Our team’s project encountered difficulties during the go-to-market stage, so we found an experienced business-development professional to provide guidance. His strategy was that everyone should DM KOLs to discuss cooperation.
The specific method was to find KOLs in the relevant field directly on X, chat with them, build rapport, ask about their needs, and discuss cooperation.
The goals this strategy could achieve were, paraphrased:
This was the strategy proposed by the BD professional and, in his understanding, the most feasible approach with the highest conversion and retention rates.
To be honest, I have no GTM experience, so I kept reflecting on whether this strategy was good or correct and why this was the only strategy recognized by an experienced professional BD. Of course, I had already reached a conclusion long ago; I am only writing it down now. Let me explain why.
My conclusion is this: the strategy is necessarily correct, but it may not produce results.
The principle is simple. If a student asks a teacher how to improve their grades, the teacher will say: preview the material before class, listen carefully and take notes during class, complete the homework conscientiously after class, and ask classmates or teachers about anything you do not understand. This methodology for studying has remained unchanged throughout history.
Yet we all know that in the same class, with the same teacher, textbook, and homework, students’ grades differ enormously.
Why? Because the direction of the strategy is correct, but every student’s execution differs, and differences in individual behavior are amplified.
As long as the direction of a strategy is broad and general enough, therefore, it will always be “correct.” Correctness is not necessarily useful, because a strategy must be executed by specific people, and every person is different. Unless the strategy can be mechanized into a computer program and executed repeatedly, the results will certainly differ.
That is also why you cannot blame the teacher when your grades are poor. Some students achieve excellent grades, do they not? The teacher taught everyone the same material, so you cannot say that the teacher’s principles were wrong.
After 2022, Li Xiaolai stopped investing and devoted himself full-time to family education, writing books, selling courses, and teaching. I like two of Li Xiaolai’s books, The Road to Financial Freedom and The Self-Cultivation of Leeks, and I still pay attention to his new books and courses from time to time.
His views in recent years very clearly share one characteristic: they are extremely “fundamental” and “simple”—so simple that they resemble lessons for six-year-old children, such as telling children to be honest, brave, and kind. Li Xiaolai’s ideas are similar: “production is the source of wealth,” “learn to use compounding,” “knowledge can be transferred, so keep learning whenever you have time,” “self-suggestion is extremely powerful,” and so on.
Everything he says feels so simple that “everyone already knows it,” and every point is simple enough that “any ordinary person can do it.”
Yet in reality there is only one Li Xiaolai, and only Li Xiaolai achieved genuine financial freedom. His courses did not teach these seemingly universal truths to other people and make them rich.
I often reflect on this question too. Why is it that someone as experienced as Li Xiaolai ultimately summarized principles that are unusually plain, fundamental, and simple? I believe he was not deliberately concealing anything, but sincerely believed in his framework.
Now the connection becomes obvious. It is the same as a student asking a teacher how to improve their grades. Many people ask Li Xiaolai how to make money and become wealthy. Li Xiaolai then tells you to persist, work hard, learn, produce, and so on.
Do you see the flaw? The strategic direction is necessarily correct, while specific execution differs from person to person. Again, as long as the direction is broad and general enough, the strategy will always be “correct.”
Returning to the DM KOL strategy, let me break down two questions.
Very broad. Judging from the three expected outcomes described at the beginning, it actually includes three goals: market research, product feedback, and finding partners. A large company might treat these as three separate tasks, but a small team combines them all into the phrase “DM KOLs.”
Those few words may not make the scope intuitive enough. More specifically, we expect to ask KOLs:
Of course, this assumes the other person is willing to reply. In reality, most KOLs do not respond, or they immediately quote a price. The focus of the DM KOL strategy is actually to establish a relationship and strike up a conversation: make contact first, then state your purpose.
Can you hear the problem in that description? It depends entirely on an individual’s social ability, and specifically on socializing by typing online. The BD professional also told us to keep bothering the person until they cursed at us.
Very poor. What I want to share, however, is the greatest problem our team faced and why the results were poor: the execution cost is high.
Many exchanges continuously hire BD staff. Those BD employees have no guaranteed base salary and can be fired at any time. You can see complaints about this in virtually any recruitment group.
Many projects hire interns on Xiaohongshu for RMB 3,000 per month. The interns are willing to work diligently for an entire month, spending every day chasing traffic and posting advertisements on X.
The DM KOL strategy has a long cycle and slow feedback. You might DM 1,000 KOLs, receive feedback from ten, and establish cooperation with one. That assumes you put serious thought into contacting each one.
If you have no direct feeling for this process, think about job hunting. I search for jobs frequently, so I understand this state deeply. During a job search, you may contact hundreds of HR representatives, interview with dozens of companies, and eventually find one suitable job.
For BD or salespeople, DMing KOLs is their job. They can spend the entire day doing it and have enough time to think about and summarize their experience.
As for my team, judging by appearances, none of the members has a lower opportunity cost than I do. Everyone is wearing “golden handcuffs.” They are not professional BD staff and each has work to do in their own career direction, leaving little time for DMs. More importantly, DMing has a long feedback cycle and extremely high uncertainty. You can spend an entire day sending DMs and receive no feedback at all. On the path you already know, by contrast, you can always produce some result.
If part-time team members are expected to DM KOLs and achieve meaningful results, the difficulty is no less than first making them change careers and then requiring a long period of disciplined execution before any result can emerge.
Otherwise, either someone will take the work seriously and do it well, or nothing will be done well. I personally do not believe that someone can casually do something on the side, without care or reflection, and outperform a professional.
Even within a professional BD team using the same completely correct strategy, the results among ten BD staff members would surely differ enormously. Some would be fired, while others would become top performers. Who can predict such things?
You should now see that the purpose of writing this was not to complain, but to analyze and share.
The important thing is that I understood a principle: why can a strategy that appears correct fail to produce good results?
I do not know whether I explained it clearly.