5 builders who never spoke to each other

Interview customers when sales stall, not buy traffic

When growth flattens, more visitors will not fix a product people are quietly getting nothing from. Go and talk to the ones who cancelled, the ones who downgraded and the ones who represent the segment you want next, and take feature requests only from people paying you.

The method

1. 01

   Stop chasing traffic and go interview existing customers when sales stall, because more traffic will not fix a product people are quietly not getting value from.

2. 02

   Customer calls tell you where your documentation assumes too much and which parts are hard to customize, which is what should set your roadmap.

3. 03

   Go and interview the customers who cancelled or moved to a cheaper plan and ask them directly what drove the decision, rather than inferring the reason from your own numbers.

4. 04

   Before you build a tier for a new segment, go to the specific existing customers who already represent that segment and ask what their group actually needs.

5. 05

   A single twenty-minute interview can settle a messaging question you would otherwise spend months guessing at, so rewrite your outreach using what one customer tells you and measure the reply rate.

What it returned

• Zue set a goal of talking to three Pegasus customers and rebuilding the roadmap from what they said, having realised he did not know what customers were doing with the product or where it failed them

• From two calls and several email threads Zue learned where his docs confused people, what was hard to customize, and where Pegasus added the most value.

• Hillman had publicly said Indy Hall's retention was good but could not quantify it, so he set out to pair the growth and retention figures with exit interviews.

• Hillman spent several months in conversation with Jim of MyClin and Nick of FactorMedia about what made their teams effective before landing on team rooms as the answer.

Sources

• Unlock the Power of Customer Insights with Clarity CallsJessy Gervais · customercamp.co · undated
• Coworking Churn RatesAlex Hillman · dangerouslyawesome.com · Retention . · 2010-01-01
• Not a Joke: Indy Hall v3.0 - The Future of Indy HallAlex Hillman · dangerouslyawesome.com · Support for Teams · 2012-04-01
• The hidden reasons why people are using your softwareJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · How to do a Jobs to be Done interview · undated
• My step-by-step guide to landing pages that convertHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · One last thing · undated
• What do we do when we fall off the horse?Cory Zue · coryzue.com · Customer Development · 2019-11-06
• My Icarus JourneyCory Zue · coryzue.com · Pegasus: the Elusive Search for Product-Market Fit · 2019-10-01
• Growing a SaaS to $4k/month in a Highly Competitive MarketNick Sawinyh · failory.com · If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do? · undated