How To Do Customer Discovery

The Startup Help Desk

In this episode we answer questions about doing effective Customer Discovery, including:

• How do you hold a Customer Discovery interview?
• What to do if you hear inconsistent feedback?
• How much time should you put into it?

All of these questions were submitted by listeners just like you. You can submit questions for us to answer on our website https://www.thestartuphelpdesk.com/ or on Twitter @thestartuphd - we'd love to hear from you!
Episode Notes
Reminder: this is not legal advice or investment advice.
Q1: How do you hold a Customer Discovery interview?
Step 1: disarm your interviewee.

• Get them talking! Small talk, affinity, ice breakers.
• Make sure your objective is clear: your goal is to learn whether this person (or business) has a hair on fire problem, and you want to test your major assumptions about how you could solve that problem.
• Thus: you are not selling.
• Explain that you do not want “feel good” answers.

Step 2: ask about their problems.

• Don’t assume they have your problem or that it is important.
• Find out how they currently solve these problems. Why is it bad?

Step 3: ask “subjective” questions to go deeper on their motivations to solve the problem.

• Provide possible solutions and evaluate their response.
• See if any make them “reach across the table” and demand it now.

Step 4: conclude the interview by asking if you can follow up with more questions and if they can introduce you to others to interview. Schedule another meeting or get them on the mailing list.
Additional best practices:

• Have two of you on the call: one teammate to lead the conversation, one to take notes.
• Take plenty of notes!

Q2: What to do if you hear inconsistent feedback?
In the early stages of your customers interviews, expect a lot of variance. It can often mean you haven’t found the right problem to solve yet, or you have not narrowed in on the right target audience yet.
Remember: words and behavior are not the same. Listen closely and continue calibrating your questions, asking more open ended questions.
Furthermore:

• Instead of asking them what they think of X or Y, ask them to tell you about their day & problems in their own words.
• Test demand - how bad do they want a solution? How much could they pay? When would they want it live?
• Test suggestions from customers in new interviews - what reactions are you seeing vs previous messaging?
• Focus on a more narrow set of customer profiles.

As you increase your volume of interviews, calibrate your questions, and refine your target audience, you may see your feedback become much more consistent!
Q3: How much time should makers put towards building vs selling/discovery?
Selling only matters after you have product/market fit. If you don’t have it, then you need to focus your time on customer development.

• On day 1, 100% of your time should be on discovery.
• Interview 200-300 people.
• Even if you have a bad template or ask wrong questions, volume can save you.

Once your interviews show that you have right problem to focus on, you want to test your ability to solve it: this is where you have a balance of “building” and “discovery”.
Once you have product/market fit, you need to have a team in place so that you can build and sell at the same time instead of jumping back and forth.

• As a founder, you’ll always need to be selling. You don’t always need to be building.
• However, if building is what makes you happy, you need to make time for it. If you are miserable, you won’t be an effective leader.