As a CEO who takes herself and her company seriously, I am on a constant learning journey. Much of the learning is about the market and the needs you all have. It happens through applying strategic product discovery processes (the same ones I advise my clients to use) and constantly listening to the market. Other learnings involve areas I’m less familiar with or new methodologies that I’d like to apply, and they happen through the more classic approach of classes and mentorship. 

When I realized that consulting isn’t a one-time gig for me and that it’s what I want to do moving forward (it was a few months after I started doing it, before the CPO Bootcamp was even created) I immediately understood that I need to up my game in order to build a sustainable business. I have been reading a lot for a few months, staying up at night thinking about how I can implement what I had learned.

I then ran into a business mentor who offered a program for businesses like mine. His marketing materials promised amazing results, but I knew I needed to take it with a grain of salt since I had no idea who this person was and whether or not I can trust him. I joined a few of his webinars to learn more and saw that I can relate to what he talks about. Hint: it was about the importance of delivering value to your customers as means for business success, I’m sure you understand why it resonated with me 🙂.

But that in and of itself wasn’t enough to make me truly interested in the program. There was one specific slide in the webinar that did the trick: he shared how long people knew him before they bought anything from him. Before you continue reading make an educated guess on what this number was. His stats showed that over 60% of his customers only bought from him after having known him for two years or more. 

Two years! That’s a long time to wait as a business owner. But sometimes you don’t have a choice. You want to strive and target people who are ready for you here and now (you need to know who they are first), while at the same time, you want to be on people’s minds so that when they are ready they think of you and not of someone else. Because the timing in which people are ready has a lot more to do with them than it has to do with anything you do. 

Here are the things to look for when you want to know if your customers are ready for you, and what you can do in case they aren’t. 

You Know Who They Are

This isn’t something to look for externally but rather internally. Your customers can’t be ready for you if you don’t understand exactly who are you aiming for. A generic segmentation like “startups of 50-100 people” is not good enough for two reasons.

The first is that organizations don’t have problems, people do. If you don’t know who exactly in the organization has the problem you are solving, and why it’s important for them, anything you say will be empty words that don’t make a difference for them. You can talk about your technology all along, but they need to hear that you understand them and their pains, not that you understand yourself. 

This leads me to the second problem that leads to the exact same outcome – if your characterization of your customers is too generic, you can’t talk about their pain because they don’t necessarily all have the same pain (or any at all). 

To truly understand if your customers are ready for you, you must first understand who they are, in detail. Only then you can take a deeper look and learn what matters to them and how you can help. But what they say isn’t enough, that’s why we want to see what they do.

They Invest in Other Solutions

This might sound counterintuitive: why does the fact that someone invests in a solution other than yours indicates that they are ready for your own solution? The answer is that it means that the problem you are trying to solve is important enough for them. In fact, not only important but also that they have the ability to do something about it.

Sales organizations have frameworks like BANT and MEDDIC to rank prospects and make sure they have a high chance of converting into paying customers. Knowing that you have a problem and knowing what to do about it aren’t usually enough – either because you need to convince others like in the B2B example, or because talk is cheap. 

Think about all the people who want to lose weight and do nothing about it. They want to lose weight, so theoretically they have a need, and doing something about it isn’t hard or complicated (generally speaking – do more sports and eat less), but still, many of them do nothing.

Now, if your product helps people lose weight, who are the people you want as your customers? The ones who had tried everything, had been spending constantly a lot of money on solutions, and still want more, or the ones who only say they want to lose weight and do nothing? Who do you think has a higher chance of becoming an actual customer of yours eventually?

Note that other solutions are not necessarily your direct competitors. Sometimes they would be seeking other types of solutions (think about guidance and supervision of a nutritionist vs. bariatric surgery) and you can explain why your approach is better. Even if they chose your direct competitors (in which case it’s harder to convert them to become your customers) it’s still a good indication that there is a market for what you offer. Remember that no competition at all is usually a bad sign.

Something Significant Had Changed for Them

In my example above, I had an a-ha moment about where I want my career to go next. It wasn’t something anyone could have controlled, it happened to me when it did. But when it happened, it immediately led me to action.

The action originally wasn’t spending money, I wasn’t ready for that just yet. Instead, I spend time learning (see investment in other solutions above). It was only when I realized I need help and can benefit from professional guidance that I was willing to make the move.

Not all significant changes happen in your customers’ heads. Sometimes the changes that will push your future customers into action are more visible. They could be market changes – now is a great time to offer AI-related training services, for example. Or they could be personal but very objective, like moving to a new company or taking on a new role with extended responsibilities.

Timing matters here, though. In most cases, people wouldn’t seek or pay for external solutions right away. They will try to work it out themselves, and only when at some point they realize it’s too difficult they will be ready to take a different approach. The time it actually takes could vary based on the topic, the person’s background as well as personal preferences.

And What if They Are Not Ready?

Since you understand their world deeply (see the first point above), you should be able to understand why they are not ready. Do they still want to try alone? Are they struggling to convince management to secure a budget? Is it too innovative and they are afraid to be perceived as irresponsible? Or maybe the problem isn’t painful enough, at least yet.

Once you understand what is it exactly, you can formulate a strategy. If you know exactly what characterizes those who are ready for you, you can see if it is coming up their alley or not. For example, my strategic consulting clients usually need me when they realize they have a product strategy problem (even if they don’t call it that way). When things don’t work, and they need to connect the dots between the product, the go-to-market and the business. Occasionally, I get introduced to founders who haven’t yet reached these points. We talk, they share how impressed they are, but they have no reason to spend any amount of money on my services. Since I have been around for a while and I know that many of them will run into such an issue in the future, I make sure they remember me once they get there. Even just saying “I don’t think you need my services just yet” goes a long way, because how frequently do you hear that?

In some cases, you might want to solve the problem that they do have now that is different from the one you were originally coming to solve. In other cases, you would realize that this is a dead end and that it’s not a matter of timing but rather a matter of overall importance. If you are solving a problem that people don’t feel that they have or wish to solve, you need to walk away. It’s pivot time.