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Ask HN: How to ask companies about problems they are facing?

145 points by prats226 ↗ HN
I have a hypothesis about broad problems companies are facing which I am planning to solve. In order to validate it, I need to ask many companies about if they are facing similar problems and if they are willing to discuss it. I have already reached out to my network and got responses. Apart from that, I am mostly cold emailing companies hiring for positions to solve these problems but haven't got significant responses to cold emails. What would be good way to ask about it?

39 comments

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payne92
I think it depends a lot on the kind of problem(s) you are imagining solving. Saving money? Talk to the CFO. Making money? CEO, VP/sales, etc.
OJFord
It's a very HN view of "companies" that one can simply "Talk to the CFO ... CEO, VP/sales, etc.".
HeyLaughingBoy
Or the view of a highly motivated person. Take your pick.
tow21
On the other hand, if you're not in a position to go and talk to decision makers about your product, it's worth asking whether you're the right person to be building that product.
prats226
I agree to some extent that if problem itself is not noteworthy for them, it is good problem to solve for them? However in many cases people who are going to benefit directly are different from decision makers. So would it be better to talk to people who's life is going to get easier first and then ask them to redirect to decision maker?
onion2k
With good reason - those people are accessible if you go about things the right way. In this particular case I don't you'd get very far because "What problems do you have?" is far too open a question. If you ask something specific and you make it straightforward to reply then you'll often get something back.
prats226
Would they be willing to spare their precious time to talk for some time? They might not be directly aware of gravity of problem if people who face it directly are engineers, PM's. In that case, would it be wise to ask them to point to correct person to talk to?
edoceo
In this case start with the employee who sees the issue daily. If it's a real pain and your solution is good it will move up the chain of command
prats226
Problems related to data science mostly. Developers, Product Managers, Marketing departments are going to benefit from this. What do you suggest should I talk to people who are decision makers or someone who is going to benefit from it directly?
arisAlexis
Could you explain problems related to data science?
fab1an
First off, you can't talk 'to a company', but will need a specific idea on who's the person / function you want to get feedback from. Companies aren't people ;)

Cold email / LinkedIn should actually work fairly well for this. If it doesn't, your approach might not be specific enough, the person you're targeting might not be the right person OR your problem hypothesis is flawed.

Re: general approach, I've seen great response rates with a template like this one below.

Hi <NAME>

It looks like you’re an expert on <SPECIFIC FIELD YOU’RE SOLVING A PROBLEM FOR> - I would love to get your opinion on something I’ve been working on.

<ONE SENTENCE TEASER>

I’m not looking to sell anything at this point, but would love to understand if something like this would actually help you with your job. I don’t want to build the wrong thing!

Would you be willing to hop on a brief call with me sometime in the next week? This would only take a few minutes and if we’re onto something, you’d be the first to know about it.

Best, X

prats226
Well we are thinking of some specific problems related to data science. Developers, Product managers, marketing folks would benefit immensely from this and naturally all of them could give feedback from their own perspectives. Decision makers might be VP, Founders. Currently I am writing to founders of startups.

This email looks great. Will try it out and tweak based on who I am getting feedback from. Thanks !!

tyre
Don't sell to someone who doesn't feel the pain. If the developers feel the pain but a VP has to be on board, get the developer to be a fanatical user of yours then advocate on your behalf. They'll have more sway than you.

See: Github, Slack

prats226
Well little hard in my case since service I am offering, developer himself cant approve to use it (as it involves company data). Agree about enterprise-consumer approach for products like github, slack. We might think of some variation of this approach after we validate problem. Thanks!
shubhamjain
The problem here is that among the multitude of emails / requests a working professional goes through everyday, you might often just end up being noise. Cold emails are usually ignored when there is no context to the request; the attention span given might be only a few seconds and frankly, only a little thought would go into your "valuable" proposition — there are too many of them that land in the inbox everyday and not to forget, a "brief call", unlike a small response, is a good commitment to ask.

Of course, the success rate won't be zero and you are bound to get your foot into the door in some companies but set expectation should be of getting a cold shoulder many many times.

The success rate, however, can be tweaked by —

a) Being a bit influential (like, having many Twitter followers or a somewhat famous blog)

b) Establishing a context. (hey, I read your piece about the SPECIFIC PROBLEM and that's something we're working on).

c) Writing something that puts you way above the crowd. (my friend often used to read people's Twitter and LinkedIn profiled before requesting anything. Like, "Hey. I read how you recently paid off your education loan. Mine is still pain in the ass")

I understand that if the problem is super-relevant to the business, they might agree in a whim but usually, it won't be the case. I am not undermining the value of the approach, but it's just not that simple as often portrayed.

xapata
I hate the request to "hop on a call". That suggests the person hasn't considered their questions well enough to write them down. Whenever anyone asks me for a call, I always reply asking them to write their questions instead. Often they ask just one or two questions I can answer trivially. Much more efficient than a call.
itsderek23
The best approach for me is finding a shared connection that will do an intro:

* It validates you * It puts the other person "on the hook". Not good form to completely ignore an introduction.

prats226
Yeah even for me priority is if someone from network has connections. Cold emails to get more reach on feedback where I could not find any shared connections :)
VirgilShelton
If you want to ask companies about problems they're facing you'll need to learn sales. I've been a freelancer for 12 years and these books changed my life...

* How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients by Jeffrey J. Fox

* The Dollarization Discipline: How Smart Companies Create Customer Value...and Profit from It by Jeffrey J. Fox

* The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't) by Sean D'Souza

* The Ultimate Sales Letter: Attract New Customers. Boost your Sales by Dan S. Kennedy

* The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Also watch a few Gary Vaynerchuck Keynotes and you'll get ideas on how to add value first, specifically read this blog post https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/working-for-free-the-debate/

prats226
Thanks. Will give it a read :)
arkitaip
Which broad problems did this enable you to understand or solve better?
VirgilShelton
First: Don't talk about yourself they don't care.

Second: Talk about business to them. For example talk about how many more products they're going to sell because of your solution. I always ask, "So how is business going?"

I also do my homework on the business. I look them up on the Linkedin, twitter etc. (and I read up on them seriously) and see what their office looks like on Google Maps. If they're successful then I want to work with them. If they're struggling I don't work with them. I used to work with a ton of clients who didn't even make one sale. Once I targeted the right customers all I had to prove was that I can increase their business and make an impact.

Last: Be different. Make sure that everything you say to them is the first time they've ever heard it. This is critical because if you sound like every other person sending cold emails or cold calling etc. you'll get sent to the spam folder.

Reading those books teach you lessons you'll never learn unless you've been in the author's shoes. So by reading these books you get to look over the shoulder of giants and use their knowledge in your business.

edoceo
What if you mentioned those problems you're trying to solve here? Your target is likely reading this thread.
JamesBarney
I am mostly cold emailing companies hiring for position

One very large mistake you're making is assuming that companies make any decisions. They don't. People at companies make decisions. So here are some steps to follow.

Step 1. Find "right company".

Step 2. Find "right person" @ "right company". This person should personally gain something by your product. i.e. spend less time doing something they hate, look good to their boss. Linkedin can be super helpful for this.

Step 3. Figure out how to get "right person" on the phone. This could be shmoozing the secretary(called gatekeeper in sales), or e-mailing someone higher in the organization and asking for a downward referral. "Hey CEO, we want to save you lots of money via data science. Who is the best person in your org to talk about this opportunity?"(It's always easier to get a downward referral. Your boss is usually much more willing to waste your time with a sales call then you are to waste his.)

prats226
Yeah currently trying downward referral thing. Wondering would my email have more probability of getting noticed in downward referral or directly to person getting affected?
JamesBarney
If you have the contact info of the person being affected reach out to them. Downward referral is just a technique to get the contact info for the right person. If you already have that then you're golden.
icey
This is great advice, I want to add to this:

> This person should personally gain something by your product. i.e. spend less time doing something they hate, look good to their boss. Linkedin can be super helpful for this.

to include "This person should be someone who might be the _purchaser_ of your product" (e.g. the person who can buy it, since they're the person you need to convince)

prats226
In a lot of cases two are not the same. User of your product (person who is going to benefit the most) might not be same as purchaser (VP or founder)
JamesBarney
This means you're going to have a really hard time selling this product until you figure out how your product can benefit the purchaser.

Ever wonders why it seems like a bunch of products spend so much time and effort on useless reporting that only one dude looks at on a dashboard once a month for 5 minutes? This is why :).

Also think about how the benefits to your target audience role up to purchaser. Is that through reduced turnover, increased sales, enhanced developer productivity?

Basically instead of pitching the data science guy and saying "Hey you know this thing you do, that you hate that takes a lot of time. Well use my product and do less of that!!" Pitch the owner and say "Hey you know those expensive data science guys you write big checks to every month to solve data science problems, well they're wasting a bunch of their time and your money doing this "thing". Well our product means they spend less time doing that "thing" and more time solving data science problems that makes you money. If we could show that we free up 33% of your data scientists time to work on your "business problem" would you be willing to pay $1000 for that?"

basseq
Two reactions:

1) Companies can rarely articulate the problems they're facing. They know the pain they're feeling, but not necessarily why. If they know the problem, they're either a) working on a solution, b) thinking about it in a different way than you might be, and/or c) wrong.

So get to the symptoms of the problem you're trying to solve, and see if those are big enough pain points. This also helps you focus on your value. If the pain point you're solving is low on my priority list or low-ROI, I'm not going to pay you to solve it.

2) You're not talking about sales, you're talking about market research. So the sales comments here are good, but the question I'll ask you is: "What value are you creating for your contacts?"

You're asking people for their precious time and not offering anything in return. A hypothetical solution to their problem at some point in the future is not value. The only reason I take that call is the goodness of my heart (e.g., my friend introduced you and asked if I could help you... I'm doing them a favor, not you).

What's their feedback worth? And what's the value of their time? You might have some success with a "paid" survey (Starbucks gift card, swag, etc.): your question then becomes right-sizing the benefit to the individual. A CEO doesn't care about your T-shirt.

prats226
Would it help if I offer my expertise into solving their problem in the beginning? I would love to get early customers and chance to work with them closely go get more learning, so can also assume its kind of sale email
rupzilla
Instead of asking these questions, observe their behavior when you share a "solution" to the problem with them. Even if nothing is built, you can see if they bite. If they do, you can interpret the level of signal.
saosebastiao
I'm gonna go ahead and give the saltiest response you can imagine.

You can't ask companies about what problems they are facing. You can only ask individuals, and their responses will be colored by their perspective.

If you talk to the people that have the power to fix the problems, you're going to get the perspective of ladder climbers that can only ever tell you what problems should be solved in order to further their career.

If you want to solve problems that the company is facing, you will only find the problems by asking the people that are powerless to solve them. Mostly people on the ground floor that work in the trenches solving massive problems on an ad hoc but daily basis, but occasionally people that are higher up but marooned and destined to be fired at some point.

An example from my past: A VP tasked with improving operations performance saw some bottlenecks in warehouse employee productivity, and a potential solution in a robotics product. He ended up betting his career on outright buying the robotics company, without even testing out the product in the company's warehouses. As it turned out, integrating the product was extremely difficult...it involved tradeoffs that forced re-arranging how products were stored, what product mixes could be stored in which warehouses, how inventory was modeled and managed, and how inventory was surfaced to the customer. Basically, the product improved worker productivity by small margins, and increased inventory, software, and most of all logistics costs dramatically. BTW, those logistics cost increases overshadowed the productivity gains by a 5:1 margin. But he accomplished his goal, and any criticism of how he accomplished it is just a detail to manage. If you ask someone in Ops, they will say they need to make a few major software improvements. If you ask someone in software, they will say they need better QA and access to the robotics engineers, and to simplify their logistics for easier modeling. If you ask someone in inventory management, you'll need bigger warehouses and major re-organization of warehouse inventory design. If you ask someone in logistics, they will say they need to re-arrange the warehouses better. If you ask the VP, you'll need incremental improvements in robot speed. If you ask the VP's boss, he'll say he doesn't care, as long as he gets improvement.

But funnily enough, if you ask the guy who was the technical architect at the acquired robotics company, he'll say you need to cut your losses, revert course until you can recover your logistics costs, and either invest massive development in a different technology with a better fit to the application, or buy a different company that already had it developed. He got fired for saying this, by the way. No way the VP could ever be made to admit to his mistake. To this day, the VP talks to the press about how much money they're saving due to this thingamajigger that he bought. He'll take it to his grave.

drieddust
I couldn't up vote this enough. I recently had an interesting encountered with a Senior Director who argued that his quarter million pound project was never supposed to reduce any of the work required to actually delivered the final product.

Since he was cornering us to take the blame, I showed him the mirror and proved him wrong with evidence. Conversation immediately shifted to our contract renewal which is due shortly :)

debt
get a job at the companies having problems.
ahammed027
You can't ask what problem they are facing (I'm assuming that you are going to sell something). You have to identify what problems are you solving with your product/s, then research about the company (As much as Possible) and learn what problem they might face. Now approach them (Any person who might be a decision maker of that company) with your solution.
luke3design
You might ask about their daily routine. (I'm assuming you want to create a software to solve these problems. ) "What are the first two tasks you perform everyday?" "What are the most repetitive tasks you find yourself performing during your day?" "How do you use Microsoft Excel/Number/Google Sheets/...?" "By looking at your inbox, what are the most compelling task you need to perform today?"

Pain is often found in repetitive and reoccuring task. Asking them about how they use excel might opena whole new scenario about how they're struggling to solve some tasks that could be easily solved by a software