How I get my customers to commit

We’re currently building our MVP. Nine out of ten companies we spoke to so far have signed up for our beta and committed financially before we even wrote a single line of code. Getting someone to take out their wallet out is the ultimate idea validation. This post explains how we get customers to commit.

We’re building a SaaS product that will help app developers make more money by optimizing their onboarding. I think you could replicate this process with almost any other product, B2B or B2C.

Here’s my 3-step interview process with potential customers:

I will start by asking a lot of open ended questions to understand their business and the challenges they're facing. My favorite questions in this phase are:

What’s the biggest challenge in your business right now?
What’s the most difficult thing about what you’re trying to achieve?
Tell me about the last time X happened.
How do you deal with this issue right now?
Basically a lot of “what” and “how” questions. Don’t impose your idea of the solution, really understand their struggle.

Once I had a good overview of their business, I'd start asking more specific questions about that problem and potential solutions. We’re helping developers make more money by optimizing onboarding so our questions would look like this:

Do you feel like you have all the data you need to make decisions?
How many people in your team are working on this problem?
What is this problem costing you every month?
How much more MRR could you make if you solved this?
If they’re really struggling with this problem, I will move on to the next step which is the commitment. If they’re not experiencing the problem, I don’t pitch. I explain that we will not be able to help them and respectfully end the call there.

If they are really struggling with the same problem as companies in our target group and our product would help them, I will ask for a commitment and say some of the following:

We’re opening up for beta for 20 companies, would you like me to sign you up on the list?
You’ll get lifetime discount once we launch
In order to get real commitment, we’re asking for a $100. It’s fully refundable before we deliver the product which take a few months
While we’re building out the product, I’ll help you manually solve the problem before we can automate with the MVP. This makes it a no-brainer for them. They get free consultation from me. In return, we get great feedback. It probably helps that I have a strong personal brand in the space so they already trust me.

Like I said, 9 out of 10 companies said yes. You’re not pitching, you’re trying to find out if you can help solve their problem. $100 is nothing for a company but it's a higher-quality commitment than just a verbal agreement. As soon as you ask for money, it becomes real. It’s better to ask for a financial commitment and get rejected than work on the wrong problem / solution for months. If they don’t want to commit financially, it tells you the problem is not big enough or the solution is not good enough.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment. I respond to everyone.