Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers

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

It is more effective to ask your interview subject to share a story about the past.

Your job is to think through the kinds of people who have the problem you are interested in solving. Sometimes they have a particular job, or a state of mind, live in a particular part of the world, or belong to a certain age group. Standard demographics might be useful, or they might be irrelevant. What are the commonalities across your customer b

To ask the right questions, you need to understand your risks and assumptions

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.

You are looking for clues that help confirm or deny your assumptions. Whether you are a tiny startup or an intrapreneurial team within a big company, your goal is not to compile statistically significant answers. Instead you want to look for patterns that will help you make better decisions.

In my interpretation, about 65% of reviews talked about sleep quality, which seems like a good sign for our first risk. A lot of the reviews had to do with personal preference for firm versus soft pillows.

Can you identify your champion? Can you identify who might be a saboteur?

Customer discovery is about gaining much deeper insight into your customer, or your partners, or your market Being told your idea is cool is not useful; seeing behavior that validates your customer’s willingness to buy is very useful Prepare an interview guide before you get out of the building To ask the right questions, you need to understand you