Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers

While people are willing to grant time to polite people who ask for advice, you have an extra advantage if you are a student or academic researcher. In other words, if you are a student or researcher, say so. As an extra incentive, you might also offer to share the results of your research with your interview subjects.

time. I have found that it is extremely effective to ask people for their time, but for later, after the conference or meetup. Get their business card, let them get back to networking, and then have an in-depth conversation when it fits their schedule. Immediately after the conference while their memories are still fresh, send them a short email th

You should use referrals as much as possible. Set a goal of walking out of every interview with 2 or 3 new candidates. When you end an interview, ask the person if they know others who face the problem you are trying to solve. If they feel like you have respected their time, they will often be willing to introduce you to others.

Find the Moment of Pain If you can connect with people at the moment of their theoretical pain, it can be very illuminating. My colleague Alexa Roman was working with an automotive company and they had a concept tied to the experience of getting gas. So Alexa and team visited a series of gas stations.

An interview guide is not a script. You do not need to read from it like an automaton. You should feel free to veer off of it if the conversation brings up something interesting and new. It will likely evolve as you learn from the market and unearth new questions. But always plan, prioritize and prep your questions before any session.

Because we are a new brand, we are hoping that most shoppers are undecided. We want to see that 40% or fewer shoppers already know what they want when they walk in Because our pillow is expensive, we want to see that at least 40% of the shoppers buy mid or high-end models Because we believe that sleep quality is a major differentiator for our produ

Some people like to ask, “if you could wave a magic wand and have this product do whatever you want, what would it do?” Personally, I avoid questions like this because customers are too constrained by their current reality to design effective solutions. It is the customer’s job to explain their behavior, goals, and challenges. It is the product des

How much do you currently spend to address this problem? What budget do you have allocated to this, and who controls it? How much would you pay to make this problem go away? (this

Testing for Price