Ten deadly sins of Customer Development
I am pretty sure all of you guys have a brilliant idea of a startup.You are ready to build the next big thing that will undoubtedly disrupt our minds and I will be honored to know that this person read my article a couple of years ago.
So you are on fire with your next uber-for-cats or facebook-for-australian-teenagers idea. You are googling “how to find investments” and “startup accelerators 2019”. You know for sure that people are in need of your product and nothing can stop you. You see yourself standing on the stage with $500K bill and sharing on your Facebook page TechCrunch’s fresh article about your launch…
But wait for a minute. If this were so easy, why hundreds and thousands of startups fail each year?
The first and the main reason why all those guys fail to be successful is no market need. Creators keep on creating things users don’t need. And one of the most powerful, cheap and precise ways to observe this need or to find valuable insights that can entirely change the way you do your business is customer development (CD) methodology.
Let me share with you ten deadly sins of CD and how you can avoid committing them.
#1 You hear something you want to hear
It’s obvious you want your dream to come true and become one of those “30 under 30” guys. Nevertheless, you should be honest with yourself and your team\stakeholders.You should realize that if you use invalid information in product building or development now, it will cost you much more money later.
Always keep a positive attitude no matter what is happening around you, but don’t make this positivity excessive. Come back to reality and keep your mind sober.
#2 Using friends, close colleagues or relatives as respondents
Sometimes it’s so seductive to ask your mom, a beloved man or a colleague sitting nearby to share their thoughts. Don’t do that: you have a relationship context with all those people, so the information they can give you will not be true. They will tell you lies not because you are a bad guy or they are scamps. They simply don’t want to hurt you ❤
Avoid such people while working on your idea, they will not bring any truthful insights.
#3 Questions about future
Do you remember that sports club membership card you have bought three months ago? Or ten English lessons your colleagues presented on your birthday? If no, that’s ok. People want to be better in future. Our brain thinks that talking is equal to doing. Thus, approximately 80% sports membership cards remain unactivated and your English still ̶s̶u̶c̶k̶s̶ is not perfect. People are very hard to change their lives and habits.
While doing customer development, don’t ask “How are you going to solve problem X”?, ask “How did you solve problem X last time”?. We need exact cases and specific previous experience of this user.
#4 You are talking too much
No matter what is happening, our brain wants us to make the simplest things possible and when we face that “silence situation” the first thing we do is start talking. Sometimes on the topic and sometimes not, but exactly in this case we are stealing those super valuable insights that can be told you by the respondent sitting in front of you.
Don’t talk, add comments or describe your own experience. Even if you want — just keep silence and you will be amazed how much people can tell you.
#5 Closed-ended questions
Generally, there are two types of questions you can ask your vis-a-vis: closed-ended and open-ended. Close-ended are much easier to generate and ask, they are naturally created in our minds and that is the problem: we, as product managers or current\future startup founders, don’t need them, we need open-ended ones. Open-ended questions allow observing the entire experience of the user.
Before conducting an interview, check your prepared questions on being closed-ended (yes or no as an answer) or open-ended (start with “why, describe, share” etc — they are not binary). Use the last ones only.
#6 Cognitive distortion
When you want to hear something you want to hear (sorry for a wordplay), you start asking questions that are prejudiced with your own opinion or attitude. This is a huge mistake that can cost you lots of money in the future. Try to be as neutral as possible. Check your questions on cognitive bias presence (“Will you be sad if….” or “How much would you like if…”). Do not give your respondent your own or somebody other’s experience, ask for their unique one.
#7 Generalizations with no specific cases
I’ve met a lot of people who “usually play sports” and “regularly go to dental check-up” (if you know what I mean). Maybe somewhere in the parallel reality it is really so, but we do not need sci-fiction stories, we need specific use cases that have happened to end-users of our product or our target audience.
The easiest way to find this use case is to ask for a story. “Hey, could you please refresh in your memory step-by-step how you ordered a taxi last time? Where were you? Who was near you and why? What was happening around?”. Avoid phrases with all those “usually”, “in most cases”, “sometimes”, “in general” etc.
#8 Accepting all feedback as equally valuable
I am going to describe the main thought in this picture (that was found somewhere in Facebook).
So please, filter all the information you get and remember that people like to talk very much. Be wiser and don’t get caught on this trick. Chose those who are relevant for your product\use case and ignore verbal noise.
#9 Delegation
We are super busy almost all the time and when we are able to delegate some tasks, we should do that. Thus, there are several things that cannot be delegated (unless you are not a decision-maker in this product or company and you are not interested in the success of this story).
Try to conduct all interviews by yourself if possible. When you are talking with a relevant respondent, you can catch insights that can blow your mind and change the whole backlog. When you are delegating interviews, you are delegating responsibility, decision-making and future success of your product.
You are a rising startup star, so you don’t need that, do you?
#10 No deep diving
Our product or solution needs to be a pain-killer for existing user’s pain. To find this pain, we have to dig deeper into the user’s experience to find a trigger that makes this person feel that pain. Use “Five whys’ ” principle in your CD process: ask why again and again until you get the a-ha moment. This discovery will allow you to build a really necessary product.
Unfortunately, too many brands and startups think they are solving problem A, when in reality they are solving problem B. Don’t do the same — dive deep to solve the right problem.
I hope this article will help you.
Of course, this list can be complemented and it will be super cool if you do so in comments below. Please share your feedback and, of course, claps.
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