How to Approach Strangers for Customer Interviews

LIFFFT's Whiteboard Wednesday videos on Customer Development.

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Skydive. Start a company. Ask them out. Travel the world. Learn to paint.

But there's a more interesting question. "Why are you afraid?"

Once you ask the "five whys" enough times, you often end up getting to the same core reason, over and over again.

Rejection.

One of the most terrifying ways to get rejected is by approaching strangers.

But if you want to do customer interviews (and you DO want to do customer interviews), you have to approach strangers.

Here's the thing though. It turns out approaching people isn't actually that hard.

One of the tricks that makes approaching people easier is to have some "openers" prepared, and knowing how to continue a good conversation.

In this week's Whiteboard Wednesday video, Kav talks about [[LINK: how to approach people and build rapport]] and provides a few opening patterns that we have seen work almost 100% of the time.

This tactical advice will help you get comfortable approaching and interviewing people on the street, in the bookstore, at a bar... anywhere!

Help us caption & translate this video!

[intanali]

I love the chill vibe of the presenter. gives wisdom without coming across like a typical business guru. thank you!

[Cechyy]

Love this video, guys! Great ideas in only 5 minutes. 100% worth to come to watch it again to remember the stuff.

Exactly what we need write right now, as we already interview all the social cyrcle people

[tafm]

I used this approach today. Really helped. Thanks

[minhucto]

Thank you guys, these video that you've uploaded were so much helpful! I'm about to build some really small business, this definately helps me a lot.

I'm also writing some SCRIPT for customer interview!

[noahwarrior]

Awesome video gonna use this for an upcoming project

[alialmarzouqi]

Pls keep goin in lean startup videos so helpful

[nachiket_]

could you kindly share how to talk about revenue streams in the business model especially for a freemium model?

[New_Zealand_Music]

This isn't related to customer interview sorry. Lol. I'm a clinical psychologist and I get complete strangers walking up to me in the street and asking for help. And I will. I was hoping your video would be about something else. Have a nice day. With your first comment I would add somewhere with your, permission, which can be seen as offering respect. But that's just from my training & psychology. Cheers. But I'm actually looking for people to work with this is giving me a good idea. I never thought of doing this before. Thank you very much. Absolutely if someone wants to tell you there's a story listen. I liked it when you said that. Sub. Great video, random find.