Navigating Customer Development with AI: The Founder’s Guide - GPT Edition

An article we liked from Thought Leader Alok Nandan, PhD of First Rays Venture Partners:

Founder's Guide to Customer Development - 🔥GPT edition🔥

A lot has changed since I wrote one of these. I wanted to revisit some of these insights from the previous series (Part 1, Part 2, AI-edition, COVID-edition) – in the brave new world of AI.

For founders, as part of the idea maze of navigating the category creation vs existing category question, customer development is a key activity. This is a key piece that founders should not take shortcuts (especially if you don’t come from the industry/domain). LinkedIn is your friend but you need to know how to craft a LinkedIn message that customers appreciate and more importantly, respond to.

💯 If you can master the art of cold outreach, the world is your oyster.

Here’s a suggested structure for sending emails on LinkedIn with regards to customer development.

1. Customer Development

• Subject: Research//Reference//Share Insight//RequestResearch: An opening that shows you have done your homework and that this is not a COLD call.
• Reference: Refer to other clients/people you talked to that have had a similar experience and what they did. Human beings value social proof a lot
• Share Insight: Offer value, such as a link to some blog or white paper
• Request: Offer to share more insights and ask for a meeting or a phone conversation.
• I have listed some other best practices in my previous blog.

💡GPT note: Each of these steps are super-charged in the world of GPT and Perplexity. The time it took earlier to craft this was of the order of days, now you can do it 30 mins or less!

Prospecting using GPT prompts to get vertical / market insights, and show up smarter on your next meeting. What other prompts or tips do you love to use?

Hyper-personalized emails

1. Google search for “[COMPANY] CEO interview”
2. Copy transcript from Youtube or interview text
3. Paste into ChatGPT and ask “What are the top 3 takeaways from the CEO in this interview?”
4. Copy the takeaway that best matches your value prop.
5. Tell ChatGPT: “My company’s value prop is [VALUE PROP] and my customer need is [PASTE FROM CEO INTERVIEW]. Please write a 100 word email that connects the two.”
6. Edit that email so it actually sounds good (first drafts from ChatGPT are ??). Try to get it down to 50ish words.

2. Is there a Compelling Event?

When selling to enterprise buyers, another useful tool that I have found is the notion of “Compelling Event”, which can be defined as...

Read the rest of this article at linkedin.com...

Thanks for this article excerpt to Alok Nandan, PhD, Founding General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners.

Photo by Buro Millennial

Want to share your advice for startup entrepreneurs?  Submit a Guest Post here.