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Parental guidance: Customer discovery
Parental guidance: Customer discovery If you’re looking to get honest feedback on your ideas, then The Mom Test* is a highly recommended read. One of the most popular books in the Enterprise Lab library, it’s a handbook on how to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea.
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*Or ‘Mum’, depending on your side of the pond.
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D/srupt The magazine for student innovators & entrepreneurs
our mum (or dad, gran or best friend, for that matter) might be the last person you want to think about when imagining the potential customers for your venture. However, likening your clients to your nearest and dearest is exactly what The Mom Test recommends to understand what people really think about your business. Written by serial technology entrepreneur Rob Fitzpatrick, the book shines a light into the yawning gap between what customers say and what they actually mean. Put simply, the book suggests that, like your mom (Rob is American), customers are inherently programmed to give a positive response when asked about your ideas. As such, you should never ask anyone directly what they think about your venture. Rob wrote the book after one of his businesses failed to get on its feet, despite the fact he had raised funding and found some early customers. The company was working on social advertising before Facebook and Twitter adopted the concept. “I would talk to
customers and I would have these interviews,” Rob says. “And then a month later I realised that what I thought I had learned wasn’t true. When you ask people what they think of your product, you are always going to get compliments, and that’s not real data. They will lie to you. You need to ask them in the right way and you need to be very careful with these biases.” The Mom Test suggests a more customer-centred approach to interviews, which Rob believes can remove those automatic biases. “No-one can tell you if your business is a good idea,” he says. “Your job as an entrepreneur is to learn about your customers’ lives, frustrations and problems and then come up with the solution. Stop talking about your idea and start talking about their lives.” A programmer by background, Rob is the first to admit he found it difficult to take on a customer-facing role. Having read several books about sales interviews, he came to the conclusion that the authors were people who were naturally talented in this area and who couldn’t empathise with
When you ask people what they think of your product, you are always going to get compliments, and that’s not real data. They will lie to you.
Issue two / 2019–20
