#6 - Jade Waterman
Episode #6 - Jade Waterman on digging in and not being afraid to ask the tough questions.
Show Notes
On this episode of The First 10 Podcast, I talk to Jade Waterman, who focuses on helping businesses build a repeatable and scalable market.
Key Points
Customer Discovery is hard work but it’s the only way to understand those you seek to sell to
Always research the prospect
Dig in and don't be afraid to ask the tough questions. Don't be afraid to take your questions several questions deeper.
Show Notes
Spin Selling - Neil Rackham
Strategy is your Words - Mark Pollard
Lean Customer Development - Cindy Alvarez
Contact Details
LinkedIn
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Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, realise, customers, book, discovery, soft skills, founders, business, coaching, selling, big, learn, sales, sales cycle, market, convertible mustang, talk, approach, step, emotions
SPEAKERS Conor McCarthy, Jade Waterman
Jade Waterman 00:00
When you're asking questions that people say “I'm not comfortable answering that”, that's where the real nuggets of wisdom lie. And so, to me, that's what great discovery is. It's having a conversation with someone and not just scratching the surface. It's going deep.
Conor McCarthy 00:19
Hello, Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the first 10 podcasts where I interview Business Builders on their first 10 customers, who they were, how they found them, how they talked to them, and what effect they had in their business, so that you could learn what worked and what didn't. My guest today is Jade Waterman. Jade has a good friend that I met through coaching Seth Godins altMBA and Akimbo workshops. Jay works for a consulting firm that focuses on helping businesses build repeatable and scalable markets, they eliminate risk for founders. The focus of our work is on small to medium sized businesses in areas such as marketing licencing, sales, innovation and growth, using frameworks such as lean customer discovery, market development, through SPIN Selling, and working with subject matter experts on assumption mapping and testing. Jade really has seen and done it all We talk a lot about about her some of her experiences of being in the room, doing customer discovery and customer development. And alongside that, of course, she has done she's done a lot of work through her coaching. Again, on the workshops I mentioned, we talked about the importance of soft skills in this in this podcast a lot, because it's core to what Jade does. And she really has great ways to think about developing soft skills and using them including reading between the lines, and as well as how, how to go about listening to the hard information. And not often is through asking the hard questions. So that's a really interesting part of the of the podcast listen to one one point she made that was really interesting was how the best selling comes not from selling at all. And she also introduced me to my new favourite phrase, which is great discovery. I really think you'll enjoy this talk. As Jade points out, we're all human. We all fall trap to bad behaviours influencing emotions and preconceived notions and they are super important things to realise when we go looking for our first 10 customers. So without further ado, Jade Waterman. Hey there first 10 podcast listeners. I'm here today with Jade Waterman. Jade, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, your business story so far and what you're working on right now?
Jade Waterman 02:19
Sure. Hi, Conor. Thanks for having me today. So um, I always like to jokingly say that I am a generalist before being a generalist became trendy. Now people are writing books about it. And I was insecure about that early on in my career. But now I realised how how that has served me very, very well and is set me up for success with people that I work with currently, so the theme for me throughout my career, though, has been working with small to medium sized businesses. I Excel and love to work with businesses that are in that growth phase of their life cycle, because I get to wear a lot of hats and I get to learn to and that's what what keeps me engaged and interested. So my background is heavily in marketing. That's kind of the umbrella that overarching most of my experience, but there are so many different facets, traditional marketing, you know, advertising, PR, social media and whatnot, but also sales licencing brand branding, innovation, growth, being a being an in house entrepreneur, and being a true entrepreneur, and then just overall business strategy. So I've managed teams, I've run my own businesses, and primarily now I work with tech companies, usually startups. And so I've had some wins and losses along the way. And I were both of those badges proudly, because I think they are both equal in terms of what they bring to the table. Oh, so well said.
Conor McCarthy 03:50
Yeah, you've seen you've seen it all. You see, you've seen a lot. And like you You have worked with a lot of founders you want to talk about if it's okay, would you talk about some of those founders and their process or their phase of discovering their first 10 customers?
Jade Waterman 04:05
Sure, I think I think right now I work with founders in two different capacities. And whether people realise it or not, both of them overlap quite a bit. So on one hand, you know, Connor, how we met was coaching for Seth Godin and his courses. I coach the alt MBA, which is Seth's flagship course under his akimbo workshops, and I also coach his bootstrappers course. And throughout that we work with, you know, entrepreneurs, we work with people that are at large tech organisations, Apple, Microsoft, we've worked with millionaires, and in one of my courses, I've coached a billionaire, which is exciting and fun. And so I do that on in one aspect of my life, and that revolves a lot about leadership and emotions and good behaviours. And then in my professional life, I work for a consulting firm that helps businesses grow. Essentially, we help founders build a repeatable and scalable market and test that market. And we do that through several frameworks. The lean customer discovery framework and the market development framework, which I'm sure will will talk about. We use terms like ICP, ideal customer profile, and we test assumptions and, and we talk to subject matter experts to help develop a go to market plan for these founders. Ultimately, it's our job to eliminate risk for them. And we we hold their hand and take them along for the ride every step of the way. And so I think, one is focused very much on on growing a market and profitability and the other one is focus very much on on emotion and leadership. But what most people don't realise is that when you are selling when you're looking for your first customers, both play active participants in the process. Hmm, I love that. Yeah, it's it's, it is a mix of both. And yeah, we're lucky in coaching or MBA and bootstrappers, that you kind of get to see that an action. And as you said, you don't know who you're coaching. We've coached hundreds of people, millionaires, billionaires, people starting off freelancers, it's a bit of everything. The it's what do you find? So you've seen a lot, you've got quite of kind of broad experience of all kinds of different approaches. One would you say is the hard part about finding those early customers for the founders you've worked with? It's all hard. So if you're listening to this, and you're facing your first 10, customers, kudos to you, and give yourself a pat on the back, because that is really hard work. Before you have momentum before you have credibility in a market, to, to go chase those customers and get people to say yes, and to be excited with you and for you and to be brand ambassadors for you. That is the hard work. And I think a lot of people want it to be easy and want it to happen overnight. And it doesn't a lot of people. So one of the things that we do before we go into a true sales cycle, is we test the market. And I think so many people miss that step, they miss the step of great discovery, they miss the step of before actively selling to someone to talk to someone to say, Hey, you know, how do you do this? How do you solve this? Where is it painful? What hurts? What are you using to solve the problem now? Even if it's kind of a band aid approach, right? And that learning helps form so much of the sales process in understanding how to approach people in understanding what they care about, where to put your finger in the wound, so to speak, right to get them to move to drive urgency. So I think there's this big step of discovery and great discovery is just taken for granted. And a lot of people miss that step before going to try to just sell their products or their services. I love that it's the you call a great discovery. Because, yeah, everything you said is so true. There's we've both seen and talked about ideas that have tried to force themselves into a market where there maybe was no market. Because the market will tell you whether there is a market or not. But But discovery I suppose in that maybe goes back to the kind of some of the coaching that we've done, they've kind of been curious, the listening, and figuring figuring out the pain points and the needs. So important. But but still difficult. But still, I think you have to get good at doing that almost. Yeah. And I think I think there's some things that you can do to help overcome that. People love to help other people. And so take advantage of every opportunity that falls in your lap. Don't be afraid to reach out to strangers, and just approach them like, hey, I want to learn, I want to sell you something. And those gifts have been curious of reading between the lines of hearing what they have to say. And then taking it a step further, right. There's, there's this edge that people are afraid of going into right. I've worked with a lot of founders where the moment we're doing discovery, and someone mentions their competitor. They're like, okay, we can hang up now we're wasting our time talking to them. And I believe that's where the real value is right? Like, well, how much are you paying for your competitor? Right? We'll ask the tough questions. Why did you decide them? What was good about the buying process? What was bad about the buying process? And so really, instead of just like asking, Well, how do you think about this? It's taking the questions, several layers deeper and not being afraid to get to where people tell you no. Where you're asking questions that people say, I'm not comfortable answering that, right? Like, because that's where the real nuggets of wisdom lie. And so, to me, that's what great discover is it's having a conversation with someone and not just scratching the surface, it's going deep, all those questions that you're you really want to answer and you really want to know, for your business. Think about it beforehand, and write them down, you know, on a computer on a scratch piece of paper, and make sure that if someone does agree to give you their time, probably their most valuable asset that you're using it wisely. And that you're informing what you're about to do, and how you're going to go sell based on really good information about that. And talk about the experience of so if you have, or, you know, founders who are going in with a product in mind, and the kind of the yearning to just blurt out the big idea, and say, Do you want it? Yeah. Let's talk about everything. But my idea. Sure. So okay, that's great, let's say so in discovery, don't talk about your idea. No influence the conversation, right. But let's say you've gone through discovery. And one of the the other pitfalls I see is they founders will talk to one or two people, and they're like, Oh, I'm going to change my entire business, I'm going to change how I sell, because they've heard it from one one person or two people don't, don't let one or two people influence it, right? Like, make sure you have a decent sample size, maybe it's in the two digits, at least, you know, you've got 10, or a dozen people that you've spoken with. And now you've got some information. And you know, okay, hey, these are what this is what people care about, you're in a true sales cycle now. So now you really aren't going to go get your first 10 customers, there is a process that should be followed, just as you are curious and learning about the person. The person is curious about learning about you, and what you're offering and bringing to the table to write. So we like to say, don't give them all the information up front, right? Like, don't just walk into that first meeting, and show them all of your product before you know what they care about who they are as a human. I work with a lot of technical founders, and they make this mistake of wanting to sell on features, right? They're engineers, and they're like, I've built this 15% faster and 22% bigger, and, you know, it's got 75 more horsepower and an awesome Bluetooth radio in this convertible Mustang, right, like whatever it is. And people don't care about that. They care about, you know, how am I going to feel when the top is down on that convertible Mustang, and I'm cruising down the highway and the sun is hitting my face, right. So that's what you have to find, you have to find that moment of inspiration for them. And, and I think people just want to get in a meeting and say, This is who I am. And this is what I'm doing by it. And that's a mistake, because nobody cares about you. They care about themselves and their own problems and their own experience. And so you have to craft the story around that. So I guess you know, that was a very long winded answer to your question. But don't make the mistake of giving too much information up front. And don't make the mistake of making it all about you.
Conor McCarthy 13:34
Amazing. That's, ya know, you've got such deep experience in specific scenarios, which most of which you probably couldn't tell me about, because this NDA is and all kinds of privacy around it. But I'm just like, what's, where did you learn that one? And why any? Was there any one or two big learnings you've had over the years where you're kind of going? Well, actually, you just use this told me to but I don't think even like more overarching where you're like, right? That is definitely something I bring to every single conversation. Hmm. One of the things that I learned in in the heart the hard way and a painful way, when I was building my startup, I was approached by someone who is building out the TV show, meet the Draper's, who's, you know, an investing show and it was going to be the first season and no one had heard about it. Nobody knew what it was. And I did not realise what a big opportunity it was. And they asked for some information they asked for a pitch deck, which anyone that's ever built a pitch deck knows this is a living breathing document probably took me months to create. There's been 224 iterations of it, right like making complex things simple is a gift and a skill. And that usually takes time you have to learn everything before you can bring it back to make it simple. And so this person asked For, for our pitch deck, and we said, Oh my gosh, we you know we have it, but we don't feel like it's perfect. So we spent time tinkering and reiterating and redoing, and about a week later after he had asked for this pitch deck, we emailed it back to him. And he basically laughed at us and said, I needed this the same day, like you're too late, I already have people slotted now, sorry. And we missed a really big opportunity, because we were so focused on making something perfect. And I firmly believe in the power of momentum. And so if you have had a great call with someone, somebody has dropped an opportunity in your lap, someone asked for more information, someone's interested in your product or service, move quickly. And that is something I had that has been a thread throughout everything I have done. And I had to learn at painfully. The best lessons are learned painfully. You don't forget them that way. That's for sure. Yeah, you probably don't read them in a book and go right, got it. Just implement next time you're you're at a meeting lessons learned. So coming into into this world, what kind of sales or marketing experience? What kind of formal sales or marketing experience have you had?
Jade Waterman 16:26
In terms of transactions transactional selling, or consultative selling in terms of large enterprise scales, not a lot. This was something I've learned in the last couple years of my life. And I will say, in my past life, I've had some fun using unique approaches to selling partnership selling. You know, bringing multiple parties to the table networking ideating. And approaching people with have this idea that I think would be great for you. In particular, that's worked very well for me, I'm in a position now where there's a much more formal sales process. And there has to be. And I have learned that it can be taught, it can be made into a process. And every step of that sales process, right, a great first call, second call, third call, how do you show a demo? How do you close a call? Those are all steps that need to be optimised and thought about, you need to think about what assets you might need for every call, you know, you might, you know, you need to think three steps ahead. If they asked me about pricing, what am I going to say? If they asked me about my competition, what am I going to say? And once you kind of optimise that, and have all of those stages down and you practice that many times, in real situations, you can put numbers and metrics to that sales funnel into that sales pipeline. And then it's very easy to understand how to predict what sales and revenue will be how to then put that in front of a potential investor, if that's what you need to do, or budget, to plan for resources, you know, human capital, if I'm gonna hire a salesperson at some point. And, and those metrics and numbers, typically, if you follow, you know, a formulaic and an approach with your sales process, you can bank on them, you know, plus or minus a few percentage points. And so that's something that I've really learned from great teachers and who I work with day in and day out on, on building a formal process that is just all all a numbers game. And so of course, there's like the behavioural things and the emotions within that process. But once you kind of know every step of the way, and you know how you're going to approach it when you get on a call or in a meeting with someone. Yeah, it's it's a numbers game, huh, God, this and again, experience probably plays into that so much. Hugely, but that experience can come fast. I mean, when we go through discovery with someone, or even a sales cycle, it can be three months, it can be six months. I mean, that's not overnight, right? Like some people probably want that to happen in a matter of a week or two. And that's not going to happen. But yeah, you can, you can do that very quickly. If you're if you're moving fast. Mm hmm.
Conor McCarthy 19:37
And what, what books or videos would you recommend to people to gain more understanding in this space?
Jade Waterman 19:44
Sure. So um, to that I keep on my desk always are leaning lean customer development by Cindy Alvarez. And this book focuses on early mid stage companies and how To do great discovery and how to build products that people want, so I wouldn't highly recommend this one. And then, if you're in the sales cycle, or you want to be better at the sales cycle, Neil Rackham, this is a book probably from the 90s. And it's it's old school sales called SPIN Selling. But it's it's great spin stands for how to ask kind of questions when you're in that room with someone around, you know, the situation, the problem, the implications of those things, and then the need or payoff of of a solution. And so that really teaches you how to take your your questions and your curiosity several layers deeper. Hmm. And, and inside of that they are their SPIN Selling, this is a classic the cover actually, it does look like a bookstore classic versus that I bought this online classic doesn't? Yeah, I'm sure you can find both on Amazon very, very quickly. But yeah, this was, this is an old school book. And, and, you know, take it for what it's worth, maybe you don't need every piece of advice either person offers in their book, but I guarantee if you buy and read through both of them, you'll learn a few things outside of so if they are, let's say, tactical books that you would use to learn the business of what you do.
Conor McCarthy 21:23
Are there any books or resources outside of the kind of business realm that have influenced you?
Jade Waterman 21:30
Good question. We look at I've got a few books stacked behind me right now. This one is a new one. And I haven't gotten all the way through it yet. But I've loved what I've read up to this point. Mark Pollard wrote a book that called strategy is your words. And who looking book, it is it's Yeah, it's got a yellow spine. And it's about 400. And some pages. It's a huge, it's a monolith. But it, it helps yo kind of just strategize what you're doing in business and in life, how to find great problems, write insights around those problems, explain complex ideas. And yeah, and move forward with purpose. As you build a business, that's a big recommendation. Very cool. I'll check that out. Yeah, the only other one that I love Personally, I can't say that it will help find your first 10 customers. But usually, if you are a founder, or an entrepreneur, or a new, you know, business owner, your time is fragmented. You're wearing so many different hats, you are accounting, you are sales, you are marketing at this point, right? You're the coffee boy, or girl, um, this book flow, I'm gonna butcher the name, the author of the Haley, says Susan Haley, I don't know how to say it. But Flow is the name of the book. And this this gentleman, I believe he is a professor in psychology on like, optimal experiences. And it's a great one for me to understand how to get in a state of flow and how to time time block my, my days and how to work where I'm most productive. And so it's a science based approach on kind of productivity. And I love that one too.
Conor McCarthy 23:36
Good recommendations, I'll add them all to the to the show notes. And just to go back for a second to the part of the kind of, I suppose the customer conversations, if you like, and through altMBA and akimbo etc. Like we spent a lot of time on soft skills, and what role of soft skills played in your work?
Jade Waterman 24:00
A lot. I think, in this particular situation, you could walk into a room with a list of questions and ask them and get answers. And maybe that would suffice. But I think, people there's the it's like methodology of asking why five times in a row, right? Like somebody gives you an answer and you say, but why and then they take it to another level deeper. I think that's missed a lot. The curiosity, the getting uncomfortable, the trying to read between the lines of what someone says to hear what they're really self saying. That is a that is several things that I've learned through coaching in trying to get people to get to the edge themselves, right. So when I said earlier, don't talk about yourself when you're doing this Because you don't want to lead the witness, so to speak, it's a little bit of that it's letting them get to the answer themselves, even if they don't answer initially with that answer, right? Like they say something, and then you get curious. And you ask why and you dig a little deeper. And a lot of times people will come to that realisation of wisdom themselves, right? Like, oh, you know, and we'll ask great questions like, well, what is not having that costing your organisation? And they'll go, Wow, I've never thought of it like that, well, it's costing me time, it's costing me money. It's costing me manpower, it's costing me frustration. And so like, just kind of using some of those Scott soft skills to really dig in and not be afraid, I think, I think that's really important too. And then, um, you know, as we learn in the MBA, whether we're coaching it or taking it there are so many decisions that happen at organisations, from people who maybe aren't at the top of the org chart, right? Like, there's always this underlying jockeying for power, there's this underlying sense of blind spots with people, um, there are emotional traps and bad havior and procrastination, and I am afraid of losing my job. So I don't want to implement this software, because I'm afraid it might do my job for me, I don't want to make a bad decision. I'm the one that wants to say yes to this, because I want to look like the hero, right? Like thei emotions and behaviours, run our businesses. And the more that you can understand how those interplay with business skills, the better off you will be as an entrepreneur or as a salesperson. Because they they're in the room every time. Hmm. Fellow that well described. And I realise encoding soft skills, said to be tottering, because he prefers the term real skills we need right? And he's right, yeah, to everything you just said is like, speaks to the fact that those are hugely important in the room.
Conor McCarthy 27:12
Yeah, they're there. I could say they're the anchors we want walk around with every day, whether we realise it or not, right, among keys on our back, but some of them work in our favour.
Jade Waterman 27:23
And, and if you are selling, understanding those those weaknesses, those softness, soft points, those Yeah, just the way humans work in tech, like you can use them to your advantage. And I don't necessarily mean that in a malicious or manipulative way. I think that a lot of times, people just don't know how to best Express value and their value proposition to a potential customer. And so the more that you can understand the other human that you're talking to, the better you can convey that. The better you can say this is the benefit you're going to get this is how I will solve your pain in this situation, and to me that's more authentic rather than salesy or manipulative, jewellers. Talk a little bit about the frameworks use their lean customer discovery and the market development frameworks. Sure. So the lean customer discovery to me is everything prior to selling, right? It's Who am I going to sell to? What do they believe? What do they care about? How big is that market that's too big, let's make it smaller. That's too small, let's make it bigger. Right? A giant red flag for me is when CEO say anyone could buy my product. Because having a great niche is is like is important. You have to start somewhere. And there's not enough time or resources in the world to sell to everyone. So lean customer discovery is really all about like figuring out who you're going to sell to, and how you're going to do discovery with them what you want to learn what you believe they care about what you believe they are struggling with, and going out and finding those people and just talking to them and learning from them. Market Development to me is truly developing your market and moving into more of a full sales cycle. And that is when you take everything you've learned in customer discovery and and apply it through throughout market development. And that's where Okay, now we're not just having one conversation with someone we're actively selling to them. And we're going to kind of walk them through our sales funnel. And we're we're going to still learn from them right out the gate. But now we're going to show them how we think about the world and now we're going to show them our product and now we're going to talk about price and competition and what it would look like if we work together and If we were to implement and so those are kind of the two frameworks that I use, and I go through customer discovery first with, you know, 10 or 12 people, and then I use that to inform my market development.
Conor McCarthy 30:14
Okay, I think we'll leave it there if that's okay, because I've taken up a good bunch of your time already. Thank you very much for sharing so much there. Every 30 seconds, it was like, oh, there's something else we could talk about.
Jade Waterman 30:28
Welcome, happy to continue the conversation. And I hope that people understand what I was saying in a high, high level on a 30,000 foot view, and they're able to take some of that and implement it on on a granular level as well, because it's a lot, it's a big process. And there's a lot to it.
Conor McCarthy 30:47
What would you say to someone just starting out on there to get their first 10 customers.
Jade Waterman 30:53
Um, I would say Be patient, it's not going to happen overnight. There are companies out there that pay for their first 10 customers, now they put a tonne of money into social media, or, you know, they get fake reviews, or whatever they're doing. And that's fine, if that's the route you want to go. But if you're looking for 10, people that are really going to shout your name, your brand's name from the rooftops that are going to be these brand ambassadors that if you reach out to them and say, will you be a reference for me, can I use a testimonial on my website for free, you know, with your name and picture attached to it. It's not gonna happen overnight. And there is a an element of trust and credibility that comes through that process. Which is also why it's important, you know, to make it a process and not just one step, to build a relationship with these people that you're selling to. So buckle up, put your seatbelt on, you know, get get a cup of coffee in the car, because you're you're you're setting out for a journey here a long ride. And and I guarantee it will, it will inform everything else you do your your product and how you think about your target market and how you sell to them and approach them. And so if you're if, if you're doing doing it right, I'll put right in air quotes, I'm sure there's many ways to get to the same destination. But at least in this in this way. You have seen up front what it's like in the room. This isn't just the reading the book or watching the video about what it is like at a distance. And yeah, I think you talking about it from a first person perspective has been the greatest value of all. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Conor McCarthy 32:47
And that's a wrap. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and that there was something in there that was actionable and insightful for your business. Do check out the show notes for more information on what we discussed, as well as ways to contact my guest today. Helping you identify and create those first 10 customers is what I do. So if you like what you hear on this podcast, please do get in touch at www.first10podcast.com, or on Twitter @TheFirst10Pod.