Analyzing Demand
Analyzing 30 of my recent sales calls with Google's NotebookLM product to try and gauge demand.
The early stage of startup building is a creative process. Its more creating art than engineering. You are using a lot of gut feel and intuition vs. hard data to drive the ideas.
That said, I thought it’d be fun to expose you to how I’m trying to analyze demand data. In the last two weeks I’ve had 30 sales calls. These are early, research style sales calls where I’m presenting the idea of Game Film, asking the person i’m talking to if they have any pressing projects in the ballpark of what Game Film could help solve (while sparking a few ideas of things I’ve seen others trying to work through that are now helping me as design partners).
One day (hopefully soon) I’ll use Game Film to do this analysis. We’re rapidly trying to get the product working well. The tech is not trivial.
As an alternative to building my own thing, the next best tool I could think of is to give Google’s NotebookLM product all 30 sales transcripts and ask it questions about the data.
Here is my prompt:
These sources are sales calls that I'm having to present my idea of Game Film. I want you to take on the role of a user researcher helping with an expertise in finding product market fit. What evidence is there a true authentic demand in these calls? Its important that you only look at the parts of the transcript where the customer is responding, not where Wade Anderson (me) is speaking.
And here is the response:
As a user researcher focused on product-market fit, I've analyzed the customer responses in the provided sales call transcripts to identify evidence of authentic demand for Game Film. Here's what I found, focusing solely on the customers' reactions:
Recognition of the Problem ("Telephone Game"): Several customers immediately resonated with the problem Wade Anderson described as the "telephone game" – the distortion of customer feedback as it passes through different teams.
RN responded with "Oh, yeah" after hearing the explanation of the telephone game.
BK said Wade's description of relying on feedback from other team members telling him what customers have said rang true for him: "hundred percent dead on yep".
CB responded with "Oh, yeah" when asked if the concept of the telephone game vibrated with him.
Validation of Pressing Customer Questions: Customers acknowledged experiencing the types of "pressing customer questions" that Game Film aims to address.
RN stated, "a lot of those do resonate a lot" when presented with examples of pressing customer questions related to feature requests, new product initiatives, and feedback loops.
JS agreed that the examples of pressing customer questions were "totally" relatable.
HA also nodded and indicated agreement ("It sounds like it sounds like you're nodding and seeing this before") when presented with similar examples.
Articulation of Existing Pain Points Aligned with Game Film's Value Proposition: Customers described their current struggles with analyzing customer data and extracting insights, mirroring the problems Game Film intends to solve.
CS mentioned trying to get call transcripts to run through AI to find commonalities but found it to be a "royal excuse my French but it isn't paying in the to get it right now out of the system". He also expressed a desire to identify common objections, effective rep responses, and characteristics of ideal customers by analyzing call data, stating, "This seems actually like a really good way to approach that. I think you've landed on something that's pretty good".
The customer in mentioned their "disappointment when I read through sales deals that fell through and see no actual info. It's the way the deal was," indicating a desire for better insights from sales interactions.
The customer in described their challenge as, "today, my challenge and your challenge is what we have to do. We have to watch a whole bunch of calls to try to get at this," highlighting the time-consuming nature of manual analysis.
DC liked the idea of putting "data behind customer questions" and noted that being able to quantify the frequency of certain issues from a large volume of calls ("feels like data that would be really hard to put together without a tool like this") would be valuable.
Interest in Exploring Game Film Further (Pilot/Next Steps): Several customers showed interest in learning more, exploring potential use cases, or even participating in a pilot.
LB asked "Yeah, how would that look like from your point of view?" when the possibility of a pilot was raised. He later suggested connecting Wade with a researcher on his team who uses Dovetail, expressing interest in a comparison.
CS said, "Yeah, I think I might. Let me talk to my tech people... because this is really intriguing. If they're the way for me, like I said, the real use case for me is, can I figure out what is actually working when we get someone on the phone? I would like, I think it would just be a friend project to try to help you answer too".
AB while not a decision-maker, offered to "try to set up a call with the three you, me, another who would probably be able to say, like, yeah, let's let's test this out."
DF in agreed to a second call to discuss potential projects: "Yeah, that sounds good."
In summary, the customer responses across these sales calls provide significant evidence of authentic demand for a solution like Game Film. The consistent recognition of the "telephone game" problem, the validation of the targeted "pressing customer questions," the articulation of existing pain points related to data analysis, and the expressed interest in exploring the solution further all strongly suggest a market need for a tool that can efficiently extract and synthesize actionable insights from customer interaction data. The positive reactions to the core concept and specific features further reinforce this potential product-market fit.
Overall *kind of* interesting. I can’t say I learned much new but it was interesting to pull the data together and ask for some aggregated insights.
Hopefully we can do much, much better with Game Film.
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#HappyLearning