TALKING TO HUMANS: Success starts with understanding your customers

TALKING TO HUMANS is written by Giff Constable about how to successfully start a business by thorough understanding of customers. Most businesses are very similar to those in past centuries that deal with customers who buy products. This is very simple idea that is included in the definition of business, but entrepreneurs sometimes fail to success in career due to lack of understanding in their customers and clients. Part One starts with the story of two entrepreneurs, Koshi and Roberta, who are trying to sell pillows with their techniques and scientific knowledge. It starts off with a discussion with the advisor in starting a business. As the advisor said, more important thing for entrepreneurs at this stage is to learn first and understand the market. Focusing only on the product without understanding of market is simply ineffective. Observing the current market, talking to customers, and buying the products are critical in starting business. Koshi and Roberta, based on their product, started by researching the current online shopping website and retail stores, walking in customer’s shoes to understand how people of different age groups and occupations prioritize in buying pillows, and regrouping with organization. By going back to initial list of hypotheses, Koshi and Roberta could organize and regroup their ideas.

Along with the lessons learned from Koshi and Roberta’s adventure, TALKING TO HUMANS further develops in “How to” effectively engage in additional qualitative research. It is not an exaggeration to say that being an introvert as an entrepreneur is completely ineffective and somewhat absurd. It is not only in the situation of starting business, but also in persuading customers that greatly demands eloquence in speech. To success in expanding the business, I believe it is vital to talk and persuade diverse group of people with credibility and change their mind. As a foreigner, although I once thought that it would be extremely difficult to communicate with many strangers, I now think that to actually start and to gradually expand the research of customers is not very hard. I believe consistent practice and numerous experiences with many customers will gradually solve this problem.