Using LinkedIn for customer discovery
A startup founders guide on finding experts for market research
I recently put together this process for finding people to interview for market research, also referred to as customer discovery in “4 steps to the epiphany” by Steve Blank. This process proved to be repeatable and helped me predict how many people I could reach based on the number of people I contacted. It’s a straightforward process with clear steps and what to do next to provide the best experience possible while also reducing my cognitive load. After all, I am a founder, so I needed something that would allow me to engage people while also keeping the amount of time spent on each person to a minimum. On average, it took 10 minutes worth of my time to schedule each meeting which meant I could fill my calendar pretty quickly with meetings.
Getting setup for success
To do this well, you’ll want to be organized and have a tool that allows for minimal friction. I recently discovered the LinkedIn sales platform, and I found it made managing conversations a lot easier. Sure there are free alternatives like using a spreadsheet and constantly grooming it. I tried that method, it was terrible. If you're a founder like me, you need efficiency above all else. Transferring data between documents isn’t a good way to spend time. With LinkedIn sales navigator, you can easily create lists, and the search controls are a lot better. You’ll want to get comfortable searching and find people that mostly fit what you are looking for. Be sure to restrict your search to second-degree connections because having a mutual connection helps increase your chance of success. On top of this, as you gain connections, the number of second-degree connections available in your network will grow.
Build a list
To be sure you have a constantly fresh batch of leads, you will want to build lists for each persona. The work is tedious because you will have to read each profile that comes up in your search to make sure they are worth contacting. Not everyone is going to be worth contacting. It helps to filter out everyone that doesn’t exactly fit at this stage so that you don’t have to do extra work in the following stages. Building prospect lists is the longest step in the process and makes up about 80% of the effort. It’s not something that takes tons of time to get started. Before contacting anyone, I spent around 6 hours putting together a list of about 150 people. Then each day, I would spend about an hour to find 20-30 people that fit my persona.
Create a connection
Now that you have a list, it’s time to start networking. You’ll want to send each person a connection request with a personalized message. You can send inMail as well, but LinkedIn limits how many you can send per month, so you should use them wisely. I found that about 1 in 100 people will require an email address to connect. Reserving your inMail messages for people like this can increase your reach. I’ve also found that inMail messages don’t result in meetings set and sending connection requests. When you send your connection request, you’ll need to keep it brief because LinkedIn has a limit. What they want to know is generally, who you are, why you are contacting them, and what you want. Here’s one of the snippets I use for sending out connection requests.
I’m an entrepreneur building a UX evaluation platform to help create more delightful experiences. I’m looking to speak with UX experts and given your deep expertise, I would love to get your feedback. Would you mind giving me your perspective over a 15 minute call?
Follow up
A lot of people will connect with you without even reading the message in the request. By accepting your request, you can assume that they are willing to give you 15 minutes of their time. After all, that’s what you asked for the connection for. Once they accept a connection request, I’ll usually give them an hour or 2 to get back to me. Then I’ll message them with the following. For this message, you will need a calendar scheduling service. I use Calendly, but any of their competitors should work too.
Thanks for connecting! Can I get 15 minutes of your time to get your feedback? To reduce a bunch of back and forth you can select a time on my calendar at *Calendar Link*. I look forward to chatting
Set the meeting
This process aims to set as many meetings as possible in as short of a time frame as possible. So, clear your calendar because you’re about to have back-to-back meetings for the next couple of weeks. Some people will ask for absurd things, like gift cards or maybe even recommendations…yes, someone asked for a professional recommendation from a stranger. It was an odd request, to say the least. You can politely reject those requests. Some will ask for more details about your service. In those instances, give them a brief description of what you intend to accomplish from your meeting and why you are doing it. At the end of your message, be sure to ask them to set the meeting. In most cases, they will.
Wrapping up
The last time I went through this process, I contacted around 700 people and set 68 meetings. These are really manageable numbers. You can usually do the prospecting portion of the process in under 2 hours per day. The same thing goes for appointments. If you want to be really aggressive, you can contact everyone on the same day and fill 2–3 weeks with meetings. You should be aware that any appointments that you set that are more than 2 days away have a high probability of not showing up. It’s best to set your appointments for as close to now as possible. I generally restrict my calendar to only show the next week to be confident that the majority of people will show up. You should be all set to go out and figure out what your target market wants for your service. Good luck!
