Tip #5: It's all about investigating, Sherlock
🎯 Today's objective: ⛔ Bad interviews vs ✅ Good interviews
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Today, we start focusing on your most important task right now, I would even say, your ONLY task: understanding your customers.
This process is difficult. There is no secret sauce to success. However, there are techniques you can use to get more and better insights when talking with potential customers. This is what we’ll see today.
🎯 Today's objective: ⛔ Bad interviews vs ✅ Good interviews
A good idea is one that solves a problem, an idea that fills a need. Why should people like or use what you provide otherwise?
That’s why your entrepreneurial journey doesn't start by focusing on the idea itself, but rather on the end-users. You will need to build the company from their point of view, rather than trying to push them what you think they need.
And that’s why entrepreneurs do what is called Customer Interviews. In other words, it means: go and ask questions, my friend. Try to identify where the problems, needs, and pain points of your future users are: what makes them angry every day, wastes their time, energy, costs them money...
☝ "Buuuuut, wasn't it Ford who said: if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would've answered: faster horses.” (He never said that, by the way).
An idea Ford could have had is trying to make horses run faster by improving training or food. The problem Ford had identified is that horses are slow, uncomfortable, and create shitty problems… literally... He realized that the combustion engine could solve that, and finally he had the industrial power and the resources to develop a solution like the Ford T. See the difference? _ STFU⚡
So, what do we do exactly? What are these interviews about?
👉 Ask well-prepared questions to potential users in order to discover their needs, problems, and if the solution you plan to create solves their problems.
Interviews last usually around 30-40 minutes.
⛔ Bad interviews vs ✅ Good interviews
The best way to understand how to conduct good interviews is to understand The Mom Test (super book btw, a best-seller once again). Even if the voice is horrible (🤭), I’m sure this 3:30 min video will open your eyes regarding the right questions to ask when talking about your business idea.
Let's analyze the main learnings from this example
The girl starts by presenting her idea, and thus exposes her ego, because her idea, according to her, is necessarily a good idea. ❌ 👉 Don’t start by pitching your idea.
Then, she presents all the features, without letting her mum speaks. She won't give up before her mother says “yes”, which will happen as her mother doesn't want to be rude. ❌ 👉 Listen more, speak less.
Her mother says “yes”, and she replies: “Great! Thank you!". She completely interpreted the conversation as a validation of an act of purchase, instead of an unconscious “lie” from her mother to protect her… ❌ 👉 The biggest mistake you can make.
Needless to say that such an interview brings nothing... except that it seeks to validate your idea, that it flatters the ego and gives you irrelevant information that will guide you in the wrong direction.
✅ So, what are the hacks to know and mistakes to avoid in order to get more valuable information during an interview? This guy answers this in a short and super clear video.
I think you got the point now! In the next tips, you'll receive a list of questions, templates, and examples you can use to build a perfect interview script.
Just for your culture, the term "customer interview" comes from a methodology invented by Steve Blank. Blank is one of the most famous entrepreneurs and thinkers of the last 40 years, who has been part of or co-founded 8 startups, wrote 4 bestsellers, and taught entrepreneurship at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Berkeley for years, based on his experience in building successful companies. (To meet the guy see: 1 and 2)
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See you next week guys 🤙
Nico, Marie, Raquel