Customer Discovery (aka Talking with and Learning from Prospects)

1. Customer
Discovery
(aka Talking with and Learning from Prospects)
BarCamp - May 11, 2013
Jason Innes

2. About Uncommon Innovation
• Started in 2007
• Services:
o Product Management and Customer Discovery
o Business and Market Strategy
o Marketing
o Opportunity Assessments
o Financing preparation
o Capital raising
• Focus:
o New products
o Technology

3. Agenda
• What is Customer Discovery?
• Why do it?
• Resources
• The Interview
o Pushback
o Goals
o Keys to Interview
o Getting Contacts
o The Problem Interview
o The Solution Interview

4. What is Customer Discovery?
• Learning from initial target customers
o Talk to them, engage them
o Do they have a big/painful problem?
o Would they pay to solve it? Etc.
• ...not selling or promoting
• Systematic
• Iterative. Can my product be successful?

5. Customer Discovery? (con't)
• Focuses on problem initially, the solution
comes afterwards
• For startups AND established companies
• Happens after market research to determine:
o Market Size
o Market Trends
o Competition
o Segmentation

6. Why do it?
• Most startups fail
• More likely due to market risk, not
technology risk
• Nothing important happens in the office
(Pragmatic Marketing)
• Learn before you build and seek investment

7. Resources
• Running Lean (by Ash Maurya)
• The Lean Startup (by Eric Ries)
• Four Steps to the Epiphany (by Steve Blank)
• The Startup Owner's Manual (by Blank/Dorf)
• Pragmatic Marketing (course)

8. Interview Pushback
Common things we hear:
• Interviews take too much time
• Interviews are scary
• I don't know anyone in the target market
• I don't want to tell people about my idea
• Steve Jobs didn't ask people what they
wanted, he had vision

9. Interview Goals
Goals:
• Understand the problem(s), customer,
needs, competition/alternatives, buying
behaviour
• Testing the solution (MVP) will come later

10. Keys to Interview
• Participate in process
• 12 interviews target (5 may cover 85%)
• 1-on-1 interviews, phone or in-person
• Open ended questions
• Qualitative (not quantitative) validation
• Develop falsifiable hypothesis
o Statements that can be clearly proven wrong
• Aim for repeatability
• Try to determine what you don't know
• 30 to 40 minutes, more if possible
• Don’t stop learning!

11. Getting Contacts for Interviews
From Running Lean:
• Start with personal network
• Ask for introductions
• Play the local card
• Create email list from a web teaser page
• Get contacts from Google searches
• Use LinkedIn
• Guess email addresses

12. The Problem Interview Script
From Running Lean:
• Welcome 2 min
• Collect Demographics 2 min
• Tell A Story 2 min
• Problem Ranking 4 min
• Explore Customer's Worldview 15 min
• Wrapping Up 2 min
• Document Results

13. Interview - Welcome (Set the stage)
"Thank you for agreeing to talk with me today. I want
to ensure you I am not trying to sell you anything. I
am only trying to learn more about your needs in
regards to XX, so we can build a better product that
meets your needs. I am interested in talking with
experts like yourself.
We are working on a service that aims to solve the
problem of XX. I got the idea from XX.
This is what is going to happen...."

14. Interview - Collect Demographics
• Dependant on product and segment
• For B2B product/service:
o Age
o City
o Title
o Responsibilities
o Number of people in company
o Key priorities in next few years

15. Interview - Tell A Story
"Great, thanks. Let me tell you about the
problems we are tackling with this product."
Tell the story of how you came up with your
product idea (but don't describe the solution).
Talk about the problems you identified.
"Does any of this resonate with you?"

16. Interview - Problem Ranking
• State the top one to three problems and ask
the prospect to rank and provide a measure
of value (scale of 1 to 5)
• Ask for other problems you haven't identified
• Need to understand how big of a problem
these are

17. Interview - Explore Worldview
• Open ended exploration
• Keep asking "Why?" until you understand
• Don't be afraid to ask questions
• Are they trying to solve the problem?
• Are problems "nice to have" or "must have"?

18. Interview - Wrap Up
• Thank them for their time and valued input to
helping a startup
• Ask for permission to follow-up ("Your input
has been extremely valuable and we will be
looking for experts like you to provide input
into our product design")
• Look for references

19. Interview - Document Results
• Document results in a template
• Review and learn
• Tweak questions if needed, ideally not too
much (want to compare results)

20. The Solution Interview Script
From Running Lean:
• Welcome 2 min
• Collect Demographics 2 min
• Tell A Story 2 min
• Demo 15 min
• Test Pricing 3 min
• *Buying Process 4 min
• Wrapping Up 2 min
• Document Results

21. Interview - Wrap Up
• Thank them for their time and valued input to
helping a startup
• Ask for permission to follow-up ("Your input
has been extremely valuable and we will be
looking for experts like you to provide input
into our product design")
• Look for references

22. Interview - Collect Demographics
• Same as for Problem Interview

23. Interview - Tell A Story
• Same as for Problem Interview

24. Interview - Demo (Test Solution)
• Illustrate through your "demo" how you
intend to solve the identified problems
• Seek feedback:
o What are the key features?
o What could they do without?
o What should be added?

25. Interview - Test Pricing
• Don't ask "What would you pay?"
• Ask "We plan to charge $XX for the product.
Does that seem reasonable to you?"
• Aim higher than you were planning on
charging to determine range
• Look/listen for clues (hesitation, surprise)

26. Interview - Buying Process
• Who is the MAN (more for B2B)?
o M - Money
o A - Authority
o N - Need
• Budget timing, likely cycle length
• Promotional Channels:
o Where would they expect to hear about this kind of product?
Rank priority
o Tradeshows, web, magazines, word of mouth, TV, radio, social
media, industry associations, etc.

27. Interview - Wrap Up
• Same as for Problem Interview except...
• Ask if he/she would be interested in being a
beta tester (may provide incentives, like "free
for 1 year", "50% off for 1 year“, “be part of
special customer advisory group”)

28. Interview - Document Results
• Same as for Problem Interview

29. Some Past Clients

30. Contact Info
Jason Innes
jason.innes@unco.ca
(o) 403-455-3966
(m) 403-701-0680

31. Appendix

32. The Lean Canvas
• By Ash Maurya, based on Alex
Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas
• Business model on 1 page (concise)
• Identify riskiest parts of business
• Draft early, test and iterate

33. The Lean Canvas