A lot of us ought to talk to customers or even talk to customers but no one buys our products
User conversations are easy to mess up and can go wrong badly. It can give you false positives and lead you down the wrong path
The Mom Test
You should never ask anyone whether your business is a good idea as it invites people to lie to you
Useful conversations have told us some concrete facts about our customers’ lives and world views which allows us to improve our businesses
By never talking about our idea and listening more, we can develop some interesting insights
The Mom Test:
Talk about their life instead of your idea
Ask about specifics in the past rather than generalities in the future
Talk less; listen more
Examples of good and bad questions:
“Do you think it’s a good idea?”: no one except the market can tell if your idea is good. To improve, ask questions about their experiences in the past with a particular problem area that you are trying to tackle.
Opinions are worthless
”Would you buy a product which did X?”: again, asking for opinions about the future. Ask intead about how they currently solve X, the effort, the cost, why they haven’t solved X, do they care?
Anything about the future is an over-optimistic lie
”How much would you pay for X?”: like last one. Ask about how much they spend right now trying to fix it
People lie to you if they think it’s what you want to hear
”What would your dream product do?”: ok if you ask good follow-ups. The value comes from why the users want the features they said
People know the problems, but don’t know how to solve them
”Why do you bother?”: Good question as it gets to the root of the problem and the “why”.
You’re shooting blind unless you understand their goals
”What are the implications of that?”: distinguishes between problems that people are willing to pay and annoying problems.
Some problems don’t actually matter
”Talk me through the last time that happened?”: better to learn from the customer’s actions than their opinions. Even better if you can see it with your own eyes.
Watching someone do a task will show you where the problems and inefficiencies are reall are, not where the customer thinks they are
”What else have you tried?”: good as you learn whether is fixes are worth it and big of a pain it is
If they haven’t looked for ways of solving it already they’re not going to look for yours
”Would you pay X for a product that did Y?”: numbers don’t really help make this a good question. People are over-optimistic about their future actions. Ask them about what they currently do now and how much it is valued by them, or just ask for the money at that exact moment.
”How are you dealing with it now?”: allows you to understand the value of your idea
”Where does the money come from?”: essential for B2B context.
”Who else should I talk to?”: helps multiply leads
”Is there anything else I should have asked?”: people will be willing to help if you missed the big question about a certain industry.
People want to help, but they won’t unless you give them an excuse
At the end, the users own the problem but you own the solution. Just make sure to always validate the problem space before you start building something.
Avoiding Bad Data
Bad data can give us false negatives (an idea is dead even though it is not) or false positives (idea is good even though it is not)
Three types of bad data:
Compliments
Fluff
Ideas
People give us compliments just to make us feel good or if they feel excited by our excitement
Remember: unless the person has done the exact thing you have done before, the opinions of others are useless
Deflect compliments and get to your other questions
Symptoms: thanks, meeting went well, everybody loves the idea
Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting and worthless
Fluff comes in either generic claims, future-tense promises or hypotheicals
Fluff-inducing questions: do you ever, would you ever, what do you usually, do you think you, might you, could you see yourself
Put anchors to previous behaviours/patterns and get specific. Ask them to make decisions to force them from stop being flaky
Ideas from customers are interesting but you don’t need to execute on them. It shows that the customer is interested in the potential of this field
Determine why they advocated for a particular feature, what are the implications, how they are dealing with it now
Dig into emotional signals as well
Don’t seek idea validation, seek problem validation
Less talking, more listening
Asking Important Questions
Think of important questions by running thought experiments: if the company failed, what did they do? If the company succeeded, what did they do?
Important if the answer could change the business
To ask the hard questions, approach from third person perspective
We need to love bad news because it gives us solid learnings. That’s why we need to ask hard questions
Lukewarm, does-not-care signals are great! They tell you that your idea is not so interesting
Don’t up your pitch. Understand the apathy
Can easily mess up by looking at the details too quickly. You can ask what are their biggest goals and see how your idea fits in with that
Sometimes, you don’t need to do that as you already know the biggest problems for your user (eg. businesses always struggle with marketing)
Be more generic if you are not sure if this is a problem worth solving
Does-this-problem-matter questions: how seriously do you take this issue, do you make money from this issue, have you tried making more money, time spent, aspirations, what are you doing to improve the situation
Ask cost & value questions to determine whether this is an important thing to them
Asking the elephant questions: sometimes it is tempting to not ask those big elephant questions
Successful startups tend to rely on multiple failure points, so even if one is solved, the whole product doesn’t have to change
Two types of risk: product risk (can I build? can I grow? retention?) and market risk (do people want it, will they pay? are there enough?)
If people say: “if your product does X, then I will buy it” indicates product risk. Because obviously, the benefit is great, but no one knows if you can do it
Pre-plan your questions and the 3 most important things you want to learn from a person
Don’t need to repeat these questions for each customer
Keeping It Casual
Learning about a customer and their problems works better as a quick and casual chat than a long, formal meeting
If it feels like you are doing a favour, then it’s too formal
Early convos are fast and extend in time as you get deeper into the product. Keep your idea out of the conversation as far long as possible
Commitment and Advancement
You never want to friendzone your startup by never moving leads onto the next step of the aquistion funnel
Symptoms: zombie leads, ending with compliments/no clear next steps, ‘went well’ meetings, no value
Best meetings have customers show commitment (giving up their time, rep or money) and advancement (getting closer to a sale)
Friendly customers but will not buy are dangerous mixed signals
Meetings either succeed or they fail. They suceed when there is commitment and advancement (no stalling tactics or wishy-washy compliments). Be specific and firm
If you feel that the meeting is going bad, push for commitments. Bad commitments are excellent too because they provide information. Give them a chance to reject you
Don’t ever hard pitch. Instead, learn questions which pass the Mom Test and confirm by selling
Look out for emotional customers, because they will be the early evangelists. They are the crazy ones willing to commit to your startup before it goes belly up
Finding Conversations
Cold intros: the goal of cold intros is to stop using cold intros. If successful, use as an opportunity to get warm intros (commitment!)
Seize serendipity: have great conversations with people you randomly meet
Talk about things that you both enjoy, shouldn’t be a one-sided conversation
Immerse yourself in the community of customers that you want to target
Use landing pages as a way to generate qualified leads
Ways to get customers to come to you: organise industry meetups, speaking & teaching, blogging, use clever techniques that are unique to your industry
Creating warm intros: use your existing connections, get killer advisors from your most ardent customers, professors in a particular area of interest, investors, people who said ‘let me know how it goes’
Frame your meeting requests so that it’s very driven. Follow these steps
What is your vision? Don’t mention your idea
Tell them explicitly that you don’t have anything to sell and what stage you are at
Show weakness and give them a chance to help you
Put them on a pedestal by showing them how much they can help
Ask for help
Grab the reins on your meetings to ensure that it doesn’t derail into the customer drilling your idea. Use the above framing to start off the meetings
In-person is better than calls because it’s not as formal and you can use body language as additional information
Keep talking to people until you stop hearing new information
Choosing Customers
Startups don’t starve, they drown: get overwhelmed by everything
You need to focus on a particular customer. The big companies today started off like that. Google focused on PhD students, Facebook focused on college students, Evernote focused on moms sharing recipes
Before we serve everyone, we have to serve someone. Allows to filter out noise
If problems and goals of customers are not consistent, you are not talking to a consistent customer segment
Slice your customers even further to create features that really resonate with them. Ask the following questions:
In this segment, which group of people do you want most?
Would everyone in this segment buy or use this product or only some?
What is their problem? What is their motivation for using your product?
What other types of people have this motivation?
Once the segment is small enough, determine where they congregate. If you can’t determine that easily, continue slicing
Determine which customer segment to go after based on profitability, reward and interest
Running the Process
Avoid creating bottlenecks where people that were involved in the customer meeting are able to say “the customer said so” as a dictator card. Ensure that notes are shared promptly and faithfully with entire team
Prepping: ensure that you have your three most important questions, understand what the next steps should be and the commitment you are pitching for, try to guess the answers to better structure the interview, LinkedIn due diligence, prep questions to unearth hidden risks
Review: review with whole team and update beliefs and answers to 3 big questions appropriately
Create a system of notetaking that prioritizes capturing emotions and direct quotes. Note down things with big stars on items you promised to follow up on
Notes should be created on some sort of sorted, retrieval system