The Line Between Sales and Customer Discovery Only Exists At Scale

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I’m about three months into actively talking to publishers and advertisers about Gruvian.

I can place my conversations into four buckets based on how I approach them:

1. To Publishers: Hey I’m building this thing that might provide you value. What do you think?

2. To Publishers: Hey I’ve built this thing that can provide you value. Do you want to use it?

3. To Advertisers: I’m trying to learn more about marketing, tell me things about your job?

4. To Advertisers: Do you want to sponsor this site through my platform?

Going off my opening intro alone, it seems the 1st and 3rd would be solidly in the customer discovery category and the 2nd and 4th would lie in the sales category.

This did not end up the being the case.

In actuality:

• Our first onboarded publisher came from outreach 1
• The most valuable pieces of information came from people in groups 2+4. Specifically people who told me they wouldn’t use Gruvian

Nuance hides in the no’s

The sales version of the Anna Karenina principle is something like 'the nuance hides in the no’s”.

If someone instantly says yes to a sales pitch, you haven’t really revealed anything. Obviously you made a sale which is great; But you didn’t learn something deep about your customers.

The no’s are the most revealing.

Here are some quotes from Publishers and Advertisers who said no to using Gruvian

• “I just want a quick integration and a guaranteed fill rate”
  • We need a way to combat low fill rates for our early publishers
  • Integration should be seamless
• “I’m not looking to buy ads on a platform I don’t know yet. But if you think more than 1 in a 1000 will convert, my affiliate links will be more profitable than your usual ads.”
  • Affiliate links de-risk the ad spend from the advertisers perspective
  • There is also a theoretically infinite supply of affiliate campaigns to run, which solves the fill rate challenge

When someone responds with a detailed no, you get to discover the contours of their preferences. You can get a sense of the boundary between what they would and would not purchase.

Understanding that boundary is the key to setting a successful product roadmap.