Interviewing Customers is a Special Kind of Torture
- Talk to a stranger. Fun.
- That stranger is immensely busy…and hates being sold things. Getting better.
- That stranger will likely destroy your vision for a company. Ready to get started?!
When I started interviewing customers, the only thing I cared less about than talking about other people’s problems, was asking about them. So, I skipped all the questions I thought were BS, and jumped to the most important ones:
and
Turns out, those aren’t the most important questions…they’re the most misleading. Apparently, I am not a natural interviewer.
When I realized interviewing customers meant standing in front of strangers doing something I was awful at, any enthusiasm I had towards “getting out of the building”, evaporated.
When I see other founders hesitate to interview customers, or do them wrong, I empathize. I’ve been there. It’s a daunting task we have no experience with – and – isn’t nearly as fun as building stuff.
Let’s Fix That
Despite my early misgivings, learning to interview customers has become one of my most indispensable skills. Not just because it gives me a leg up on competitors, not because it helps me (in)validate ideas quickly, and not because it helps in my personal life as much as it does my professional. It’s indispensable because…
Instead of being stressed about what the customer is going to think about my idea, instead of fumbling over my words and worrying about the perfect way to pitch my product, a customer interview isn’t about me, my product, or my words. It’s about theirs. All I have to do is listen. No pitching, no negotiating, just ask a handful of questions with a sincere interest to learn.
How Not to Interview
A few ground rules I use that will prevent you from torpedoing your interviews:
Your brain is hard wired to screw you as soon as you start thinking about your idea.
Once your idea pops into your brain during an interview, your body will literally turn against you. It will start looking for validation that the idea is good. Your interpretations of statements, intonation, body language will all be skewed. What’s worse, the person you’re talking to subconsciously knows what you’re looking for, and based on our desire to build relationships, will want to help you. They’ll be your unwitting accomplice and provide the “validation” you’re looking for – leading you in the wrong direction. To the best of your abilities, avoid thinking about your idea during the interview – and certainly avoid talking about it. These interviews are about your customers and their problems. Do your best to keep the conversation focused there.
No hypotheticals, no projections, no guesses. The way I remember this rule? I never ask a question with the word “would” in it:
- “If we built a product that solved X problem, would you use it?”
- “How much would you pay for something that did X?”
- “Would you like your existing solution better if it did X?”
When you use the word “would”, you’re making a thinly veiled attempt to validate your product…not their problem. Don’t do that. See Rule #1.
In addition, when you ask about the future, you’re asking your customer to predict it. She can’t do that. She’ll try, but she’ll be wrong. Listening to wrong answers can only serve to harm you (“75% of people I talked to said they wanted…”, “Half of the interviewees said they’d pay $20”, etc.) – they’re all bad guesses. There are better ways to answer those questions.
How To Interview
There are five questions I use to form my customer interviews. Start with these, and you’ll not only to learn about your customer’s problems, you’ll learn if they’re worth solving (and how to solve them):
The trickiest part is figuring out what to put in the blank for Question #1, but I’ve created an Interview Script Generator that will do the heavy lifting for you! You don’t want to be so specific that you tell them about the problem you want to solve. For example, imagine you want to build Yelp for Vegetarians…
But you also don’t want to be so broad that you’re inviting discussion about a range of problems you have no interest in solving:
You want to ask about a significant problem context – situations that occurs frequently enough, or are painful enough, to warrant solving:
This question will certainly evoke responses, but they could range from:
- “The portions aren’t large enough” to
- “I don’t really trust that the things I order are meat-free” to
- “A yelp search for ‘vegetarian’ returns results like ‘Joe’s All American Steak House’ with comments like, ‘Don’t bring your vegetarian friends here.'”
And that’s the best part about interviews! Not only will they help you validate whether the customer has the problem you hypothesize, if they don’t, interviews will point you to one they do have. You win either way.
Btw, this is one of the benefits of interviews vs. surveys. Surveys might tell you how often a customer experiences a problem, but if the answer is “not very often”, surveys won’t give you another problem to explore. Interviews will. More specifics on why we ask each of the questions in the video above, but here’s here’s the gist:
That’s the list of starter questions. Other great questions to consider adding to your script:
- How often do you experience this problem?
- How much are you spending to solve this problem now?
- Where do you find information about [problem context] online?
That last question is great for a couple reasons: if you don’t already know, it can tell you some of your online channels and, if you’re not interviewing an early adopter (someone trying to solve this problem already), the answer to this question may point you to folks who are. There are some other recommendations I make in the video above regarding looking for emotional cues, asking why, and repeating the process with the same customer – watch it for full details.
[New] Interview Script Generator
Want some help drafting your interview script? I’ve created a free Customer Interview Script Generator that will help you start your interview script in less than 30 seconds.
The tool creates a custom Google Doc for you, based on who you’re interviewing and the problem you want to interview them about. Here’s an example:
- How to make your customer feel comfortable and open up about their problems
- For each question, what you should listen for
- How to get their permission to get in touch with them again about your solution
- How to ask them for introductions for additional interviews
Check out the Customer Interview Script Generator to get a head start on your interviews.
Invalidation
If the problem you hypothesized doesn’t get mentioned during interview, you can still ask about it – just start the interview again with Question #2:
The trick is, you must put extra weight on their response to Question #4.
If you have to bring the problem up and they’re not taking steps to solve it, they won’t use your solution. It doesn’t matter how simple it is, how well it solves the problem, how cheap it is…none of it matters. This problem is not a big enough concern for this customer to take the time to find it, pay for it, learn it, or use it. Something must change.
This scenario happens more than any other – and when it happens to you, like it’s happened to me (over, and over) – know that it’s OK. It means you’re doing it right. While disappointing, this truth is a reflection of reality. Knowing it sooner than later will serve you well.
The good news is, because you asked Question #1 & the channels question during your interviews, you’re ready to setup your next interview! Either interview another customer segment (try the online channels customers look to for additional information) or validate a different problem they’ve mentioned.
Next Steps
Armed with this information, you have everything you need to (in)validate your problem hypothesis:
You can search for new customers in the online channels they mentioned during the interview. If those folks don’t have the problem, time to try solving a different one – you’ll have a list of them from the responses to Question #1. Pick the most popular one.
Summary
Interviewing customers is the key to customer development. It unlocks all the most important components of the business model canvas. It’ll be the skill that distinguishes you from other startups, and it will not only tell you if you’re going in the right direction, it will give you a map if you’re not. But I promised more than that. I promised interviewing customers would make customer development fulfilling. To me…
What’s Next?
This is Part 4 of a series of Customer Discovery posts designed in collaboration with Startup Weekend NEXT. I highly recommend the others:
- Which Customers Should you Interview (The SPA Treatment)
- How to Find Customers to Interview
- Getting Customer Interviews with Cold Emails
- How I Interview Customers
- You’ve Interviewed Customers. Now what?
Our next post will be…5 Tools I use for Customer Development. Subscribe to get it via Email or RSS.
Justin,
Love your blog post!
I have discovered huge pain… to one potential customer. Pain is huge and they have no real practical solutions at this point AND are ready to pay. To make it even better, I CAN develop this product!
But how do I find more people like this that have the problem? This is in B2B security space. And there is probably just *one* person in company that is responsible for this. (It’s one person in where I am at).
I want to interview potential customers, but I am stuck trying to figure out how to find people to talk to.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mark
Mark – Have you tried asking your prospect if they know of others that have the same problem?
This is an awesome post – wish I had this one year ago when I was in full interview mode… I wasted a lot of time asking those misleading questions.
I know exactly what you mean. The joys of learning! Thankfully, I am not quite as far down the path yet and can still apply this stuff. Awesome post Justin!
Another awesome post!! keep these comin…
Justin, you rock. I will send this video to everyone I help. Bravo, bravo, bravo.
One word , brilliant.
This should be given to all business analysts. Is a great way to tease out problems. We could add an outcome question to this. “What if we solved this problem, what outcome would you like to see”. These outcomes would enable us to align requirements and possible offerings, which would help the customer achieve this need.
Outcomes can also be put into categories:
Emotional Outcomes – This is the human element i.e. feelings and experience for the user/customer
Functional Outcomes – The measurable result of activities undertaken by an individual or group
Economic Outcomes – These are the more harder outcomes i.e. financial value
Process Outcomes – These are the “how” outcomes, they relate to the process being performed
http://bridging-the-gap.me/2013/05/15/we-need-to-focus-on-outcomes/
Very helpful, thank you Justin!
Great video – thanks for sharing your experience. This is a really clear and concrete path to follow – I can’t wait to give it a try!
Damn I just recently conducted a set of interviews, and did fall into the trap of pitching than listening. Wish I had this earlier. Great post!
Justin- Clarification please.
First of all- Intelligent stuff THX.
Is the goal to get the other party simply talking in depth about topic X?
How close to the line of a business centric question do you get before you cross the line?
I don’t want to pitch, but I want valuable information.
THX in advance
The goal is to identify and understand the customer’s problems. If you’re worried about crossing a line…you’ve probably already crossed it :)
This exercise is about being curious about the lives and hardships of your customer. Save your questions about your product and potential solutions for another day. Today is all about hearing their problems.
Thx for that and had I scrolled down after watching the video I would have seen the commentary as well.
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing your experience, Justin.
Hey Justin,
I just stumbled upon your blog… (actually I was reading another guys blog post where he mentioned your workshop at the lean startup conference about pricing and I was curious enough to look for your blog…)
It is indeed the most valuable help and information about a customer discovery interview I read so far! Thank you so much for that.
At the moment, we are trying to launch a product for recruiting, but it seems not very compelling to potential customers… so in review of our interviews made (actually we did them quite unbiased, but when we evaluated, we had the mind set to validating our idea / solution way too much…), I can see now (in learning mode) how we fell into the pit of question #4 -> they didn’t even look for a solution yet!
“So they don’t know they have that problem yet, that will change as soon as we show them our solution” we thought… But as you can guess, they didn’t… ;-)
The good thing: reviewing the interviews we saw some other problems a subset of our customer is facing, and we might be able to provide a solution…
I guess maybe it’s necessary to fall into that trap, and it hurts, but otherwise I might have the trust in your advise about interviews as I do have now…
Oh and one question:
would you recommend to re-schedule some interviews to learn more about the other segment of customers who already solved that new discovered problem to look for flaws, or would you start to do solution interviews with the ones who still have that problem? (so we validate more quickly that it’s at least a solution for that subset?)
thanks and again: great post!
Thanks for the great feedback! I think you’re onto something…nothing teaches quite like failure :)
As for what to do next, will discovering the flaws in the existing alternative solution help you design a better solution for both groups?
Hey Justin,
thank you for your response! I thought quite a bit about your question, and I guess that these flaws in existing alternatives are more specific for one group.
As we came across a great talk of Simon Sinek (the Ted Talk about the Golden Circle, nice recommendation from Ash Maurya…), we decided that we currently have gone too far from our initial “why”, so we started over and are now running complete new interviews!
So thanks again, your video and post is always an inspiration!
I just started studying the lean startup methodology, and as I’m reading one question kept coming up for me and that’s – “How do I ask customers the right questions?” This question was nagging me non-stop until I found this page, and I’m so glad I did before starting with customer interviews. I can’t thank you enough Justin, you’re really filling a gap here.
Because the better questions lead to better learning, I’m hungry for even more understanding of which questions to ask and how to ask them. Specifically I’d like some ideas of how to find and engage customers for face to face interviews (surely the startup community has this nailed) and really nailing that first question: What’s the hardest part about XYZ
Figuring out how to best phrase XYZ for my particular product vision is the new gap that will nag me.
Cheers Brother, I appreciate your good works big time. And offering a half hour of your time is beyond stellar.
Hi Justin, incredible video!
Could you speak a little on how to form the various hypothesis that a company would want to test?
Great question. The quick answer is “Business Model Canvas.” Every box is a pile of assumptions that need to be tested. For example: How assumptions made an ass out of my company.
That said, there’s a longer answer that deserves it’s own blog post. You’ve inspired me to think more about it. If you’d like the audio version in the meantime, hit me up here: http://sohelpful.me/justin.
From two weeks ago on a mentor call to now trying to scale our services quickly enough to meet demand, the usefulness of this process didn’t just help us think through a customer’s problem: it helped us entirely reframe our information seeking and uncover an entirely new opportunity.
What happened?
Before digging deeply into the philosophy of these videos, we were using the customer discovery process to continue expanding the capacities of our business. “Wow, we didn’t think about that need – we can totally serve that, too!” Bad idea, getting worse. We didn’t build anything, thankfully, but we weren’t getting any closer to a product.
Enter Justin.
We talked through our process, set some weekly discovery goals – with pass/fail ratios, specific users we were questioning, and a single problem focus we would be trying to invalidate. Our goal: would they pay if we did just one thing? We invalidated almost everything – and went back to the drawing board. Racked our brains, and – finally – thought about the basics: what do we care about, how would we define success for our business, who are the customers we really want to serve? We used the customer discovery on ourselves, and then extended it to others.
Now we’re building something we love, that will serve the entrepreneurs we care deeply about working with, that can be MVP’d and is showing more demand that we can provide supply.
So: Justin, thanks. This blog doesn’t just rock cusdev – but proper entrophilosophy.
I love this Michael…thanks so much for sharing! I’m really excited you’re building something you love, and serving customers you care about. Please keep us posted on the progress and let me know if there’s anything else I can help with!
Hey Justin,
thank you for the „buy the why“ link. You just changed my life. No kidding. You enabled me to write down why I do *anything*, and this is because I believe we all can live our dreams. I realize that:
I am writing you this comment because I believe I can live my dreams. In one aspect, I do that by being around powerful, inspired people. What I do is letting you know that you just literally changed my life.
What you gave me with this link to the TED talk:
From now on, at any moment, I can refer to this crystal clear formulation of the fire inside my heart.
Live our dreams.
Awesome article Justin. Liked it. I can see how I was doing interviews differently and the old-fashioned way and the results after that. Will switch your way and see what happens. Thanks.
Hey Justin, thanks for an invaluable article! My question is how to set the context for the intertview, especially if you know the person you’re going to interview? “Hey I just want to ask you some questions without telling you what is this about, ok?”
Great question Ron. I usually set context with something like…
“Thanks for taking the time to chat. I’m try to help (insert your problem statement – make remote coding easier for outsourced coding providers such as yourself) and I’m really looking forward to your input!”
After that, start firing away. Once you start asking about their problems, they’ll start talking.
When I’m all done, I finish with, “This was really outstanding – thank you again for your time. I’m pretty excited because we’re focusing on solving (insert the biggest problem they mentioned). I’m going to take what we talked about here back to the rest of my team and do a little tweaking based on your input. When we’re ready, can we setup another conversation to get feedback on our potential solution?”
This separates the problem and solution interviews nicely and gives you a chance to prep for the latter.
Good luck!
I just ask and talked about my idea with one potential client. Now I am reading this I am in total remorse.
No worries Lily, we’ve all been there :) It all gets better from here.
Excellent article Justin – I just failed at my first attempt at one potential client (I’m still early stage). I re-read this article with my wife (who is a teacher) and she explained your process is similar to teaching kids.
What I take away is “Don’t pitch….hear their b!tch”.
Cheers.
I like it!
Makes sense that it would be similar to how your wife teaches kids…my partner is an educational psychologist. I steal most of my good stuff from her :)
Great article, Justin. I am now reading through all your blogs. One question is, do you usually record the audio when you interview customer face to face? I am speculating that the customer may be reluctant to accept recording. But if no recording, it would be quite busy to take note, isn’t it?
Great question Sam.
Ideally, you’d do the interview in pairs with a co-founder. One of you asks questions while the other takes notes. When that’s not possible, I’ve tried both notes and recording.
For me, notes are better because I only write down the most salient details and don’t have to spend a bunch of time going back and listening to the interview. Other folks prefer recording so they can focus their energy entirely on the customer.
As for the customer feeling uncomfortable, you can say something like, “So I don’t have to be taking feverish notes while we talk, is it okay if I record our conversation? I’ll be transcribing the notes later this week and will destroy the recording immediately after I’m finished.”
Fwiw, I’ve never had anyone turn that question down and I’ve been recorded myself. I don’t remember feeling more shy about what I shared in that scenario.
Justin
First, I would like to say that I love your customerdevlabs website. I have recently subscribe to it and it has provided me with a lot of clarity in my pursue of my startup. Thank you for sharing your information with the public.
Now to my question. I have watched your video on the NEXT customer discovery program probably 40 times and I have watched Simon’s TED’s video as well. I am still having trouble understanding how to get the interviewee to explain why was it the hardest when they feel like they feel like they have already explained it in the what was the hardest question. Do you have any suggestions for me to explain to the interviewee the differences? Thanks Justin!
Fantastic question Nicos. It can get a little awkward for you and the interviewee to ask “why” was that hard when they just told you something that was so obviously hard.
The way I usually do it is by saying something like, “That makes complete sense that _______ is a challenge. I can make some assumptions about why that would be hard, but so that I don’t put words in your mouth, can you why is that hard for you?”
It’s at this moment when the conversation can get most awkward, because you’re asking them to go to an emotionally vulnerable place and share it with you (a stranger). It’s really important to create a safe space after they answer the question. It will help everyone feel more comfortable.
I’ll usually respond to what they say with something like, “Of course that would be a challenge. I’ve been in a similar situation myself and it felt ____________ to me too.”
That you’re asking this question Nicos means you’re doing the most important, and most difficult, part of the interviewing process. I’m excited for you. When you master this skill, you will understand the heart of entrepreneurship…
When you understand the negative feeling they are experiencing when the problem arises, you can find a solution that replaces the negative feeling with a positive one.
Keep up the good work,
Justin
Justin. Thank you so much for that breakdown. What you wrote makes more sense to me and I look forward to putting your methods in motion. Thank you for the information and this website.
-Nicos
Great post! I came already having read a lot about the concepts but this post created a structure for me to design the interview and a way to convey the learning to others. Thanks!
Hi Justin, that was a great great read, very insightful!
Could you clarify something please? I always read about interviews helping to figure out if a certain problem exists in somebody’s life, so we can create a product that solves it, here we’re validating a product’s idea. But how about interviews that are focused to answer other objectives, like for example interviewing customers of a live product to figure out why exactly use it?
Thanks in advance, Juntin!
Hey Franco, that’s a good question.
If I want to know why someone uses a particular product, I’d probably ask them straight up, why they use it. I’d probably also ask questions like:
Ultimately my goal is the same – identify the problem this product is solving for them, why it’s important they solve the problem, the words they use to describe the problem, what’s great about their current solution, and what’s missing from it.
Does that help?
Great, Justin! Yes, it does help. I can guess how easy may be for you to come up with those nice questions! It’s interesting the twist you make.
I see that obviously when interviewing current users, we can talk directly about the product, unless we’ve got a new feature idea for example, then we must avoid mentioning it.
Since we want to know why people use the app to make smarter improvements in the future, would be enough asking 5-10 active users, until I find patterns, to consider them as a significant sample with which we can make “safe” feature decisions?
My last question. When researching, do we need to be very very very specific in our research objective, like “Discover why our users use our app”?, where all the questions of the interview should be lead towars getting that answer only? But then if I also want to know if they find difficulties to accomplish those goals in the app, and also what’s the context of usage, are those all too broad already to ask together? Should we ask them in another time to other people?
Thank you Justin!
You’re on the right track. Yes, ask enough people until you start to find a pattern. If after 5 interviews you’re not seeing a pattern, there may be more than one type of customer using your product, so you may consider narrowing down on one of those types of customers and focusing on them.
You’re also correct in that you want to be very very specific in your research objective, but I can see why you’d struggle because you would want to do all of the following:
– “Discover why our users use our app?”
– “they find difficulties to accomplish those goals in the app”
– and “also what’s the context of usage”
The way to resolve this conflict is to take a step back and understand what’s most important. There are only two metrics that really matter in terms of usage of your product: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and your Viral Co-efficient (K factor).
Everything else you’re trying to measure (including the three questions you have above) are all intermediate things you measure, that will have an impact on your LTV and your K factor. So in your research, you want to ask questions that will help you increase either of those metrics.
Blog post comments aren’t the place to dive into how to do that, but luckily, I’ve just finished the rough draft of my workbook series that covers this information exhaustively.
If you’re interested, grab a copy of the FOCUS Framework (http://focus.customerdevlabs.com) and when you do, you’ll immediately get access to the rough drafts of all 5 workbooks – including one on Utility Testing – which spells out exactly how to increase the metrics that matter about your product: LTV and K Factor. Also remember to use the coupon code “preorder” for 20% off.
Justin
Hi Justin, thanks for the great detail there. I understand the point, the more I get into the why I’m actually doing research, the more I’m gonna get close to the concepts you exposed. Congratulations for your seriously good job coming out with those series of books, they look really exciting!
I just came across this video…great one. Wish I had seen this before I started reaching out to potential customers, because I’ve been doing it so wrong. My question is, what is the best way to even get an interview with a potential customer? Do you just walk in to the business and ask or do you call an ask for an interview. And if so, what is the best way to do it?
I ask because the businesses I am trying to reach out to are usually small retailers and they do not have the owners (who are usually the decision makers) onsite. So they tend to just give me the email address of the owners. So now I have to email them and when I do, I feel like I have to provide a background of what I am doing…and that can easily lead to pitching. Do you have any advice on how to deal with a situation like this?
Great question Darren. I got your back: https://customerdevlabs.com/2014/02/18/how-to-send-cold-emails/
Hi Justin!
Do you have any tips on interviewing homeschool teenagers? I’ve been able to locate the parents and interview them, but it’s a lot harder when dealing with “children.” Obviously if their parents introduce me it 1) requires and extra step and 2) brings in some bias. My goal is to get their true, honest opinion. I have a long list of twitter accounts for homeschool teens (feels creepy to say that) but I’m not sure whether to keep it via tweet or try to move it to a phone interview, which, for some reason also feels creepy.
The key to getting any interview is to:
If you don’t think there are any, that’s good news and bad. Bad because there’s no business opportunity there. Good because you found out before you built a solution (although that never tends to make the bad news feel any better :)
If you don’t know where they would go to solve the problem, ask someone like them. Ask a teenager who doesn’t have the problem you want to solve where she would go to solve it and see if she has any better guesses than you.
Don’t worry about feeling creepy if you’re really solving a problem they’re trying to solve. The same way your product doesn’t need to look great if you’re solving a really important product – you won’t come off as creepy if you’re solving an important problem for a teen (assuming you’re not solving it in a creepy way).
Don’t worry about feeling creepy if you’re really solving a problem they’re trying to solve. The same way your product doesn’t need to look great if you’re solving a really important problem – you won’t come off as creepy if you’re solving an important problem for a teen (assuming you’re not solving it in a creepy way).
Good luck and keep me posted!
Hi Justin,
First, thank you so much for your website and the videos. My team is learning a ton from you!
My company, Booxby, received a National Science Foundation grant and is in the process of deep customer discovery.
We are currently in the midst of many author/publisher interviews.
What’s the best way to ask about pricing without breaking the ground rules? Do you have time to answer this or direct me to something you’ve written that will? Thanks again for your awesome teachings!
Best,
Holly
Thanks for the fantastic question Holly! It’s a great one, and it’s confusing to gauge pricing during interviews.
One way is to ask during the interview, “How much are you paying to solve this problem now?”
The problem is the answer to that question, or any other question about pricing, doesn’t take into account all of the factors that will go into whether they’ll buy *your* solution.
The best way to test pricing is not to ask about it, but to do it – to sell your product.
Pre-sales or letters of intent are by far the best way to get data on pricing. For more information about testing price testing, see – Testing your Price: http://goo.gl/41lSNx
Also the FOCUS Framework has an entire workbook devoted to researching, testing and optimizing your price called “Currency Testing.” More about FOCUS here.
Justin, thanks for all the incredibly helpful tips and insights. I’m currently in the process of interviewing potential customers, and I’m trying hard to not step into the ‘future mode’ by asking them whether they would be receptive to solution X (which, of course, is my app).
However, I do want to get a sense of what they WOULD find useful. My current approach is: a) Ask them about their problems doing a particular task, eventually followed by b) What are some things they wish existed, that would make this task easier.
Is this a valid line of questioning?
Hi Bri, great question.
Feel free to ask customers what they want – I definitely do that sometimes as a source of inspiration. That said, don’t rely on them. It’s not a customer’s job to design solutions (that’s your job). It’s their job to identify problems.
And of course, whatever they tell you needs to be validated with real-world tests.
Keep us posted!
Justin
Hi Justin,
Thanks God I found your site. I have read most of your post, but I still have some questions (maybe I missed out something).
1. My products are matching outfits for moms and kids – they are designed not to exactly solve a problem but to improve a situation where I experienced myself: I would like my kid and me to wear the similar dress – for fun, for pride, for the joy when we hang out. And I myself tried a solution by buying a larger size (size of 15 year old) to try to wear the same design as my kid – and that solution did not work because it looks too childish (of course, it’s kid clothing) . That’s why I startup with a clothing brand that has similar, but not exactly the same design for moms and kids – it s completely age appropriate for both, while making both looking matchy and fashionable at the same time.
If i ask my potential customers that ‘ what is the problem with finding something to wear for you/for your kid’ -> they’ll never think abou the matching outfits. If I ask ‘what is the problem with finding something MATCHY to wear for you and for your kid’ , it will be a leading question – i suppose. So as for fashion brands and other products that do not exactly solve problems but just improve life (people never knew they needed a thing like ‘facebook’!) , how to ask question in an interview to find out about product-market fit?
2. As far as I understand, we need to find early adopters to interview. And does that become trial-and-error process where we have to find 100 pp from our target market and find a few early adopters there? Or how to effectively find early adopters and evaluate if the market size is big enough?
Hi Trudy, cool idea for a startup!
You’ve got a great understanding of the core principles, so I’m going to give you a bit more complex explanation of the process than I normally do.
At the end of the day, your company needs to provide your customers with an emotion they are seeking. We most often describe these emotions in terms of “problems” because problems elicit the most intense emotions, and drive the most “Early Adopter-ish” behavior.
In your case, you’re not providng an emotional experience related to a “problem” so much as you are to an aspiration. In that way, consider what kind of emotional experience your startup will create for your customers (you’ve already started with “fun, pride, joy, ” etc.).
Next, (and this addresses your second question) ask yourself what actions your potential customers are taking to help them achieve those emotions right now in terms of their relationships w/ their daughters – those are your Early Adopters – the people you want to interview.
If you want some help on this front, definitely check out the Adoption Behavior Curve in the FOCUS Framework – it will walk you through step-by-step how to find your Early Adopters.
In terms of sizing your segment, the “SCALE your Segments” exercise in FOCUS (the very next exercise after the Adoption Behavior Curve) will help you identify which segment to target based on their size.
Thanks for the great question and please keep us posted!
Hi Justin!
(I hope you still respond on here!)
This article (and video on the techstars YT) has been so helpful!
Let me make this short and sweet…
I’m interviewing entrepreneurs about their finances – specifically how they manage them.
So, if I ask them something along the lines of:
What’s the hardest part of managing your finances as an entrepreneur?
Or
Tell me a story about the last time you were in contact with your tax preparer or accountant?
Am I leading?
The script generator says to ask:
“What is your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?”
I think it may be too vague/open… but I’m willing to try if I’m leading with questions above.
Also, if you already answered this question somewhere in the loads of posts here, I apologize and I promised I searched.
Feel free to just point me back to them and I’ll review.
Thanks in advance for your help! So happy to have found this gem!
Great question Tani. It’s one a get a lot during workshops, but I don’t think I’ve answered it here.
I understand why you want to ask about the hardest part about managing finances, and you’re right, if you ask 10 random entrepreneurs about their biggest challenges, you’re likely to hear 10 different problems, none of which are related to finances. That said, pointing your interviewee towards problems you want to solve for them isn’t by asking explicitly about their financial management problems isn’t what you want either.
I’ve got a better way for you. In this case, it’s not about what you ask, it’s about who you ask.
For you business to be successful, you need to find Early Adopters for a solution to their entrepreneurial financial management problems. In other words, there needs to be a set of entrepreneurs out in the world who are already trying to solve their financial management problems, and you need to be able to sustainably find them.
So what you want to do, is find entrepreneurs who you hypothesize are already trying to solve their financial problems, and then ask them what the hardest part about being an entrepreneur is. Because you’re opening the door for them to discuss any problems they are facing, if they cite financial management problems, it’s more likely they are the Early Adopters you’re looking for and you’ll be able to validate your assumption.
To summarize:
Best,
Justin
Got it.
Thanks so much Justin. I’m off to DO IT!
Best.
Tani
Hi Justin,
Thanks for putting this together!
I’ve interviewed like 10 people in the B2B space, and I frequently find myself in silence between my questions and the persons’ answers. I hear their frustration trying to go over the questions quickly to finish. Off course I don’t want to start a relationship with a customer feeling that I’m wasting their time. Any advice?
Thank you!
Thanks for this question Nat.
Do you feel like your customers are describing genuine problems to you? Are you having conversations with people who are actively trying to solve their problems?
Make sure you’re interviewing people who you think are actively trying to solve a problem and then ask them open-ended, non-leading questions about their problems. If they have some, they are generally pretty receptive to talking about them. If they aren’t actively trying to solve any problems at all, it sucks, but better to know now than later.
Justin
Awesome, I just discovered this post at the right time. I am at the verge of kick starting customer interviews.