I-Corps
Customer Discovery
Help Desk Training & Examples
Customer Discovery
To find potential customers, channel partners, suppliers, etc., the process is simple.
First, you already know several potential targets from within your personal, university
or business network, and you can initiate discovery with them directly. Ask them who
else you should talk to.
If you have no one in mind, you can do a web search using key words from your
technology to turn up appropriate potential targets. Either way, once you know one
potential target, you know lots more.
Every business entity has both a SIC (3 digit) and a NAICS (5 digit and more) code, a
classification system/method set up by the government. This database, namely the
North American Industry Classification System, (“nakes“), is used by business and
government to classify all business establishments according to type of economic
activity.
Customer Discovery
Next, use Google to look up the NAICS code of a target you have already identified,
typing in their company name, or their industry group and the words “NAICS code”, hit
return, and there it is.
Go to your university or local public library (usually online) and use ”One-Source”, or
any other large NAICS database, do a search of the NAICS code itself, to reveal all
others in the same classification. Now you will see individual profiles of your targets,
with enough information to get discovery underway.
Also, there are lots of other available databases specific to many business sectors, and
your library will have them, along with librarians eager to help.
In the next few pages are examples of two of the databases available. While you are
here at the University of Michigan we have arranged for you to have use of the library
at the Ross School of Business where these databases are in common use.
The next page tells you how to use the system.
Break the Ice - Sample Questions
First, take into account whether you sell to the end user, or to someone who makes your product part of
theirs. Direct, or though a distributor? Either way, think to yourself about how your products or services
meet their needs. Then ask questions like these…….
• What frustrates or annoys you about selling your product…….? What do your customers want?
• How are your current solutions performing - do you need more features, higher performance, etc.?
• Is cost your biggest problem?
• What risks do you fear the most – technical, financial, operational, etc?
• What are the main difficulties and challenges you face with your suppliers?
• What do you need that you do not have?
• Do you do any advance planning with your suppliers or customers?
• Etc.