Solving a problem
“So, what’s your idea?” - everyone thinks about this, imagining that companies are built on ideas, inspirations, flash of thoughts.
But no, companies exist because they solve a problem better than any existing solutions, and grow bigger as they solve problems for more people or solve a bigger problem for the world.
Idk why I suddenly have a flash of light in my brain
I have been hearing about this since college, I know I need to solve a problem, but I feel that the problem I have actually comes from my idea. In this case, one could even say, you are imagining a problem… or you arrive too early at a conclusion in your discovery phase and grow content with an insignificant problem and you decide to build.
But as I conduct more customer discovery calls across different profiles, I realize problems become more specific.
Take manufacturers as an example.
The very first time I land on the idea of an AI SDR for Chinese suppliers or helping with 拓客 came from the Chinese New Year dinner I had with my uncle in February 2025.
He said he has problems with top of funnel lead qualification coming from the Meta ads campaigns he ran; there was a lot of inbound leads and he was understaff to manage it inhouse, so he outsourced the task for $7000 to a team that does cold calling to covert them.
That turns out poorly.
The reason is the outsourced team not only had broken English but also doesn’t speak Spanish and Portuguese at all, and guess what, my uncle ran ads in South America… when those leads get calls that greet them with “Hello, how are you?”, they either immediately hang up or respond with broken English that both sides couldn’t understand.
I offered a better solution: a multilingual AI sales rep that can help him convert more efficiently and effectively, and he was sold. I built the tool fast with Vapi and delivered to him, and the conversion rate was much higher.
I then become content with this idea and solution and go out to find more people to talk to - at that time I thought I was validating my hypothesis, turns out I was more about validating my product idea, which is backwards. And I would be stuck there in a local minimum.
Surely, everyone wants to get more sales, who doesn’t?
It’s not until I interviewed more factory owners I cam to understand that the incentives could be very different and cannot be encapsulated with just “I need help to get more sales”
Imagine you talk to 10k owners, and only 5 of them run Meta ads and want a better top of funnel conversion mechanism, then I definitely stuck in a local minimum. I’d be happy to spend the time and heads down building, maybe for a problem that doesn’t scale or that problem might be wrong in the first place.
What I am trying to say is I talk to more suppliers now, when I ask their challenges with their sales, they express different pains and needs: 1/ I have always been reliant on word-of-mouth and relationship, but the old customer just chose another supplier because they have better pricing and quality. 2/ we are too reliant on Alibaba as the single channel and I am forced to keep paying for ads spend to get exposure 3/ I have a lot of old leads but I don’t have enough staff to call and email them (are you sure this is the right solution to your problem? Or if this is even the right problem?)
Meanwhile you hear 1/ Alibaba isn’t working, I spend in ads but lead quality is terrible (industry problem?)
As I dig further, I can become much more specific on the problem statement.
I learned from conversation with 10+ factory owners and they told me Alibaba and tradeshow ROI is dropping, and some others are saying they rely on Alibaba and wish to diversify.
So then my pitch can become “we help you not depend on Alibaba but still get leads. What’s even better? You don’t pay a dime till you close a transaction.”
See how different it is now? That helps me shape my elevator message. And also whats even better is I can go ahead and target those who already are on Alibaba, direct audience outreach.
Its not as generic as “我们在开发一个AI业务员，能够帮你24/7主动拓客”
There might be other examples maybe like idk
拓客 is way too general
But this level of insight is still shallow, I expect to get more deeper insights as I talk to more people.
“Why is my sales not growing?” - well sir, this problem is multidimensional.
