Problem 01
Money already leaving the building
A five figure tool they openly resent
The clearest willingness-to-pay signal in the whole scan, because the money
is already committed and the buyer is angry about it. Nobody negotiates this hard about
something they are not paying for.
"Every time I log into LinkedIn Recruiter I feel like I'm being mugged by
Microsoft with a smile. The damn thing is $10k+ a year and for what? Outdated profiles,
broken filters, and InMail response rates that make cold calling in 2003 look good."
r/recruiting ·
read the thread ↗
Problem 02
Actively shopping, cannot find it
Looking for software that they believe does not exist
A small agency owner listing exactly what they would buy, and reporting that
nothing on the market fits. Demand with a spec attached, and no supplier claiming it.
"I'm looking for something that is seemingly impossible - a simple CRM that has
like 4 main features: Email integration with easy access to view emails in and out ...
Links between the data points ... natural language search ... easy resume and LinkedIn
parsing. And that's it!"
r/recruiting ·
read the thread ↗
Problem 03
Hours disappearing into a spreadsheet
Running a growing desk out of Excel until it breaks
The moment before a purchase. They have outgrown the manual system, they can
feel the waste, and they are in a thread asking strangers what to buy next.
"I started off using an excel spreadsheet of everyone I have spoken with ...
However, we are starting to hire and grow more and now I feel like I have wasted time
manually entering information into an excel sheet."
r/recruiting ·
read the thread ↗
How to read these three
Rank a market by how close the money already is, never by how loud the complaint gets.
01 is the strongest signal on this page, because the budget already exists. Ten
thousand dollars a year is leaving that business right now, and the buyer resents every pound
of it. You are not asking anyone to find new money. You are asking them to move money they
already hate spending, and that is a much shorter conversation.
02 is a shopping list with no supplier. Someone wrote out the four features they
would buy, then reported that nothing on the market has them. Demand with a spec attached is
rarer, and worth more, than demand with a complaint attached.
03 is the moment before a purchase. The spreadsheet still works, but it is bending,
and they are already asking strangers what to buy next. Arrive on the day it breaks.
Now run the same three questions on the market you are pitching into: who signs the cheque,
which problem has budget attached today rather than sympathy, and the one line that opens the
room.