Presented at NYU Stern Technical Product Management II, April 9, 2020

1. Understanding
What Your Customers
Really Want
Understanding
What Your Customers
Really Want
flickr.com/photos/wwworks

2. @thinknow
HI! I’m Lane Goldstone
I’m a digital product
strategist with an
entrepreneurial spirit

3. @thinknow

4. @thinknow

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Back in the day
PLAN – BUILD – TEST – SHIP – T-SHIRT

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Back in the day
PLAN – BUILD – TEST – SHIP – T-SHIRT
Research & Design
^

7. @thinknow
“9 out of 10
new products
are failures”
www.class-central.com
Steve Blank
Photo: udacity.com

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The most expensive
features you build
are the ones
nobody uses

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Don’t scale until you find
Product-market fit

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flickr.com/
photos/joi
“ “
flickr.com/photos/betsyweber

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UNVALIDATED
ASSUMPTIONS
RISK
TIME
Delayed
Customer
Feedback
Continual
Customer
Feedback

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The Lean Startup cycle
Hypothesis
ExperimentEvaluate

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Tools for product-market fit
✦
Know your customer
✦
Get out of the building
✦
Experiment and Learn

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Know your
customer

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Micro-segments
✦
Have the same problem
✦
Use the same jargon
✦
Congregate in communities

17. Photos Lane Goldstone

18. @thinknow
Discussion:
What are the functional, social and
emotional benefits of Brooklyn
Copper Cookware?

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GOOB*
*”Get out of the Building” —Steve Blank

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Before you GOOB
✦
Who do you want to talk to?
✦
Where do you find these people?

23. @thinknow
How do you find (the right) people?
✦
Your current customers
✦
Your competition’s customers
✦
Social media (Facebook, Twitter)
✦
Special interest groups (Meetups)
✦
Friends and Family
✦
Coffee shops, malls….wherever they are

24. @thinknow
Discussion:
Where will we find “copperheads?”
How could we screen them from our
other micro-segments?

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Fast user sentiment test
Screening Question
Prompts

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Experiment
and learn

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Hypotheses
We can attract people who live within a 100-mile radius of
NYC to this event via a FB event and Mailchimp mailing.
Asking people to RSVP will increase the chances they
show up.
Spending money promoting the event will result in on-site
sales (via more qualified leads attending.
?
?
?

30. @thinknow

31. @thinknow
What we learned
We can attract people who live within a 100-mile radius of
NYC to this event via a FB event and Mailchimp mailing.
Asking people to RSVP will increase the chances they
show up.
Spending money promoting the event will result in on-site
sales (via more qualified leads attending.
FAIL
FAIL
FAIL

32. @thinknow
Discussion:
What are your observations about this
experiment?
What do you think we did next?

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New hypothesis
We believe Friday 3-7 isn't a convenient time for our
micro-segment.
We will do our next event on a weekday (T, W, Th) later
(6-10) or weekend during the day.

34. @thinknow
Review: Tools for product-market fit
Micro-segments
Talk to the right people
in the right way
Define hypotheses,
fail fast
Know your customer
Get out of the building
Experiment and Learn

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Established product?
Learn from your
customers
continuously

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Customer Insight / Design Ops
✦
New/growing area of practice for companies
with an established user base and key metrics
✦
Mashup of product analytics and lean user
research methods
✦
Coordinated listening for all customer
touchpoints: call center, analytics, user panels,
etc.
✦
Centralized research results, learning backlogs

37. https://flickr.com/photos/wwworks
Talking to customers
shouldn’t be a special
occasion.

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Combine techniques: Quant, Qual, Quant
✦
See a pattern (via analytics, customer
feedback)
✦
Do a quick user study (user panel, intercept)
✦
Form a hypothesis
✦
Mock up a proposed solution (design thinking)
✦
Test and measure
✦
Repeat!

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Topic Map
a quick, collaborative conversation guide

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Plan your conversations
✦
What do you want to learn?
✦
Who should you talk to?
✦
Where will you find them?
✦
How will you make the conversation productive?
This is a GREAT activity for team alignment and
collaboration.

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You need conversation starters
It’s tempting to ask direct questions:
✦
How will you use this?
✦
How much would you pay?
We can’t ask directly because people:
✦
Want to be helpful/please us
✦
Don’t have reliable memories

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The power of stories
Talk about recent events and analogous experiences.
Where do you usually
shop?
How much would you
pay for our product?
Think about the last time
you shopped for groceries,
where did you go?
What are you doing to solve
that problem now? What
does it cost? (time/money)

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Good customer conversations have
Just enough
structure

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AcDvity: Make a topic map

45. Basket: Real-Time
Grocery Pricing App

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Discussion:
Plan a round of customer conversations
for Basket
✦
What do you want to learn?
✦
Who should you talk to?
✦
Where will you find them?

47. @thinknow
Activity: Setup
Make an account on
https://stickies.io and
create a new board

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Activity: Make a topic map
10 min Brainstorm: Write stickies for things you want
to learn from your customers (It’s OK to write
them as “bad questions” at this point)
10 min Cluster: Organize the stickies, give each group
a short 1-3 word name.
5 min Reframe: Think of a conversation starter for
each group. How can you get them to talk
about the things in this group?
5 min Sequence: Re-arrange the groups so they are
in a logical order to support a natural
conversation.

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Discussion:
What questions do you have for me?

50. @thinknow
Lane Goldstone
www.lanegoldstone.com
THANK YOU