I got a 7-figure SaaS idea from asking questions in this way...

Before I start, some people are hesitant to ask others for their time.

News flash: people love to talk about themselves :)

Get out there and just ask. Most people will say yes.

I’m going to share some sample questions in a moment. These are just off the cuff, but they should be enough to get you started.

The approach is more important than the specific questions.

You can’t use the same set of questions for everyone. You need to be able to go with their flow and gently guide them when appropriate, to stay on track with what you’re trying to get to. Just like a good interviewer.

Listen deeply. Don’t just go through the motions.

Make sure you understand what they’re getting at.

Don’t hesitate to ask them to clarify what they’re saying.

Ask them to define domain terms you aren’t familiar with.

You should very often follow-up their responses with “tell me more about that.”

They’ll keep going, deeper. And that’s where you want to go: deep.

And you’ll also find that some people haven’t thought about this stuff before, so you’ll need to be kind of like a therapist and help them get to the core pain.

And if they start telling you what they think would be “cool,” ignore it.

You want to get at what is painful, not what’s cool.

People don’t pay for cool, at least not within the realm of what we’re doing here.

Enough talk, let’s start asking some simple questions:

• What part of your job do you like the least?

• What do you have to do repeatedly that is time consuming?

• What tasks do you and your colleagues all have to do in common?

• What are some tasks you delegate, or would like to delegate?

• Do you have to generate any types of reports?

• Tell me about any grunt work you have to do.

• What software do you use that is a poor experience? Or doesn’t work right? Or insufficient?

• Tell me about the spreadsheets you have. (Where there’s a spreadsheet, there’s a SaaS idea)

• Tell me more about the spreadsheets you have. (Where there’s a spreadsheet, there are more spreadsheets) 😆😜

Quick intermission to note:

We are getting into questions that require more thought and creativity. Not everyone will be good at coming up with answers for these.

It may seem weird to some of us, but people’s brains work differently.

We are problem solvers. Not everyone is.

That’s OK

Carrying on…

• If you could wave a magic wand to solve a particular problem in your day-to-day, what would it be?

• What processes in your business could be streamlined?

• What processes in your business do you feel could be automated?

• Anything we haven’t touched on that this brings up?

And so on…

I hope that gives you some inspiration and a framework to get started.

Remember: People love sharing their problems. Get out there and start asking questions! You’ll be surprised where it leads you, and you’re guaranteed to meet some good humans along the way.

Note: Since I did this, a great book came out on having conversations like this. I highly recommend checking it out: The Mom Test