You know roughly who your product is for.
Developers. Agencies. Small-business owners.
Ask where to find them and someone says LinkedIn. Someone else says Reddit. Now you have another platform to search. You still don't know who to approach.
A customer description gives you a group. The work those people are trying to finish can give you somewhere to look.
A question that led to a customer
In a Mixergy interview, Zapier co-founder Wade Foster explained how he found Andrew Warner, who became the company's first customer.
Foster was looking for people who needed help connecting software. He came across a question Warner had posted on Web Applications Stack Exchange:
"How can I auto-import contacts from PayPal into Highrise?"
PayPal had his customers' addresses. He wanted them in Highrise, his contact-management software.
A person. Two tools. A job he was struggling to finish. Foster had something concrete to follow.
By the time Foster got in touch, Warner no longer needed that particular integration. Their conversation uncovered a related need: moving email addresses from a Wufoo form into AWeber, his email-marketing tool.
The question helped Foster find him. The conversation established what he still needed.
What would you look for in your market?
Say you offer returns automation for small online stores.
Search for "small online-store owners" and you can collect plenty of profiles. Which one do you approach? Why that one?
Ask how stores handle returns today, and the search has somewhere to go.
- An operator may be discussing refunds in a support-tool community. That gives you a discussion to read and, where appropriate, contribute to.
- An order-management consultant may show the kinds of stores they serve. That helps you learn which businesses do this work and who already helps them.
- An industry event about returns may offer a way to meet practitioners.
You can explain why you're looking in each place. That's already better than trying another platform because the last one disappointed you.
A name still leaves questions
Of course, you have to check what you find. The discussion may be old. The group may be full of other sellers. The person doing the work may have no authority to buy.
Finding someone isn't permission to pitch. You can listen or contribute in a community without treating its member list as an invitation to send automated messages. A service provider isn't automatically a referral partner.
You've found a possible way in. Whether contact is welcome, and whether the person needs what you offer, still need checking.
Give yourself something to look for
Look at your customer description. If all it gives you is an industry or a job title, add a piece of work that person is trying to finish.
What do they use? Where do they ask for help? Who already works alongside them? Follow a connection that could lead to an actual person.
Sometimes the work leaves little public trace. An introduction, an industry association or an in-person event may be the sensible route. Finding that out beats another week of switching platforms without knowing why.
Your first customers may never gather in one room marked "your market."
Look at what they're trying to get done. The work can tell you where to look.
Top comments (1)
This matches what we've seen. Our earliest customers came from support threads where people described exactly what they were stuck on, not from any channel we picked on purpose. Searching for the task instead of the job title is a great reframe.