I did. I emailed a bunch of different smaller companies in different sectors/industries. Explained to them that I build software to help small companies and am interested in knowing if they either have been looking for a product that doesn’t exist or are unhappy with a current product. Got some friendly responses but most said things are working well.
That's basically a sales email where not only do you ask the potential customer if they would buy but also to tell you what they would buy. I would advise against that.
Instead I would suggest:
1) introduce your self and inform them you are interested in their area of business.
2) ask if they'd have the time to chat to you about it on a call or perhaps over a coffee.
3) book the meetings (some will say no, that's fine).
4) at the meeting ask them about their business. Be genuinely interested. Don't sell them anything. These aren't sales calls or meetings. Listen to what they say. Ask how they do those things. What's the best part about they way they do it, what's the worst, what tools and processes do they use and where did they hear about them from.
5) write it all down and after 3-7 meetings looks for patterns that indicate problems or processes that you could solve.
6) given those problems return to your new friends and ask them what the world would look like for them if those problems you identified were solved (no pitching solutions). How much better off (if at all) would they be. How much more time could they save, how much more product could they sell, how many bew customers could they find or old customers could they keep.
7) record everything and look for patterns again.
8) come up with some ideas to solve the more valuable problems. Use the Mum Test technique (don't reveal your ego) to identify if they would pay for your solution (ask for money on the spot, you've enough report now to push the boat out a little).
Respectfully, I hear this advice for sales all the time, and it sounds silly unless you've already built a relationship. If someone cold-calls me and starts asking open-ended questions, they're wasting my time.
This isn't sales. It's market research. Your point stands, though. It's actually harder to get market research meetings than sales meetings, because you have nothing to offer. You have to go through your network, or meet people obliquely through interest groups.
Try working for them. I've worked for a lot of businesses outside of IT and every single one had problems that could be solved with software. Not all of them were viable business opportunities but some of them were huge.
Actually selling them solutions is difficult though because management is often too stupid to understand it no matter how simple the solution. Plus often management doesn't actually care if they are throwing money away. So long as they think they are up to date with industry norms in the region they operate then they feel like they are doing their job. I've proposed solutions that similar companies use in other countries successfully and been met with complete disinterest. YMMV
