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Troubleshooting your customer discovery
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来自 University of Maryland, College Park 的课程
创新企业家：从理念到市场
216 个评分
University of Maryland, College Park
216 个评分
课程 2（共 4 门，Specialization Entrepreneurship: Launching an Innovative Business）
从本节课中
Prototyping and Testing
This modules introduces key principles of product (or service) prototyping and testing, and highlights tools to use in these activities.
与讲师见面
Dr. Thomas J. MierzwaLecturer of Technology Entrepreneurship
Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech)
Okay, we're gonna take some time this week
to kind of troubleshoot some of the customer discovery that you've been doing.
To talk about some of the things that can go wrong with customer discovery calls,
and to talk about some other ways to do things right.
We're also gonna take time to have office hours with all of you so
that we can talk through issues that were arising and help you figure out the best
way to get actionable information out of your customer discovery calls.
So, what are the top things that can go wrong with customer discovery?
We've got a list here of the top 9,
and the number 10 will follow at the very end, just to make sure you're all awake.
But I wanna go through all of these briefly and
then dwell a little bit more on some of them.
Number one thing that can probably go wrong is that you're testing a dumb
hypothesis.
We'll talk a little bit more about that in a subsequent slide, but
let's just leave that one for now.
Number two thing that can go wrong, not listening to your customers.
If you're so busy worrying about whether your interview is gonna go well, or
you're so busy, even worse, worrying about how you're gonna present your product to
them and pitch it to them, you're not gonna be able to listen.
You're not gonna be able to keep your ears open to stuff they might be saying
that's going to help you figure out who they are,
what their archetypes are, what a value proposition would be for
them, what their jobs are and all that other good stuff you have to figure out.
Number three thing that can go wrong is probably not working for insight.
If you just hope that they're gonna tell you everything that's on their mind and
every problem that they have, then you're not gonna have to do any work.
You're gonna have a lot of work cut out for you because they're not gonna do that.
They know what's on their mind in some sense, but they can't tell it to you.
You have to work it out.
Number four problem is pitching to customers.
We all fall into it.
You've got some kind of solution.
It's on the tip of you're tongue.
They say, you know we have this problem with so and so.
And you say, well I have the solution to that.
Hold on.
You can tell them about it eventually.
You'll have plenty of time to talk to them.
Don't tell them about it right away.
Make sure that they get their bit out first before you get your bit into them.
Number five is probably must have and nice to have.
You hear them say something like yeah, that would be really nice.
And you say, hm, must have.
Not so, when they say, hm, that would be really nice, that's nice to have.
When they want something, they're gonna say, when can I get that?
Do you have that now?
Do you have something working?
Can you really do that?
That's must have, and
when they say something like that, then you know you've got a must have.
Number six is not asking about their Top 3 Pains.
You should never leave a customer discovery call
without finding out the top three things that are on their mind.
The top three jobs they have to do, the top three worries they have,
the top three things they need solutions for, etc., etc., etc.
It's a good practice just to ask.
Maybe it's good thing to ask at the very beginning of the call.
But certainly somewhere in the call, you have to ask,
what are the top three things that are on your mind?
And how do you think about them?
Number seven is one we're gonna talk about a little bit further on.
It's confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is where you hear what you expect to hear.
Like I say, we'll talk about that in a sec.
Number eight is uniqueness bias, where you get one positive and you say it's a trend.
Number nine is not following the money.
Whenever someone mentions money, budget, payment, wallet,
anything like that in the call, follow up on that.
Go a little bit deeper, think deep, ask them why questions, get into it.
If you don't follow the money,
you're never gonna find out how that ecosystem works.
So let's talk a little bit about number one, testing a dumb hypothesis.
Here's a typical dumb hypothesis, wouldn't you like a faster way to do a job?
Well of course, who wouldn't want a, who wants a slower way to do a job?
If the hypotheses that you're testing is something that's obvious and
everyone would agree with, and
no one could possibly disagree with, that's a dumb hypotheses.
A dumb hypotheses always sounds like a rhetorical question.
So you could hear it in your own mind if you're honest with yourself.
Another, there's other kinds of dumb hypotheses.
There are complicated, dumb hypotheses.
Would you say that you would like to get to
the moon by elevator but only slowly and on Tuesdays?
It's a complicated hypothesis.
Customers with the best will in the world, they can't answer a question like that.
That's a very tough question for them to answer.
Make sure that the hypotheses you're testing are pretty simple.
They want something that makes it easier.
You want, you don't want hypotheses that don't give you new information.
If you're not learning anything by testing the hypothesis, why bother?
If you already know that all the people you've talked to want something that
comes in different colors, don't ask the next person about different colors.
It's just a waste of time.
A dumb hypotheses is a hypotheses that doesn't help you with your
competitive analysis.
Half the time when you're looking at solutions in an area,
there's somebody doing it already.
Well, more than half the time, most of the time.
There's somebody doing something already and
most customers have some way that they have of handling their problems already.
You wanna be able to figure out how your thing compares to their thing.
If you're just testing a hypothesis that says yours is the same as theirs,
of course they're gonna want it, they already have it.
You want something to test the difference between yours and theirs.
That's a good hypothesis.
And finally, what all these hypotheses have in common, these dumb hypotheses,
is that they're not falsifiable.
You want a hypothesis that you can actually prove false.
So you say, how much have you paid for solutions like this in the past?
And they say $1 million,
then you are falsifying the hypothesis that they care about a cheap solution.
They know.
They're willing to pay $1 million for it.
That's a falsifiable hypothesis.
If you say, wouldn't you say that the cost of the solution matters?
That's a hypothesis that's not falsifiable.
They'll say, oh sure, cost matters.
But they won't be giving you a specific answer to a specific question.
So you won't be getting anywhere on your hypothesis.
Number six.
Getting on their top three pains.
If ain't in the top three to five pains,
you know, it probably doesn't exist for them.
You really have to get way up there in their tower of wishes and woes or
your just not gonna have any impact on them whatsoever.
So find out what their top three or their top five big problems or goals or
tasks or jobs are.
And no matter what they say about your solution,
if it doesn't address one of these, it's probably only nice to have.
That's not an ironclad rule, but it's a pretty good rule.
If it's not in their top three to five, forget about it.
And also, whenever they talk about their wishes and
woes, listen to the feeling with which they talk about them.
When they talk about ones with strong, oh my god,
I wish I could get that thing out of my hair.
Or, you know what's a real pain in the butt is getting this stuff through legal.
Whenever we have to talk to legal, it takes weeks, and
they're understaffed, blah, blah, blah.
When there's strong feeling like that,
that means that you're looking at a top three to five contender.
Note that the personal and
the work are blended in someone's tower of wishes and woes.
We have a bunch of, let's say you have a proposition of timely report.
That's your value proposition.
You'll note that that'll please their boss.
So it has a personal, a sort of personal work goal in there.
It'll make you not look like an idiot.
That's a completely personal goal.
And it will increase revenues, or arguably will increase revenues.
So, it has some business goals and it has some personal goals.
A really good value proposition would take care of both and
a really good solution would take care of both.
By the way, if you're designing any kind of software or anything that any one is
going to use in a business setting, make sure the reporting is always great.
Because they always want to please their boss.
They always wanna not look like an idiot.
And good reporting will help them do that.
So, very good thing.
Also, when people are talking about in their business role,
as director of purchasing, they're not gonna tell you about their personal stuff.
They're not gonna tell you I'm afraid to look like an idiot.
You have to read between the lines,
you have to figure that out from the customer interviews.
I wanna say a little bit about confirmation bias because it's
an important and sneaky source of dumb hypothesis.
Half a century of research has shown that it's everywhere, confirmation bias.
Our brains are always looking for something that we already know.
And so if you find it out there, you're predisposed to like it.
If you have a solution that involves loading everything into a spreadsheet,
you're gonna see spreadsheet need everywhere you talk.
And your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to stuff you already
know and that confirms stuff that you already know.
So, you're, we're completely wired for this.
The only good way to avoid confirmation bias is probably to go
with a partner who can talk you down when you are experiencing it.
Most of us, if you're faced with the inconvenient truth or reassuring lie,
will unhesitatingly go for the reassuring lie and so, you gotta stop yourself.
Finally, number nine, I wanna say a little bit more about that.
Every time the customer mentions money, dig deeper.
Ask questions like, who pays that?
How much do they spend on that altogether?
Is that from their budget?
Who allocates that money?
What other budget are they responsible for?
You wanna get the picture of the whole thing and
that will help you with your work.
Finally, we get to the tenth thing.
And you know what it is if you've listened to me so far.
Always get two more leads whenever you have a conversation.
Always close the conversation by talking, by finding other people to talk to.
If the customers that you're talking to aren't showing you new customers,
you're gonna run out pretty soon.
>> So the main points here.
Get out of the building.
Make every customer interview count.
Confirmation bias, don't drink your own Kool-Aid.
Have a little respect for
the facts of subverting what you believe, inconvenient truths.
Listen for different answers to questions you didn't ask, and
always get two more leads.
Thank you.
