Is It You or Your Product? The Truth About Product-Market Fit | Collin Stewart - 2039

Product-market fit isn't a yes or no question, and treating it like one is what trips up most founders and sales leaders. That's the core idea Collin Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Predictable Revenue and host of the Predictable Revenue Podcast, brought to this episode, and it reshaped how I think about why some go-to-market motions take off and others stall no matter how hard the team works. Product-Market Fit Isn't Binary, It Has Strength Most founders treat product-market fit as something you either have or don't, which makes the conversation almost impossible, because any founder with paying customers can point to that as proof they already have it. Instead, Collin described product-market fit as existing on a scale, from barely there to overwhelming, which means two companies can both have "a product in market" while one sells at a fraction of the speed of the other. That distinction matters because it shifts the question from a debate over whether fit exists to a real conversation about how strong that fit is and what would make it stronger. The Uber Eats Story That Proved the Point Collin shared that his old cold email agency normally booked around ten meetings a month for a client using the same process and the same team. When a former client joined Uber to launch what's now Uber Eats and asked Collin's team to run the exact same playbook, that single campaign of a thousand outreach emails booked 327 meetings in one month. The rep running the campaign hadn't changed and the process hadn't changed, so Collin concluded product-market fit acts as a multiplier on go-to-market effort, and Uber's fit was roughly 33 times stronger than anything else his team had worked on. Strengthening Fit Starts With Customer Development Interviews The fastest way to raise the strength of your product-market fit is to run structured customer development interviews with your pipeline, your existing customers, and people in adjacent markets. The key question to ask is what problem you'd solve for them if you could solve anything, then follow it with two scoring questions: how satisfied are they with how they currently solve it, and how important is solving it to them. The sweet spot is a problem that scores high on importance and low on satisfaction, because a painful, unsolved, high-stakes problem is what founders should build around, not a nice-to-have improvement. Why Working Harder Without Direction Backfires Collin compared weak product-market fit to riding a tricycle with the brakes clamped down, where grinding out more calls and more outreach just burns energy without covering more ground. He said the instinct to just work harder is the wrong move, because a founder who pauses to fix the product and the direction first will out-pace a founder who never stops to check if they're racing toward the right finish line. For sales leaders specifically, Collin's advice is to track whether a consistent process with consistent inputs is producing results that are out of line with a rep's past performance, because that gap is the signal that the product, not the person, needs the fix. How to Build a Case When the Founder Isn't Convinced If a founder isn't open to hearing that product-market fit is weak, a sales leader should still go run customer development interviews across five or six verticals on their own. Because that data builds the case no argument alone can win. He stressed that every customer development call should end with booking the next call while you're still on the phone, since the entire feedback loop breaks down without that habit and waiting to follow up later multiplies the work. Collin kept a sticky note on his monitor that read "don't forget to book the meeting" for years, because that one small discipline is what turns a single interview into a repeatable feedback loop with a prospect. What to Do About Outbound When Fit Is Still Weak The first move when fit is weak is to keep sending customer development interview requests instead of sales pitches, because the goal at that stage is learning, not closing. He walks prospects through a loop that moves from a discovery interview, to feedback on a paper prototype, to feedback on an MVP, to the question of what it would take for them to pay, and finally what it would take for them to refer three friends. Collin was direct that this only works if you book the next touchpoint before the call ends, because without that step you lose the momentum and have to restart the relationship cold every time. Leadership Advice, Books, and Quotes Collin Stewart recommends The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers https://www.amazon.com/Terrifying-Art-Finding-Customers-Sleep-Deprived/dp/1774586134, his book on connecting customer development to sales. Which he describes as part how-to guide and part honest account of the mistakes he made building his own companies. Resources Connect with Collin Stewart on LinkedIn https://ca.linkedin.com/in/collinstewart. Learn more about Predictable Revenue https://predictablerevenue.com/, the company Collin co-founded and leads as CEO. Check out Predictable.ai https://predictable.ai/, Collin's newer tool for running plays like customer development and social listening; it's in beta, and interested listeners can email Collin at his first name at predictablerevenue.com for details. Subscribe to Collin's newsletter at foundersed.co https://foundersed.co/ for more on the book and his other projects. Grab a copy of The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers https://www.amazon.com/Terrifying-Art-Finding-Customers-Sleep-Deprived/dp/1774586134. Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/cx/20/09/sales-navigator-podcast?src=re-pod&trk=tse&veh=tse&mcid=6897323946090332160. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885, Google Podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXNhbGVzZXZhbmdlbGlzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kaXI3Pj2AhVKcjABHW5PDVwQ9sEGegQIARAC, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald, or Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1NjzsFjQwVrgboUfDvbzd5?si=LdQOJDc1T-WBPMxr1h3RsA. Audio provided by Free SFX, https://freesfx.co.uk/ Soundstripe https://soundstripe.com/, and Bensound http://www.bensound.com/. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:53Speaker 00

  As sales reps and as sales leaders, sometimes we try to find the greatest product that's going to help us to sell, the one that has the biggest demand. But unfortunately, maybe you don't find it at times and you feel like it was you as a sales rep that really sucked or messed it up. But was it really you? On today's episode, we're going to tackle that question. We're going to talk about product market fit and how this is often overlooked and what you can do to make sure you have the right product market fit. So you can be the most successful possible. Check it out.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And on this episode today, I have the one and only Collin Stewart, and he is the host of the Predictable Revenue Podcast. He also has a book around product market fit, and he works with clients as a consultant that helps them with ensuring that they build the right product market fit, that they're going after the right people and they generate the right revenue and to do so effectively. He has some amazing interviews he's done over the years, and you can find some more details about that in the show notes. But he also today, just going to drop some bombs on some of the things that we need to do.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Like, again, as a sales rep, you may feel that if my company had this, we could do better and you know, can sell better. And you're probably right. And sometimes as a sales leader, you may feel that the sales rep need to do a better job of just selling a product. But if there's not a real great fit, you can't mask it. It just still won't be successful. So I'm want to tackle that. If this is your first time listening to our podcast, subscribe and we'll notify you when we drop new episodes. If you've been listening for a minute, thank you so much. Take this link, share it with one other person because I guarantee they're going to love this. If you're a sales leader, if you're a sales rep, you are going to like this one. All in all, you're going to love it. So let's dive in and listen to some of the things that Colin has to share.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Specifically, when he dive into product market fit and how determine if you do have it. Check it out.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Colin, welcome to the show.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for having me on.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  I'm looking forward to this, man. Excited to have you. And as for my fellow podcasters to another, I'm really excited for your insights today. I bragged about you a little bit about your show in the intro there. And we have some details in the show notes, but why don't you take a second and tell us a little bit more about your show and what you do, man? And I'll line us up for this episode.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  For sure. I've covered a wide range of things on the podcast. We've been doing it since 2017. It initially started off with the Sales Development World with me just trying to figure out sales development tactics because I came from sales and sales development was still kind of new. I'd been doing cold email, but I thought there was, you know, there were these other sides. And so I interviewed a wide range of sales leaders ranging from, you know, first time VPs of sales all the way to, I think one of my favorites was Jamie Buss from, she was the VP of Sales at Zendesk, and talked to me about how she was forecasting her quarters within 1% at a half billion in revenue a year.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  What?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was like my quality of recording the episode was awful. And so I'm embarrassed about that part, but like, she's one of the smartest sales leaders I've talked to. Incredible. I like stopped after the episode and I'm like, nobody bother me. I'm going to just implement all of this in our sales force right now. So it was crazy.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  So guys, we're going to, maybe we can link back to that episode in the show notes. So folks can check that one out.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Sounds dope. That is absolutely amazing. 1%. I mean, any board would be salivating for that.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Unbelievable. It's incredible. And I mean, I did that for a number of years. I mean, you know, we're coming up on 10 years next year. So that's crazy. Oh, probably, yeah. And we're at 400 and something episodes right now. But I transitioned around last year, the year before to founder product market fit stories. And it was self-serving. I was writing a book about founders finding product market fit and sort of a how-to guide based with, based on my own experience of like, these are the things I screwed up. These are the things I did well. These are the things I didn't do well. And I came to customer development and founding companies by way of being a salesperson. And I couldn't help but notice the overlap. And then I couldn't help but notice the really dumb things that a lot of founders do. And I did it myself as well, where I interviewed 150 people.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  And then when I was going to sell the product, I never went and followed up with any of them. I mean, I followed up with a few of them. I got discouraged. A couple of them said no, and then I forgot about the other 145. It was like five people said no, that means everybody said no. And now in fairness, for the first time I did it, it was very clearly we had built the wrong product. But I think I've seen this with a number of founders where you do this like research project over here that is called customer development and you figure out what product you want to build. And then you go over here to this totally new thing called sales and you start fresh blank slate. And it's like, well, those two processes actually probably should be connected. And that was the whole goal of the book that I wrote, which was the terrifying guard to find the customers.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  And it was trying to connect the sales world and the product worlds and kind of help figure out, you know, maybe for me, it was like self-therapy of like diagnosing some of the dumb things that I had done in my own pot, in my own startups.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Well, this is fascinating and I'm excited for that. So we'll make sure we have the link again back in the show notes, folks can get access to that, which is something I want to go into because we have sales leaders listening to this episode. And one of the things they look at Colin is right now we're going to market in 2026 and it's different than the way that we've gone to market before. And I want to understand, I think sometimes we overlook that product market fit. And you just gave us a rich example of that. What are some of the ways that we can do it grassroots and some things that people make a mistake on? But several things I want to touch base on the strength product market fit. We want to get into that. And then talk a little bit more about customer development. And then I want to hear about your, if you don't have strong product market fit, especially when it comes to your outbound, what are some of the things that you can do to alleviate that?

• 7:49Speaker 00

  So that's the course of our convo today, if that's cool. Sounds good?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Let's do it. So let's dive into that first part, strengthening product market fit. Give me some of your understanding. You've had plenty of conversations with folks around this. So help me understand this, what you mean by this a little more?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Totally. Basically, the core of it comes down to the, and every salesperson knows this. And so I'm just, I think articulating in new words to help founders understand this idea. But the easier your product is to sell, the easier it is to grow. Right? The greater the need with your customer, the easier it is to sell, the easier it'll be to grow. Right? I don't think I'm saying anything controversial here. The thing that I think a lot of founders don't get, especially in the early days, is your goal is to find something that's easy to sell. And I don't just mean like anything that you can sell that's a bait and switch or this and that. But what we're looking for as founders is something that's 10x better than what currently exists. And I think where a lot of us end up settling for is two or three X or like a 30 to 50% improvement on the old process.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  It's 30% easier, 50% cheaper. And those just aren't good enough. And so I think about the product market fit, trying to tell a founder that has customers, that has a product in market, that they don't have product market fit is impossible because they, there's no room in the conversation for them to agree and go, oh yeah, I don't have product market fit. Because they can argue that I have products, I have customers that are paying for it. So like, I have a product in market. And so I had this fight thousands of times. And I don't think I'm exaggerating either. We ran cold email for a cold email agency for 14, 13 years. Yeah. And like, I shouldn't say most, but a lot, the founders I talked to had this problem. And so I said, okay, well, how do I better describe this in a way that folks can hear it?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And so I came up with the idea, the, the fact that it's not binary, it's not zero or one, but product market fit has strength. So it's not a scale of zero to one, it's like point one to 20. And the customer that showed me this was we were, back when we were doing the agency. We had all these customers, they would give us, you know, some money every month and we'd book, I'd say on average, like eight to 12 meetings every month. Now, this is like 10 years ago, let's call it, 10, nine years ago. And we're averaging, call it 10 meetings, just to make the math easy. We had one customer, my poach, the VP of Sales that we were working with, had another customer. And over the Christmas holidays, Steve joined Uber to head up Uber Eats. Well, it was called Uber Everything at the time.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Yes, I remember that.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And he called me, he's like, hey, man, I need a favor. I need you to do this thing for me. I won't be able to pay you for a couple of months, but like, I need to launch Uber Eats. Can you help?

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Small task. Holy moly.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'd already done a lot of the data work that we needed to for his, the last company. And so he's like, I know Colin can, he's already set up to do all of this.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And so it was a fairly easy, I shouldn't say easy, but it was like, we weren't inventing new science in order to do this. But the moral of the story is, we went from like, in the first month, from zero to, I don't know, take a guess, how many meetings do you think we booked? For Uber, launching Uber Eats, we sent a thousand emails, just a thousand, sorry, we contacted a thousand people.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  You said you're booking eight to 12 a month. So let's say 15 to 20, you're booking a month.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  327.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  No, dude, no, no, no, no.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  That was my face. So we had, we had one person on it and looking at her inbox with, this is like, I don't know, 10 to 20 emails, like replies, not just like, this is like meetings booked, booked attended 327, I think it was, right? So she had like 30 to 50 replies in her inbox every day. So go into Google and then imagine that first page of 50 being totally full with people replying. And 80% of them are people saying, yeah, let's do it for a physical in-person meeting for an AE to attend.

• 11:45Speaker 00

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• 12:27Speaker 00

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• 12:48Speaker 00

  I'm just like baffled thinking about that. I'm just thinking the stress of managing 300 appointments in a month.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  We were building a tool called Carb that helped kind of manage that. It was like an email inbox replacement for Gmail. And so it made it a little bit easier, but it was still crazy. And so we were looking at it, we're like, okay, well, did Krista, who's the person on the account, did she magically get, you know, a million times better overnight? Or was there something special about Uber? And like, who gets the credit for these 327 meetings? Is it Krista? And she did a great job? Or is it Uber? And they had such extreme product market fit? And like, Krista did a great job. And I don't want to take anything away from Krista.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  But the number of times she was able to replicate going zero to 327 meetings is effectively zero.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Can't do it again.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  You can't, you can't do it again because Uber created all those conditions. And so that was like that seed that broke all of our metrics, it broke all of our dashboards, it broke all of our processes. We had to like, hold down the fort because it was like, all the meetings were flying in. But it showed me that like, product market fit is not binary. It exists on a spectrum. And if you think about it, Uber had such strong product market fit that they got, I don't know, 33X more results, added the same go-to-market motion that we were doing for every other customer, and they got 33X more. And so that was the like, oh shit, this thing not just has strength, but your product market fit is a multiplier of your go-to-market efforts. And that's a much fancier way to, of saying,

• 14:15Speaker 01

  the easier your product is to sell and the more of a need there is with your customers, the easier it's going to be to sell, the easier it's going to be to grow. Right. But I think when you go from like, yeah, sales terms to product, to like product and entrepreneur and founder terms, I got lost. And I made all these mistakes and I was a salesperson turned entrepreneur. And so I thought, hey, this is the path that I think people need to see. And then I wanted to show that like, it is not hopeless if you don't have product market fit, or don't have strong product market fit, that there are things that you can do to increase the strength. And most of those things are interviews. And I would say customer development interviews, stand the life interviews, where you're saying, hey, Donald, like, you know, what tech, what tools are you using? What are you struggling with?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  What are your goals? What are your objectives for the year, your quarter? Like, how do you get your bonus check? Cool. Okay. If I could solve any problem for you, what would it be? Great. And what you're looking for is like your product or you, the job to be done, the direction, the space that you're working on to be in there, like top three, magic one answers.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  Are you a Clayton Christensen fan?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, love it.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Job to be done.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Man, his milkshake video is hilarious.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  So, so sorry, we lost him, man. Brilliant mind.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  I agree. I agree.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  There is so much to unpack with this column. We could do the whole episode just on this part, but I find the more you talk about this. And by the way, when is that book coming out? Because we're gonna need to have you back.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Came out, uh, almost a year ago, came out last October. Yeah, so it's out.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Great. We'll put the link down and I'll check out the book. But because here's what I find too, it's like, I find it's the way you were describing it. I feel like it's like a, a product market fit. In this case, I'm a kid on a bike with my brakes clamped, right? I can work harder, do more outreach, do more phone calls, do more LinkedIn, bother way more people. And I'm, you know, sweating and toiling, but I'm working, quote unquote, and I'm not going as far generating revenue. But compared to you with your brakes freed and you're going downhill with the wind behind your back and you got the right tires, it's like all the pieces align to make you go that much faster. So on a sales podcast, I'm hearing about this, is this, go back to, what's her name, Krista?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Krista.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Krista, she was in the right place, right time and had the right opportunities. And sure, she had the right motions that helped her to be successful. Kid on a bike, you're fit, you have gloves and whatever you need, you know, shoes. But it seems like if the parents or the leaders don't have the right system, doesn't matter how great of a athlete you are or salesperson, you can't be as successful. So the challenges come back, then what can the sales leaders do to help make these conditions, you know, affordable for these kids, quote unquote, clients or sales reps to be successful? What making sense on that?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love the analogy and kind of to build on it, it's like, you're riding a tricycle with a clamped brake and you're trying to win the race.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Oh gosh.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  You don't know where the end of the race is and you don't know what direction it is. So should you ride as fast as you can in one direction or should you stop and look around?

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  And everybody says, and what most founders did and what I did is you just ride as hard as you can. I'm gonna gut this out. I'm gonna be gritty. I'm gonna just get out of the door and I'm gonna sell some shit.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  And like, that is the wrong solution. Sometimes, like if you and I, and let's just keep it simple. We're gonna, let's do, um, I don't know, a 50 mile race. Okay. You're on the tricycle. We both have the same tricycle. Who's going to finish the race faster? You, who just goes and rides as fast as you can, assuming we both know where the end is. Or me, who goes to the bike store, spends some time and money and picks out a race bike with carbon fiber wheels and all the kit, and then hops back on half an hour later. And now I'm racing against, I'm on a carbon fiber everything and you're on that trike. I'm gonna crush you.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  I'm done.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Right? And so like, but it's a hard piece because you're like, I'm running a race. There's turning around and walking what feels like walking backwards and going back in time and going back in the process and going back to the store and saying, hey, let me find a map. Let me find a better bike. Let me make sure we're going in the right direction in the first place. It's gonna win every time. And so I think to founders, having a way, or has to sales leaders, you need to have a way of going back to the founder and saying, hey, here's the experiments we've ran, here's what we've seen. And if you know that you, like for me, I knew that we, something was wrong when I couldn't sell our first product because I know how to sell. I know how to prospect. I had booked a ton of meetings. I knew how to close. And I was like, my close rate was really good at my last company. Like I've been a top sales performer pretty consistently.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And then I got to selling my own product and I had tons of meetings and one sale. I'm like, well, what changed? Oh, it was the product. Like, I don't think I miraculously suddenly stopped knowing how to sell. It was obviously an impact of the product. And so I think to the sales leaders, you need to look at, okay, I've measured the process. We've got consistent inputs and we're getting an output that's inconsistent with past performance of these folks in this role, you know? And I think to do that, you need to have consistent, you need to have data that you can trust of like, it's these accounts, it's these company, these accounts, these people, this process, these results, and we're not seeing it. And so, you know, to a founder, a sales leader saying that is going to feel like a cop out of like, oh, we haven't got this and that. And so you've got to have the data to back it up.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And then if you're struggling with that, well, then what I would, like, if you're a sales leader and you're bowling zeros or you're getting like, very, very poor reply rates, then what I'd encourage you to do is maybe just renegade this a little bit. Cause I think as a salesperson, as a sales leader, your commission check is on the line. You're as close to being an entrepreneur as you can be without actually being an entrepreneur, running your own show.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  And I like, I was a salesperson for 10 years and like, you get used to the uncertainty, you get used to a lot of the things. And so what I would encourage a sales leader to do is if the founder is not receptive, or maybe you just want to do the pre-work, I would just go out and start doing customer development interviews anyway. And I would go and I'd interview five or six different verticals. I would ask them, I'd run through the customer development questions. If anybody's curious, you can, like, I've got a book. If anybody buys the book, I've got like this doc with all the pre-sale benefits. There's like 10 or 15 different things. And one of those is a customer development cheat sheet. And then I've got a bunch of other stuff. But if you're looking to do all this, if you just email me, I'll like, even if you don't buy the book, I'll just, I'll send you that sheet. So find my email because you're a salesperson and I'm sure you know how to do it. It's not that hard.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  But I would go and I'd run these interviews and say, hey, if I could solve any problem for you, what would it be? The really magical questions, though, are after you've asked that, you know, magic one question, if I could solve any problem, you need to ask the quantifying questions, which is, on a scale of one to 10, how satisfied are you with how you're currently solving it? And on a scale of one to 10, how important is this to you? And this lets you graph the importance satisfaction of all of the customer archetypes. So go interview your existing pipeline. Go interview your existing customers. Go interview folks that are in adjacent markets. Go interview different people. And what you're looking for are problems or people that have problems that are high importance and low satisfaction and tied to a high impact problem.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Because if I'm really unhappy, I'm deeply unsatisfied about something that's really important to me, but solving it is going to cost, is going to earn me $8 a month, you shouldn't build a product about that.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  If it's going to unlock a half billion in pipeline, you know, and 250K in closed revenue? Yeah. If it's going to unlock 327 meetings a month? Absolutely. And so what we're looking for are folks that have their hair on fire. We're looking for really high importance, low satisfaction problems that are attached and can have to a really high impact problem space. And so, yeah, that's what I would look for. Those are the things that I would do. The customer development approach looks like, hey, can I interview you? I'm thinking of doing X or Y, or we're looking for feedback. We're thinking of entering your market. We're doing, basically, can I pick your brain? And then some context about why you want to pick the brain. PS, this isn't a sneaky sales call. I'm just here to learn.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's dope. I look forward to that. And I'll put that in the show notes as well, but I love that approach there. I mean, I'm even getting some ideas for some of our stuff for our sister company, so this is great.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Think about all the things you wish you had help with in sales. Finding the right buyers, knowing which account to prioritize, reaching out with the right message at the right time. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is built to help with exactly that. It uses AI-powered recommendation to surface leads and accounts that match your goals, so you spend less time searching and more time selling. You get real-time account insights that help you grow your pipeline, personalize outreach, and stay informed about buyer activities. It can't replace the work of selling, but it gives you the data and visibility to sell with more focus and confidence. That's what we need. All of this is powered by LinkedIn's network of over 1.2 billion professionals.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  The most dynamic buyer network working just for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60-day trial at LinkedIn.com/sell. That's LinkedIn.com/sell. Terms and conditions apply.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information, and I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them? Could I train their team? Could I come and speak in an S K O? Could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business and still to this day. So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world, and it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  If you're interested, go to bluemangostudios.com. Again, bluemangostudios.com, and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  The last thing I want to talk about today, just kind of go back in on and to just wrap this thing up here, is if I don't have the product market fit and we are doing outbound, you talked about a little bit about email, how you use email, and then how you use your network. Can you tap into that for me for a little bit?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And I'll try not to shout out my product too much because I'm, I'm building my own thing. I'll try and give you the original sources, and then I'll just say one time that I've got a thing that makes it a lot easier. It's in beta. If anybody's interested, drop me a note, but that's all I'll say. So like, if I don't have, if I'm pre-product market fit, there's two things you can do. Well, one, you absolutely should be sending these customer development interview questions or emails, sorry. And so like, try to book customer development interviews. And then you book the interview, and I'll answer the second question in a minute, but I want to talk about like, the most important piece, you know, back to my initial question or my initial comment about customer development sales are the same thing, or at least two sides of the same continuum.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  You reach out, say, hey, can I pick your brain? Right? Then you get on the meeting, you pick their brain. Then, because we're dirty salespeople, at the end of the call, we say, hey, when I decide to work on this, or when I get to the next stage, could I get some more of your feedback on what we're working on? And if they say yes, great. You mind if I throw some time on the calendar for three weeks from now, or two weeks from now, or next week? And you just continue that loop, and you go from a customer development interview to a feedback session where they're like, hey, this is a piece of paper prototype. Does this look like it would directionally solve the problem? Cool. When we build this, would you give me feedback? Cool. So then you go from like, paper feedback to MVP feedback. Hey, this is what it looks like.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Does that look like it's going to solve all the things? What's missing? Great. Then the next one is, hey, what features do I need to build to get you to use this full-time? And then the last question is, what features do I need to build for you to pay me for this? And then the bonus question at the end is, once they're using it, paying for it, then you continue this loop of like, staying with them and working and asking the questions. And that last question is, what features do I need to build to get you to refer me to three friends?

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  You cannot do any of this. None of this works. All of this breaks down if you're right-handed. No, I'm kidding. If you're, if you don't book the next meeting while you're on the call.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  It's going to create so much more hassle for you, so much more work. Basically, don't do it, right? Don't try and do this from a cold start because it'll be hard. Like, if you've got these old conversations, I shouldn't say, don't try and do it because that's, that's wrong. Like, absolutely try, but it's much, much harder if you don't book the call on the call. So yeah, put a note, I've got sticky notes all over my desk, and throw one on and say, on your monitor, and say, hey idiot, this is how I write to myself. Hey idiot, don't forget to book the meeting. I had that exact sticky note on my monitor for a very long time.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  You book the call on the call, you save yourself hours of work every week. And if they don't say yes to the call, then you know you haven't done a good job, and you know they're not worth following up with.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  So.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  It's so much with it. My goodness, this has been a masterclass, and I know we probably could go on for a lot longer with it. I think there's a lot here, if we're recap it, when it comes to going to market and the product market fit. One, you can create all the wonderful strategies, get all the software in the world, but if you don't have that product market fit, you're toast. So you've got to figure that out. Two, you can use the customer development calls to be able to help figure that piece out. And then the third component is, there's a way you can go about doing this and systematic when you're following up with those clients. But you did mention you did have a tool, so you do your shameless plug if that's okay. I'm giving you permission.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Thanks. It's called Predictable AI, predictable.ai. There's no information app on the website about it at all. If you email me, [email protected], I can share some details. Basically, I spent a lot of time building stuff for Clay and not, I wasn't a Clay employee, I was one of their first implementation partners, referral partners, that kind of thing.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I've been using it for four years, give or take. I got pretty good at it, and then until last year, I got tired of rebuilding the same plays over and over again in different Clays. And there's just a ton of manual click work. And so I said, this is dumb, I'm going to build my own thing. And so that's predictable. It's similar to Clay, but a lot easier to use, a lot less complexity, and it's got some plays built in that I, the plays that I would typically run for a consulting client, kind of baked into it. And customer development is one of those, social listening is another one of those. So that's the tool. If you like the way I ramble, my newsletter is foundersedition.co. You can find out about the book and some of the other projects I'm working on there.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Oh dope. Colin, we're going to put all of this in the show notes, folks can get access to it. And you already gave me the source where to get in touch with you, but I appreciate you taking time to come on our show, man. Thank you.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on. Thanks, nice to meet everybody, and I hope to hear from you.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Colin came through and he delivered, man. I'm telling you, if you want to check out his book, you can find some details down below, as well as you can find it on Audible. You can find him at his newsletter, which we do have linked in the show notes as well, and you can check out his podcasts. There's a wealth of information that he shared that I feel that many of us often overlook that we can apply. Now, as a sales rep, pat yourself on the back, and you may feel like you've been a horrible seller because you can't sell the product. You and I have both been in companies where the product just sucked. It just wasn't a fit. And I remember one of those companies I worked at, it was a great lesson learned, and it helped me as I moved forward. And I worked in another company, which was like amazing product market fit. They were just niche in their audience, and they just knew how to, you know, knew how to sell to those people, and they were successful. But you got to make sure you have that right fit.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  And if not, if you're left to be the one to test it out as a founding sales rep, that could be challenging. Listen, check out the things Colin has to share. If you're a sales leader, check it out. And if you have to share this with your CEO and founder, sometimes they have a hard time listening and accepting that. So share it with them as well in the appropriate way. But I challenge you to apply some of these things that Collin shared, especially those customer development calls, and bring that data. Listen, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. But most importantly, I want you to raise your level of thinking, and I want you to go out and do big things. See you on the next one.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSE Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershon Obayal. Our video engineer is Dusan Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristy Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.