Customer Site Visits to Rev the Engine
I’m a believer in customer site visits to rev the engine for startups. It is super valuable to see the customer in their own environment and speak face-to-face about how they do things.
It’s expensive and time-consuming to travel. For most startups, traveling salespeople are not as viable a business model as inside sales. However, there are times when customer site visits can be very valuable.
In 2008 and 2009, as we were launching our first product, I noticed that we were getting a significant number of leads developing in the Washington DC/Baltimore area, the Boston area, and the Orlando area. In each location, I arrange 2 to 3 full days of onsite visits. Each of these trips paid off with significant early revenue for our startup, making it well worth the visits. Here are some thoughts about making these visits count:
- Fill up the schedule in advance
- Ask the primary contacts to invite as many people as possible to meet with you; always be looking for referrals
- Bring compelling demos
- Prepare great questions to ask
- Ask good qualifying questions
- Try to understand their market pressures and internal struggles
- Try to get meaningful product feedback
- Try to get an understanding of their intentions for future involvement with your startup
- Try to get a sense of things you can do for them to make a difference
- Be open and sincere; tell them that you are looking to them as “early innovators/adopters” and “market leaders” on the new thing your startup is doing
- Invite partners in the area (I often invited hardware vendors to accompany me), but do not let them control the conversation
- Make meaningful next steps with each visit
- Follow-up afterwards
- Travel cheaply
We do not travel much anymore. As a regular practice, it is much better to focus on inside sales. However, we still try to find opportunities to do customer site visits whenever we travel for other reasons.
What are your thoughts on customer site visits? How often do you travel to customer’s sites?