August 17, 2025
Reader questions re: Stink vs Rule Results
In my message about folks who are not getting enough leads, I make a recommendation for people who are starting from zero with their marketing:
“Pick the SMALLEST VIABLE MARKET you can think of and FOCUS EXCLUSIVELY on having conversations with THOSE PEOPLE in order to understand WHAT THEY WANT.”
A fellow list member sent in a few follow-up questions:
How do I frame these conversations? Do I say something like, “I’m trying to get a better sense of TARGETMARKET’s pain points so I can be more helpful to my clients. Would you be willing to meet for a 30-minute chat? I’d also be happy to answer any questions you have about EXPENSIVEPROBLEM…” If you’re trying to do this every day for a period of months, that’s a lot of people! Where do you find them all? Do you put a call out on LinkedIn? Comment in various online spaces and communities? Reach out to your network? Any big opportunities I’m missing? What questions do you ask? I know this is very dependent on what the particular niche is, but if you have any thoughts to get me started on the right track, I’d love to hear!
I’ll answer each individually:
How do I frame these conversations? Do I say something like, “I’m trying to get a better sense of TARGETMARKET’s pain points so I can be more helpful to my clients. Would you be willing to meet for a 30-minute chat? I’d also be happy to answer any questions you have about EXPENSIVEPROBLEM…”
Sure, this is a pretty good opener.
Another effective approach I’ve seen is to come up with the idea for an article about something folks in the target market care about, and ask people who are similar to your ideal buyers if you can interview them to share their expertise with your audience.
If you’re trying to do this every day for a period of months, that’s a lot of people! Where do you find them all? Do you put a call out on LinkedIn? Comment in various online spaces and communities? Reach out to your network? Any big opportunities I’m missing?
Picking a target market that you’re unfamiliar with will make things very hard.
If you choose a market that you are familiar with and has at least 2,000 potential clients, you will know where to find them, and it should be relatively easy to create a list.
(And if it’s smaller than 2,000, that’s probably too small of a target market.)
What questions do you ask? I know this is very dependent on what the particular niche is, but if you have any thoughts to get me started on the right track, I’d love to hear!
It’s hard to give prescriptive advice about this without knowing the target market, but the classic one is “What’s your biggest challenge with regard to AREAOFEXPERTISE?”
But you can probably do better than that by asking yourself what you’re genuinely interested in learning from the ideal buyers in your target market.
Yours,
—J