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You get the emails so you can do "Customer Development". You email them back and schedule an interview to learn more about your customers.

It isn't something where you say yes/no based on the number of signups.




So that's what it's been called. Lately I've been having people trying to schedule interviews with me about their service.

It's so incredibly annoying, because it wastes my time, and I get to learn that they are considering charging way way way more than I'd ever want to spent, so I stop using them regardless.

It's like a lose/lose scenario. I get the impression their pitching out different money numbers to try and see response, but when you say something clearly off the wall, I just stop using your service.

I don't want there to be some possibility a month or two down the road that you're going to try and up the price to one of those insane ones you asked me about.

So far for me, "Customer Development" is the single largest turnoff for any application.


Testing pricing isn't usually a big part of interviews unless you are addressing an enterprise market. Also, Customer Development is larger in scope than pricing or interviews:

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-custome...


Thanks for the link to the article. I think that certain people have the time, or are willing to do this for a startup. There's nothing wrong with that.

But I think it's important to not think of it like a sales pitch.

I am getting "Customer Development" calls as if they are a sales pitch. As if it's okay to sort of bully me into trying to respond to the questions, like a sales person refuses to accept no.

This is incredible annoying, and it's good to see where the (good) intentions of this thing come from.


http://giffconstable.com/2011/07/12-tips-for-customer-develo...

"make sure that you're learning, not selling!"




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