Fishing Good....Catching Bad

Tom Garland, Acuitive Area Vice President, continues with the second in his four-part series of guest Musings on Customer Market Validation.

The last guest musing, “Fish Where the Fish Are,” was all about getting ready to engage customers for market validation. We’ve all seen the smug bumper stickers “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work” or “God doesn’t subtract days from your life spent fishing.”  When driving behind these trucks I always wonder, “Are these people compensating for not catching fish or have they figured this thing out?”

Let’s talk about some best practices to make your fishing trip better.

·          Get up Early and Stay Late

The best fly-fishermen know the secret.  Based on insect activity, trout feed early in the morning and just before sunset.  When the sun is baking the water in the middle of the day, fish stay down and things get quiet.  Most IT professionals are difficult to schedule especially in the middle of the day.  So if you don’t want your IT candidate to show up 15 minutes late, have to leave early while his pager constantly sounds during your presentation, try and schedule calls at the beginning of the day or at the end. 

Be realistic and flexible about availability.  It seems these days that everyone wants an audience with the same security IT professional employed in either health care or financial services who is particularly susceptible to getting pulled away unexpectedly.

·          Be observant

Scout the river.  Look around as things change throughout the day. One particularly memorable day, I was fishing a hole on the Pit River in Northern California in knee deep water when, unbeknownst to me, the hydroelectric dam a few miles upstream started gradually releasing water.  I am a pretty focused fly-fisherman, and by the time I noticed what had happened, I was a football field away from shore in a strong current with water up to my armpits.  Not fun and I would not recommend it.

Early in the discussion it is key to get the customer talking.  Before you launch into your product presentation, take an audit of their environment and get context.  Ask them to describe their environment or attempt to draw a topology diagram of what you think their infrastructure looks like.  This is usually the ice breaker and important information will start to flow about their architecture, incumbent vendors and potential competitors.  Be aware that some security folks in IT may not volunteer too much info on their infrastructure.

·          Be honest

Let’s face it. After spending thousands of dollars on gear and disappearing for weeks at a time, there are probably more socially redeeming activities you could be doing other than fly-fishing.

Be proactive.  Take the offensive and address any potential landmines that are sure to come up.  Talk openly about design trade-offs that you faced or even limitations of the v1.0 release. Customers will respect you for it. I love when a company is proactively armed with the slide entitled “Competitive Avoidance Strategies” because it shows you are not afraid to bring up competitors.  You will almost always get some insight about would-be competitors that you didn’t have before and by proactively bringing it up you will not be playing defense.  Reflect on the notion if you did not exist.... “How would customers solve this problem?”  VCs cringe when an early stage company says “We have no competitors” and immediately process the words into “they have no market or they are totally naive.”

I have had a few client situations recently where there was a well known problem with a number of alternative competitive solutions attempting to address the problem grouped around very similar approaches.   However, these clients got a significant amount of mindshare from the customer because their solution was radically different than the clump of competitive solutions.  Maybe it’s the contrarians in all of us or it could be that the person you are speaking with has probably seen every vendor’s slide set and they start to blur together. A solution that stands out from the rest of the crowd creates kind of a macabre fascination with IT professionals to see if this start-up is either really right or terrible wrong compared to the rest of the bunch.

·                Match the Hatch

This is fly-fishing secret code for throw a fly that looks remotely like the bug you saw splattered on your truck’s windshield or flopping on the surface of the water being gulped by a steelhead.  If the match is close... a fish might just strike.

Be humble. “This is what we think your problem is today but we are not sure.  What do you think?” Get the customer talking early.  Even if you are slightly off target, their corrective response or criticism is invaluable information for the next meeting.

Really listen to and concentrate on their responses.  I continue to be amazed how often companies don’t hear what is being said to them.  In addition to listening to the spoken word, observe the body language and listen to what is NOT being said.  When you see someone fold their arms and you hear, “Wow, you must be really smart because I understood 10% of what you just said.  I am not sure we are a worthy customer... but Boeing would probably love this.”  This is a kiss off.

Some IT folks can be direct and others are experts in conflict avoidance. The latter group would rather avoid the debate with you and attempt to deflect you someplace else on a wild goose chase.  Make sure you have your filter tuned to know the difference.  Some entrepreneurs have an amazing gift to buffer only good comments and filter constructive criticism.  Often Acuitive’s role is to make sure everyone hears what is being said without reality distortion.  Aggressively documenting these meetings is a good way to prevent this from occurring.

·                       Make a Good Presentation

In customer visits, like fly-fishing, the presentation counts. Have your most articulate team member give the presentation.  This does not mean your CTO has his mouth taped.  A general rule of thumb...spend 50% of your time talking and 50% of your time listening and probing.  I have seen many meetings where companies, obviously proud of their technology, spend 90% of their allotted meeting time on technical minutia and leave little or no time remaining to understand the customer’s problem or get feedback.  Technically drill down in follow on meetings if you earn the right to have another meeting.

The same thing goes for VC presentations.  Keep it short and avoid bringing out the schematics for your product.  VCs want to know how you are going to make them money and the sooner you get to this in your presentation the better.

·                       The Hit!

It’s a beautiful thing...the right fly, the right cast and a beautiful fish arcs out of the water and strikes!  Some customer meetings just go like that... right place at the right time with the right product and a customer actively seeking a solution to their pain.

When a customer says, “Where have you been? Finally!”...it doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it is a beautiful thing.  It is one of the reasons I love my job!

Please don’t forget to probe about pricing. Recently, a client had a beautiful strike from an SVP of IT from a large, well respected Wall Street firm.  However, due to the scale of the customer, it broke the company’s shiny new pricing model.  The company is still playing the fish as we speak.

·                Catch and Release

Most non-fisherman will question the sanity of someone who goes through all the effort and frustration to catch a fish and then let it go. For me, success is not defined as the catch ending up on my dinner plate but as a quick photo for memories and gently returning the fish to the stream in hopes of catching it again.

If a meeting does not go well because it’s clear that there is not a problem or a good match, let the customer off the hook and do not subject them to endless power point about a solution to a problem they don’t have.

Customer validation is the beginning of a long term relationship. When the meeting does goes well, I always like to verbally summarize what I have just heard.  Partially it is to make sure I did not have my rose colored polarized glasses on, but also to allow the customer and our client to internalize what we have discussed.  It is important to establish next steps if there are any.  If you are looking for a VC reference, you may want to have additional discussions so the customer is comfortable when the VC calls and puts the customer on the spot by asking, “So, would you buy it?”  I even like to give my VC customer reference a review “cheat sheet” email of all of the wonderful things they said in our meeting. If you want validation for your product requirements document (PRD), don’t hesitate to get on a plane.  Make sure the right players will be in the room to get representative feedback.

Often, when a validation meeting goes well, a customer will proactively ask to get on the beta program. Make sure they have a lab for testing and are willing to devote the resources to get the most out of it.  More often than I ever think is possible, great validation meetings lead to unsolicited requests for betas.  If the product does as promised...early revenue will often be the result.  Little or no selling required.

·          Watch out for Worm Dunkers

Occasionally you are fishing a productive spot, and for whatever reason, there is another person (likely a local worm dunker) who is not very happy to see you.

Recognize this in the meeting.  Often the person who is in the meeting may be responsible for creating the problem in the first place or may have just purchased the competitive solution you just railed against and their boss is in the meeting. There is not a whole lot you can do here, and it’s key to get a sense of whether  the person is just an influencer or a decision maker.  If you were trying to sell this person something, it may be cause for lengthy debate, but since you are not (at the present moment) avoid the debate and try to make sure they don’t pollute the discussion and negate feedback from others.

Acuitive has recently started doing videotaped, small IT focus groups with about a dozen participants around specific topics of interest to clients.  It is very interesting to see the group dynamic when you get individuals with similar titles and backgrounds, but from different companies, in a room together.  Focus groups are a great opportunity to conduct blind tests on different potential positioning concepts and evaluate perceptions about internal and competitive solutions.

The third  guest musing in the customer validation series, entitled “All Fishermen are Liars Except for Me and You and Honestly I’m not so Sure About You,” will discuss what insights can be gained post engagement.

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Tom Garland joined Acuitive in January 2001. His market, customer and channel validation practice has helped match dozens of Acuitive companies to his contacts with Fortune 1000 IT professionals in search of....  the elusive customer.   To contact Acuitive directly regarding its Market Validation Practice, email validation@acuitive.com.