2 years in lieu of ‘future massive returns’.
- Your first customer before you’ve even got a product and the first 1,000 customers after that.
- Your salesteam who will very rarely out perform you, and certainly not until you’ve shown them.
Don’t think it’s a dirty thing to do. It’s not used car sales. You’re solving someone’s massive problem. It’s a good thing.
Here’s a quick story that my friend Ben Hamilton told me long ago to illustrate it.
Many years ago a man dared to walk tightrope on a wire across Niagara Falls. It was high, wet, windy and dangerous. A lot of people doubted and one journalist particularly. The journo said ” I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you can do it.”
The tightrope walker did it. Walked across the wire.
Everyone said wow, except the journo. “That must have been luck. I still don’t believe it.”
So the tightrope walker grabbed a chair, and asked his assistant to climb up and sit in the chair as he held it above his head. Then, with one hand holding up the chair, he walked all the way across the wire again.
This time everyone was aghast. They all thought it was amazing.
The journo walked up to the tightrope walker and said, “…. OK, I believe. I do. I really, really believe in you.”
“You really, really believe in me?” asked the tightrope worker.
“Yes, absolutely,” replied the journo.
The tightrope walker smiled, and pointed “Then get in the chair.”
Being an entrepreneur is a participation sport.
Get in the chair.
Can you put me down off this chair now? 🙂
This is so true! Getting out of our comfort zone as developers, confronting human beings, having real conversations about usage of our products, is the only way to really engage and the payoff is enormous (not just in terms of success but for oneself, as a personal payoff, talking to real people using what we have created). Very well put!
The leaders of a startup – those that set the focus and direction – need to be there during the act of selling value to a customer. Its in that unspoken look of confusion|boredom|greed|exhilaration in their eyes that we understand what needs to be done. So, as a developer (who loves to sell), I agree with you @liubinskas. 🙂
Startup founders who are developers must be sales people too.
Outstanding post. I’d like to suggest that there is another benefit of getting developer/founders out in front of customers and prospects which is a strong understanding of the commercial realities of their technology. Getting a grasp of the commercial drivers of a software product, website, online application or whatever the ‘product’ is is vital to success. I suspect that most techies are initially motivated by good design and architecture, by finding the most elegant technical solution or construct all of which are admirable qualities. However for business success, an understanding of the commercial realities of their business and how the business plan funds the ongoing development and evolution of the product is critical to get a handle on as early as possible.
All the observations you make of what happens when we sit in front of prospects and customers will help to speed up this learning.