Main

Some principles

The book declares the following as its principles

1. Talk about the customer’s life instead of your idea
2. Avoid the future, get specific about the past,
3. Listen more

Core point: you’re not building a product by committee.

• People know their problems, not the solutions to their problems.

So, the first step is to

• Gather as much information about your customers’ lives so you can then take your own visionary leap to a solution

Next step

• Confirm it’s correct + refine

Avoid bad data

Compliments

• Try to avoid this- you want to be focused on the customer’s issues, not your vision
• Ignore compliments, bad sign
• Strike to the truth

Fluff (“Always” “Usually” “Never” “Would”)

• Example: I would totally buy that
• Sounds concrete, but is not.
• Example: “Oh, you have problem X. I’m doing Y, would you ever use it?”
• Don’t’ ask fluffle-inducing questions- like “Would you ever buy that” or “do you ever”
  • Go into specifics.
• Transition away from this.
  • Example:
    • “I do X all the time”
    • “Really? When was the last time? Talk me through it.”
  • Great example:
    • “I’m so sick of X. I’d do anything to get rid of the problem”
    • “Have you heard of solution X?”
    • Positive Signal: “I’ll download it next time.”
    • Negative signal: “I’ve downloaded a couple of them- none have solved my need” or “I’ve tried them all- none actually solve my problem”

Ideas

• Do NOT take ideas as to do list items
• Ask WHY they want the idea to be built. What is it SOLVING?
• Questions to dig into feature request
  • Why do you want that?
  • WHat would it let you do?
  • How are you coping without it?
  • Do you think we should push back the launch add that feature, or is it something we could add later?
  • How would it fit into your day?
• Dig into emotional signals
  • Tell me more about that.
  • Seems to really bug you- i bet there’s a story there
  • WHat makes it so awful?
  • Why haven’t you been able to fix this yet?
  • Seem pretty excited about that- big deal?
  • Why so happy?
  • Go on…

Stop seeking approval

• Keep focus on other person
• Keep specific about problems, concrete cases, etc.

Cut off pitches (distinct affair)

• If you find yourself, trying to convince other person- apologise
• Anyone will give you a fake phone number if you’re annoying enough

Talk less

Asking important questions

Look for the scary questions

• What questions would sink your startup?
• You should love bad news- don’t avoid it dumbass, search for truth not validation

Make sure users actually care about the problem. Users might not care about anything relating to what you’re building.

• IE. Asking somebody that doesn’t work out to tell you what’s most important to them in their workouts.
• Anchor with what’s important- like asking a guy “What are your big goals and focuses right now?” and then talking about health in the context of that (if building a health solution). Not always necessary if you know they care about something already (ie. marketing company obviously cares about marketing)

Does this problem matter questions (eventually zoom in)

• How seriously do you take X?
• Do you make money from it?
• Have you tried making more money from it?
• How much time do you spend on it each week?
• Do you have any major aspirations for X?
• Which tools + services do you use for it?
• What are you doing to improve it?
• What are the top3 things you’re trying to fix or improve right now?

Prepare a list of the 3 most important things you want to learn from any given type of person

-Make it easier to ask questions which pass the mom test

Keep it casual

Much simpler, effective

How to strip the formality away?

• Be casual, conversation
• If done well, pleasant for them- people like being heard

Length (5-10 minutes)

• Get longer eventually
• First: “Is this a real problem?
• Eventually: “What other software does this need to integrate with to close a sale”) / intricacies of an industry

Commitment and advancement

Once have the key facts about industry and customers, time to zoom in again and start revealing idea + showing product.

• “Advancement”

Meetings don’t go well or poorly

• They fail or succeed

Troubleshooting wishy-washiness

• Asking for opinion
• Not asking for clear commitment or next steps (just ask!)

Kinds of commitment

• Time
  • Clear next meeting with known goals
  • Feedback on wireframes
  • Using trial themselves for no-trivial period
• Reputation risk
  • Intro to peer
  • Into to decision maker
  • Public testimonial / case study
• Financial
  • LOI
  • Pre-order
  • Deposit

Good and bad meetings

Badd meeting

• So cool. Love it.
  • Reflect- get back to business
• Let me know when it launches. Sounds great.
  • Instead: ask for commitment today
    • If early stage: ask for introduction
    • If later: join as alpha user
• I can introduce you to people when you’re ready
  • Clarify: When is ready?
• I would definitely buy that (huge false positive)
  • Get concrete commitments

Good meetings

• What are next steps?
  • Know your next steps
• Can I buy the prototype?
  • Great meeting
• When can you come back to talk to team?

How to fix a bad meeting

• Take as information
• Give them a concrete chance to reject you

Don’t pitch blind

• Ensure that you know about the person/company- even if enterprise customers

Crazy customers and your first sale

• FIrst customers are always crazy (arlyvangelists)
• These people
  • Have problem
  • Know they have the problem
  • Have budget to solve
  • Have a makeshift sollution
• If you see deep emotion about the problem you’re solving during customer research, keep that person close. They’ll be your advocates

How to find conversations

Going to them

Cold calls aren’t ideal (goal is not to have them)

Seize serendipity

• Don’t even mention you’re starting a business if already engaged in conversation- just have a good conversation

Find a good excuse

• Usually as simple as just asking

Immerse yourself in where they are

Landing pages

• Collect emails of qualified leads
• Reach out to those who seem to like it most, eventually

Organise meetups

• Something like “HR Professionals Happy Hour” if trying to figure out the problems that HR professionals have

Having an audience

• If build up audience that corresponds to market, ideal
• Not even necessary to be that large, but digital footprint validates that you’re interesting

Get clever

Creating Warm intros

• Just ask
• If in right room, just call them out
• 7 degrees of bacon still applies here
• Good (relevant) advisor can help a bunch here- surprisingly easy to get on board

Professors

• Get their grant funding from high-level industry folks they’re on good terms with (fact check)

INvestors

• Who has bought into your idea already?

Cash in favors

How to ask for + frame a proper meeting (warm lead)

Mistakes

1. “Interview”: boring
2. “Can I get your opinion on this?”: neediness
3. “Time for quick chat?”: no expectations, likely waste of time

Framing format

1. Vision: You’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. DON’T mention your idea
2. Framing: Frame expectations- mentino stage + (if true) that you’re not there to tell
3. Weakness: Show weakness and give chance to help by mentioning specific your problem that you’re looking for answers on. Also clarifies you’re not a total time waster.
4. Pedestal: Put them on a pedestal- show how much they in particular can help
5. Ask: Ask for help

Examples: Hey Pete, I’m trying to make desk & office rental less of a pain for new businesses (vision). We’re just starting out and don’t have anything to sell, but want to make sure we’re building something that actually helps (framing). I’ve only ever come at it from the tenant’s side and I’m having a hard time understanding how it all works from the landlord’s perspective (weakness). You’ve been renting out desks for a while and could really help me cut through the fog (pedestal). Do you have time in the next couple weeks to meet up for a chat? (ask)

Hey Scott, I run a startup trying to make advertising more playful and ultimately effective (vision). We’re having a load of trouble figuring out how all the pieces of the industry fit together and where we can best fit into it (weakness). You know more about this industry than anyone and could really save us from a ton of mistakes (pedestal). We’re funded and have a couple products out already, but this is in no way a sales meeting — we’re just moving into a new area and could really use some of your expertise (framing). Can you spare a bit of time in the next week to help point us in the right direction over a coffee? (ask)

Once meeting starts

• Grab reins or could be centered on your idea.
• Say what you said in the email and them drop into the first question

Commute vs Call

• Start in person

Advisory flip

• Discussion for advisors, not customers
• Not a sales meeting on any level
• If like them, have them be actual advisors!

How many meetings

• Until you aren’t learning new stuff
• As little as 3-5, maybe 10. Be wise

Segmentation

Don’t hae a fuzzy sense of who you’re seving

• Before you can serve everyone, you have to serve someone

Too broad = bad

• Some customers : $10,some$10k- can’t please all

Find your ideal customer

Example: lots of types of students

• Need to narrow it down dumbass

Customer Slicing (if existing users)

• Drill down into ever more specific groups

Take a segment and keep slicing off better subsets of it until hae a tangible sense of who can go talk to and where you’d find them

Start with a broad segment and ask

• Within this group, which type of THIS person would want it most?
• How many within this group would buy/use it?
• What are their why/goal?
• Does everyone in group have that motivation or only some of them?
• What additional motivations are there?
• Which other type of people have these motivations?

2 groups of segments

• Specific demos
• MOtivations

Go back through generic ones +keep on slicing

Then, look at group’s behaviors, and figure out where to find them

• What are these people doing to achieve goal or survive problem?
• Where are they?
• Where can we find people doing above workarounds?

Now you have some who-where paris

Find the most

1. Profitable
2. Easy to reach
3. Rewarding to build a business around

Basically can find a group and then ask same questions as on the individual level (problem, why, where) and then generalize

• Once have specific group- very easy to get in touch with them
• For example, if building something to help people scared of public speaking
  • Instead of students -.> very specific type of students → eventually, people scared of public speaking who are trying to get better

Trap of the wrong people

• Segment is too broad
• Multiple customer segments - missed some
• Overlooked stakeholders

Running the process

Prep

• Know your current list of big 3 questions
• Write down beliefs/guesses, update the skeleton
• Move on from the obvious stuff- if desk research could answer question, answer it
• Do due diligence if meetignw ith business

Reviewing notes

After conversation

• Review notes + update beliefs/big 3 questions
• Tal/think it through
• Which questions worked/which didn’t? What di you mess up?

Notes

• Exact quotes

Should be fast