The hardest part about creating a successful company isn’t building your product.

It’s selling your product.

It’s easy to spend months working on features, but how are you going to sell those features?

• How will you describe your product to ensure customers are interested in it?
• Where will you find enough customers to tell about it?
• How will you differentiate your product from the competition?
• What features should you talk about most on your landing page?

The answer to virtually every marketing and sales question you have can be found in…

Customer interviews.

Interviews will Teach you How to Sell

You know customer interviews are an indispensable tool for tech startups, but I wanted to show you just how universally powerful they are by telling you about Dr. Emily.

Dr. Emily was a School Psychologist working intense hours at elementary schools in urban areas. She loved the work she did, but she thought she could have more impact if she worked outside the confines of schools.

She wanted to start a company to assess children for learning disabilities, but one major obstacle stopped her:

She didn’t know how to sell her services.

Dreading having to become a sales-person, which felt uncomfortable and a little sleazy, Dr. Emily tried interviewing her customers hoping to find an easier way to start her company.

What she found, not only shocked her, but her competitors too.

What Did Dr. Emily Ask?

As I mentioned in my last article, Dr. Emily focused on interviewing customers who were already trying to solve the problem she wanted to solve.

Her Early Adopters were parents who already had their children assessed for learning disabilities, but were still searching for answers.

The first question she asked these parents was:

Q: What’s the hardest part about being the parent of a child with a learning disability?

To her surprise, their answers always included at least one of the following:

• “I don’t know where to start.”
• “I don’t know how to get support from the school.”
• “I’m not sure if my child will ever learn read.”

Notice how the answer to just this one question provide extremely powerful marketing copy.

Instead of listing her credentials on the first line of her website (e.g. “PhD, LEP, ABSNP, BICM, PPSC, etc.”) like most of Dr. Emily’s competitors do, she says something relevant to customers, like:

“Is your child struggling to get the support he or she needs in school? Together we’ll take the first step to understanding how to help your child make the most of their reading ability.”

No mind games, no sleaze and no hard selling. Dr. Emily just asked her customers about their problems, and restated the services she provides using their words.

If you listen to your customers…they’ll write your marketing copy for you.

Stand Out from your Competition

Another one of Dr. Emily’s most fruitful questions was:

Q: What’s not ideal about your previous assessment?

Again, to her surprise, when parents talked about assessments received from Dr. Emily’s competitors, the answer was uniformly:

A: We got the diagnosis, but don’t know what to do next.

With the answer to this question, Dr. Emily learned how to differentiate herself from her competitors.

When talking with potential customers, she now tells them:

“When we work together, you won’t just get an assessement, you’ll get an action plan so you’ll know exactly what to do next.”

If you listen to your customers…they’ll tell you how to beat your competitors.

The Results

Simply by interviewing her customers, Dr. Emily accomplished what none of her competitors had:

• Her competitors typically took 3 – 5 years to fill their client list. Dr. Emily did it in 18 months.
• Dr. Emily now has a 4-month waitlist for her assessments.
• And that’s after doubling her price over the last 18 months.

With the power of customer interviews, Dr. Emily was able to build a successful company in a crowded space, with absolutely no sales experience at all.

Interviews will Increase your Sales Too

Whether you’re at a high-tech accelerator in Asia, a social enterprise in Seattle, or are simply a service provider:

Interviews will teach you how to sell.

Remember that building your product is the easy part…selling it is the hard part; and interviews will do the heavy lifting.

Interviews will help you:

• Describe your product to ensure customers buy it
• Find enough customers to tell about it
• Differentiate your product from the competition
• Decide what features to build first

The answer to virtually every marketing and sales question you have about your business can be answered with…

Customer interviews.

Don’t do it Alone

You can get help creating your sales strategy. The first workbook in the FOCUS Framework will walk you through every step of the interviewing process.

And, if you want hands-on, immersive workshops on mastering customer interviews, join me and the 300+ founders who have already registered for FOCUS Con:

This first FOCUS conference is December 1st and it’s dedicated to Mastering Customer Interviews.

At FOCUS Con you’ll learn:

• Who to ask for interviews
• How to ask for interviews
• What to ask during interviews and
• How to turn their answers into a sales strategy

All with live workshops, networking and personal mentoring (and without the expense of plane tickets).

www.TheFocusCon.com 

We’ll see you there!
Justin

*Dr Emily’s name and photo have been changed to protect the anonymity of her clients.

The biggest mistake you're likely to make interviewing customers has nothing to do with how you interview — it has to do with who you interview.

The biggest interviewing mistake founders make is:
 

They interview the wrong customers.

When you interview the wrong customers, a number of problems arise, primarily:

1. You have a really difficult time getting the interviews.
    
2. The problems you hear during your interviews are all over the map and often have nothing to do with the problem you want to solve.
    
3. Your interviews don't leave you with clear next steps.

So how do you know if you’re interviewing the wrong customers?

If you interview customers across different customer segments, you are interviewing the wrong customers.
 

For Example

Let’s imagine we’re building a “Pandora for Exercise" app that will deliver a customized exercise routine everyday to solve the “exercise is boring" problem.

There are so many customers who could benefit from this app:

1. People who go running at the gym
2. New moms who want to lose the baby weight
3. Overweight people who are activated to try to lose weight
4. People taking classes like pole dancing or Zumba
5. Etc.

So which ones should you interview?
 

If you're tempted to interview more than one of these segments, you're probably interviewing the wrong customers.

To understand who you want to interview, you have to recall…
 

Why do we Interview?

We don't interview to validate a problem exists.

You know exercise is boring, I know exercise is boring, there’s no reason to validate that some people think exercise is boring.
 

What we need to validate is that exercise is so boring, that it’s worth building a company to make it less boring.

How do we know if a problem is big enough that it’s worth starting a company to solve it? 

 

Step #1: Validate there are Early Adopters for that company.

We know your successful company will start with your Early Adopters, move on to your Early Majority, then your Late Majority and eventually your Laggards.

Notice how there's no way to get your Early Majority, without your Early Adopters.

Which begs the question…who are your Early Adopters?

Early Adopters are customers who are actively seeking a solution to the problem you want to solve.

In other words, your company will have Early Adopters if, and only if, there are people who are already searching for a solution to the problem your company wants to solve.

Back to our Pandora for Exercise Example…

(…and who we should be interviewing.)

Here’s what we know:

• We want to interview Early Adopters.
   
• Early Adopters are people already trying to solve the problem our company wants to solve.
   
• The problem our company wants to solve is “exercise is boring.”
   
• Therefore, we want to interview customers who are already trying to solve the “exercise is boring” problem!

So, which of our four segments is already trying to make exercise more entertaining?

1. People who go running at the gym? No. These people are doing the most boring form of exercise there is. They clearly aren’t taking steps to make exercise more exciting, so they aren't our Early Adopters.
    
2. New moms who want to lose the baby weight? Just because someone wants to lose weight doesn’t mean they are trying to make exercise more entertaining; these aren't our Early Adopters either.
    
3. Overweight people who are recently activated to try a lose weight? Again, unless they’re taking some action that indicates they’re trying to solve the “exercise is boring” problem, we don’t want to interview them.
    
4. People taking classes like pole dancing? This is exactly who we’re looking for! It’s safe to assume (although we still need to validate via interviews) that people are learning pole dancing because it’s more fun than traditional exercise.

   In particular, people who are brand new to pole dancing have a high likelihood of being people who are “actively searching for way to make exercise more entertaining” – and that’s exactly who we’re looking for.

Once you’ve identified your early adopters, you can interview them to validate they are in fact trying to solve the problem you want to offer a solution for.

Who are your Early Adopters?

Your Early Adopters are people who are actively trying to solve the problem you want to solve.

To find yours:

1. Think about the problem your company solves for your customers.
    
2. Brainstorm all the people who are actively trying to solve that problem right now.
    
3. Start interviewing the ones who are most intensely searching for a solution.

That can be easier said than done but…
 

Once you find the people who want your help solving a problem, you'll find the path to Product-Market Fit.

Do you want Help Finding your Early Adopters?
 

The FOCUS Framework has several exercises that will help you find your Early Adopters, and at the upcoming FOCUS Con, we’re going to take those exercises one step further.
 

This first-ever FOCUS conference is December 1st and it’s dedicated to Mastering Customer Interviews. We've designed this conference for founders who are looking for their Early Adopters with…

• Hours of live, interactive workshops
• Mentoring from top TechStars, Startup Weekend and Founder Institute mentors
• Networking with other founders
• A customer interview conducted…LIVE
• All with no hotels, no flights, no jet lag required

I hope you join us, and the hundreds of founders who have already registered, at FOCUS Con:

www.TheFocusCon.com 

I want to make sure you're interviewing the right customers, and help you find your Early Adopters.

See you there!
Justin

Two weeks ago I offered free Landing Page MVP feedback to our Customer Development Labs community. What I saw was 40+ beautifully designed pages but…

Virtually every founder was making the same 2 mistakes.

Those mistakes were leading to lower conversion rates.

Mistake #1: Product vs Problem

Of course, you’re selling a product, but here’s the thing about products…

Customers don't buy products. Customers buy solutions to problems. Click To Tweet

We know your customers will buy your product because it will create a change for them – solve a problem for them, change their emotional state, etc.

The mistake founders make is that you “know” the above to be true, but your landing page doesn’t reflect it.

When your landing page MVP talks about your product more than the problem…that’s a problem.

Take a look at the video above for a pile of examples from real landing pages.

The Fix

To solve any Product vs Problem mistakes, all you need to do is:

Lead with the problem.

When the headline of your landing page speaks directly to your customers’ problems, they’ll immediately buy-in:

Once customers know you’re going to solve their problem, you’ll have all the time in the world to tell them about your product.

Next Steps

To figure out what problems your customers are trying to solve, and more importantly, the words they use to describe those problems, you need to talk with them via 1-on-1 interviews.

In fact, the words customers use to describe their problems will be the basis of your headlines:

Your customers will write your landing page copy for you.

For details on customer interviews see my articles on:

• How to Interview your Customers
• Customer Interview Script Generator

 

If you want some help figuring out where/how to find customers to interview, check out the FOCUS Framework Exercise 1.4: Where are Your Early Adopters?

That exercise will show you exactly where to find customers who are willing to be interviewed, and how to approach them.

If you already know the words your customers use to describe their problems but want help converting them into effective landing page copy, check out FOCUS Exercise 2.4: Offer Design.

The Offer Design exercise will help you transform your interviews into emotionally-driven landing page copy, that converts.

Mistake #2: Flying Car Syndrome

The 2nd most common mistake I see is landing pages that promise to solve several different types of customer’s problems, and in doing so, solve none of them.

I call this the “Flying Car Syndrome.”

Flying cars are an amazing idea, and have existed for decades – so why don’t we use them?

Because flying cars suck.

By trying to be too many things, for too many people, the flying car is simultaneously a crappy car, and a crappy plane.

What you don’t realize is that by building a landing page that appeals to more than one type of customer, you’ve created a digital version of a flying car.

Your landing page isn't converting because you're selling to pilots and drivers at the same time. Click To Tweet

Watch the video above for what this looks like on real-world landing pages, so you can avoid it.

Put another way, if you know you need to lead with the problem not the product (see Mistake #1), what problem does a flying car solve?

• Helping drivers avoid rush hour traffic? Nope. Not unless they’ve got a landing strip near where they’re going to and from.
• Helping drivers save money? No. They’ll burn way more fuel keeping that hunk of junk in the sky.
• Helping pilots be able to fly more than they normally do? Yes, until they die…then no. Flying small planes is already dangerous – strapping wings to a Geo Metro is only going to make it worse.

Once you start focusing on the problem you solve for customers, you quickly realize…

Each type of customer has a different type of problem.

If you want to speak to any of your customers, you must speak to only one of your customers. One landing page, solving one problem, for one type of customer.

As soon as you start combining problems from multiple segments at once, you end up describing no one’s problems well – and turn your landing page into an “interesting idea” that no one wants <cough>flying car</cough>.

The Fix

The remedy for this mistake is simple:

Sell cars. Then sell planes.

Start by solving a single segment’s problems. Solve that small segment’s problems in an incredible way. That small segment will help spread the word and tell your next segment, which will help spread the word with your next segment.

Eventually you’ll serve both drivers and pilots (a la Rolls-Royce) but you’ll do it with great cars and great airline engines…not with a sub-par combination of the two.

I know it feels scary to only target one customer segment. I know it feels like there’s no way that one segment is big enough for you to be able to start a successful company. I also know…

The only way to get big, is to start small. Click To Tweet

Facebook didn’t start as the preferred social media tool for 1 billion people around the world. It didn’t start as the preferred social media tool for the US. It didn’t start as the preferred tool in colleges. It didn’t even start as the preferred social media tool for Ivy League colleges.

Facebook started at one college…Harvard.

From there it gained traction at Ivy League schools, then colleges around the US, then the general US population, and now the world.

Facebook didn’t start trying to serve everyone. It started by serving just one.

Watch the video above for an example of how Apple followed the same path.

Note: for details on picking which side of a two-sided market to start with, click here.

Next Steps

To alleviate “Flying Car Syndrome”, you need to:

1. Prioritize your customer segments
2. Pick the single best segment to start testing with
3. Create a landing page MVP just for that segment

If you want help with the prioritization process, you can either use the SPA Treatment, or you can use the updated version: SCALE-ing your Segments – Exercise #1.5 in FOCUS.

SCALE will help you prioritize your segments based on the factors I’ve found most important for identifying true Early Adopters within your market.

Conclusion

Creating the highest converting landing-pages possible is straight forward:

1. Always lead with your customer’s problem
2. Focus on just one type of customer at a time

Do that, and you’ll avoid the most common Landing Page MVP mistakes and you’ll maximize your currency.

Want More MVP Articles?

This is the 4th article in my MVP series. You can check out the others below:

1. What is an MVP?
2. The 5 MVPs of Product-Market Fit
3. My 9 Favorite Tools for Building Landing Page MVPs
4. (This one) Is your Landing Page not Converting? Here’s why.

Be sure to subscribe to get my next article: “What are Early Adopters, and Where are Yours?”