Doing customer development (and stop wasting your time)
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Hans van GentSmall Business Trends Top 20 Content Marketer to Follow. Founder @inboundrocket, former director @ StartupBus & Head of Digital @ The Oval Office at The Oval Office
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Doing customer development (and stop wasting your time)
Why would you bother to talking to people while you actually could be building your product? Because everything you assume could be wrong. Time to validate those assumptions and start your business on the right track.
Hans van GentSmall Business Trends Top 20 Content Marketer to Follow. Founder @inboundrocket, former director @ StartupBus & Head of Digital @ The Oval Office at The Oval Office
11. Personas
are fictional characters created to represent
the different user types within a targeted
demographic, attitude and/or behaviour set
that might use a site, brand or product in a
similar way.
12. Personas
A persona is a kind of an imaginary person with
a name, history, and story who has a way of
doing things.
13. Personas
A persona should have enough psychological
detail to allow you to conveniently step over to
the persona’s view and see your products and
services from her perspective.
14. Personas
A persona can function almost like another
person in the room when making a decision—It is
“Magnus.” He looks at what you’re doing from
his particular and very specific vantage point,
and points out flaws and benefits for him.
15. about potential customers
Describe a stereotypical customer
as detailed as possible
Facts & demographics
• Name, Gender, Age, Education, Occupation…
Behaviours
• What books does he/she read? What's he/she
already doing to solve the problem you want to
solve for him/her?
Problem & needs
• What are her points of pain as HE/SHE thinks
about them? What product or service, similar to
yours, is he/she using but unsatisfied with? Then,
what problem is he/she trying to solve with that?
What challenges keeps him/her up at night trying
to google the answer?
Goals & dreams
• What is he/she trying to accomplish? What is
most important to him/her?
icon by Paulo Sá Ferreira
16. about potential customers
Places
• Where (online and offline) can you find him/her?
Forums? Comment sections of which blogs?
Social networks? Meetups? LinkedIn, Facebook,
Google Groups?
Key influencers
• Who does he/she trust as a thought leader? Who
knows a lot of your customers and can introduce
you to them?
icon by Paulo Sá Ferreira
Describe a stereotypical customer
as detailed as possible
19. Questions to ask
when developing personas
#1 What is their demographic information?
#2 What kind of job do they have?
20. Questions to ask
when developing personas
#1 What is their demographic information?
#2 What kind of job do they have?
#3 What does a day in their life look like?
21. Questions to ask
when developing personas
#1 What is their demographic information?
#2 What kind of job do they have?
#3 What does a day in their life look like?
#4 What do they value most?
What are their goals?
22. Questions to ask
when developing personas
#1 What is their demographic information?
#2 What kind of job do they have?
#3 What does a day in their life look like?
#4 What do they value most?
What are their goals?
#5 Where do they get their information?
25. By talking to people you can find
out about their problems.
26. But it’s super easy
to screw up these
conversations.
icon by Stefano Vetere
27. Henry Ford
’If I had asked people what they wanted, they
would have said faster horses.’
28. Anybody will say your idea is great
if you annoy them for long enough.
29. A man wakes up, turns on the
radio, goes upstairs, turns on the
lights, and kills himself.
Why?
image by Spirit_of_69
(Note: this slide, and several other, are accompanied by a mini-workshop which is really hard to replicate
without being in the room. If you want to bring me in-house and hear the punchline, ping @jcvangent)
30. image by wstryder
(Note: this slide, and several other, are accompanied by a mini-workshop which is really hard to replicate
without being in the room. If you want to bring me in-house and hear the punchline, ping @jcvangent)
31. #1 Use a script or survey
Three ways to horrible screw up
customer development
32. Always know your big 3
questions
Don’t stress to much about choosing the “right” important
questions. They will change. Just choose the 3 questions which
seem murkiest or most important right now. Doing so will give
you a firmer footing and a better sense of direction for your
next 3.
Knowing your list allows you to take better advantage of
serendipitous encounters.
33. Questions to dig into feature requests
# Why do you want that?
# What would that let you do?
# How are you coping without it?
#Do you think we should push back the launch date, add that
feature, or is it something we can add later?
# How would that fit into your day?
34. Questions to dig into emotional signals
# Tell me more about that.
# That seems to really bug you - I bet there’s a story here.
# What makes it so awful?
# Why haven’t you been able to fix this already?
# You seem pretty excited about that - it’s a big deal?
# Why so happy?
# Go on.
35. Softball and anchor questions
How’s it going with..?
Interesting: tell me more about that..
Can we go back to what you were saying about..?
36. #1 Use a script or survey
#2 Talk about your idea
Three ways to horrible screw up
customer development
40. The mom test
• Never ask their opinion, especially about
your idea
• Ask about their life
• Ask about specifics in the past
(“talk me through the last time you…”)
• Talk less and listen more
41. Good or bad questions
Inspiration: the mom test
80. Running the process
(Note: these are another set of workshop slides as taught during Evolv Weekend, ping @jcvangent for more info)
81. Customer
Hypotheses
Problem / Pain
Hypotheses
Riskiest
Asumptions
Minimum
Success
Criteria
Experiments
Results
Solution
Hypotheses
Get out of the building and test
Define riskiest assumptions and experiments
Progress Report Board team:
Progress Report Board v1.2
Progress Report Board team:
First validate that your
customer has a problem
Then, state what your assumption
is of the ideal soluotion, and build your
experiments to validate those assumptions
Fill in your persona sheets and
refer to those, you can give them
names to match their personality
Of all the assumptions you have,
state the one, which if proved wrong,
will invalidate the whole business
Design an experiment which will
(in)validate the riskiest assumption
most efficiently
Call the criteria the results need to
meet for the assumption to
be validated
State the results of the experiment
compared to the criteria, and thus if
it’s validated or invalidated, and if
you’re going to pivot, iterate or
persevere
Inform us on the problems your
customer or persona is having and
how severe those pains are
according to you
83. Who is your customer? Be as specific as possible.
(time limit: 5 minutes)
Customer Hypothesis
85. What is the problem? Phrase it from your customers
perspective.
(time limit: 5 minutes)
Problem / Pain Hypothesis
87. Define a solution only after you have validated a problem
worth solving.
(time limit: 5 minutes)
Solution Hypothesis
89. List the assumptions which must hold true, for your hypothesis
to be true
(time limit: 10 minutes)
Riskiest assumptions
91. What are your 3 big questions? .
(time limit: 5 minutes per interview)
Experiments
93. Call the criteria the results need to meet for the assumption
to be validated.
Minimum Success Criteria
95. State the results of the experiment compared to the criteria,
and thus if it’s validated or invalidated, and if you’re going to
pivot, iterate or persevere.
Result