1. Customer Discovery Best Practices Lean Startup and Design Thinking “You’re really think you need to teach us how to talk to people?”

2. The Art of Listening to Your Customers

4. Pre-Planning Customer Discovery
Pre-Planning Pt. 1 (4:55)
Pre-Planning Pt. 2 (3:25)
Pre-Planning Pt. 3 (1:29)
Here is direct quote from the paper…and I apologize for reading directly!

5. Customer Discovery Interviews
Interviews Pt. 1 (5:40)
Interviews Pt. 2 (3:49)
Asking the Right Question (2:37) 
Here is direct quote from the paper…and I apologize for reading directly!

6. Outside the Building Death by Demo 1 (2:18) Death by Demo 2 (1:45)
Assuming You Know what the customer wants (1:56)
Understanding the Customer Problem (the wrong way) or Death by PowerPoint (1:42) 
Understanding the Problem (the right way) (3:22)
Customers Lie (2:37) 
The Distracted Customer (3:12)
Engaging the Customer (3:37)
Customer Empathy (2:25)
The User, the Buyer & the Saboteur (2:24)
Multi-Person Interview (2:03) 
B-to-B to C (2:15) 
Existing vs. New Markets (5:29) 
Public Interviews (2:11)

7. Back in the Building Extracting Insight from Data (2:59)
Getting the MVP Right (3:34)

Pay Attention to Outliers (2:16)
The “Other 85%” (2:32)

8. Customer Interviews the most difficult part of the process!

9. Customer Interviews the most difficult part of the process!
conversations
Customer Interviews the most difficult part of the process!

10. #1 –Don’t talk about your technology!!!
#2 – The interviewing process must be deliberate!
#3 – A survey is NOT an interview!

11. FOUR PARTS TO THE PROCESS
Planning Landing Conducting Analysis

12. Customer Discovery – Planning an Interview WHO SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Focus first on people you think fill these roles: End User, Decision Maker, Payer Focus on people you don’t already know! They have no relationship to protect. (*people you know are good for meeting other people)
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

13. Customer Discovery – Planning an Interview HOW TO FIND THE PEOPLE
Find people working at your customer companies Find people that used to work at customer companies Find people that work for your competitors Do NOT interview the CEO first!
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

14. Customer Discovery – Planning an Interview WHAT ELSE SHOULD I PREPARE?
Have a purpose Know what you think you can learn from this person before you get there. Make guesses about what your customer will say.
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

15. Customer Discovery – Landing an Interview
QUICK introduction (look for warm introductions). Establish credibility. (NSF, researcher, use first names) Appeal to EGO “I know you’re an expert - I want to learn from you.” Seek help. You are researchers, not salesmen! Handle “What are you doing / Why are you calling.” Diffuse “We need and NDA.” Seal the deal: minutes, get on the schedule, thank them. Be ready to “roll into the interview” if you get stonewalled.

16. Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

17. Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

18. Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible.
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

19. Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible. Take two people whenever possible –assign roles!
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

20. Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible. Take two people whenever possible –assign roles! Talk to one person at a time.
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

21. Customer Discovery – Conducting an Interview WHERE SHOULD I INTERVIEW?
Plan in this order: Face to Face, Skype, Phone Try to access to their facility whenever possible. Take two people whenever possible –assign roles! Talk to one person at a time. AVOID LISTENING TO GROUP THINK!
Abe Lincoln “If you gave me six hours to cut down a tree I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening the ax.”

22. Conducting customer interviews
Get excited to hear what you don’t want to hear! Focus on first-hand accounts, not on speculative or abstract thoughts from secondary sources. Ask for introductions to first hand accounts!

23. Asking the right questions
Always ask open-ended questions. Never ask multiple choice questions. Target the who, what, why, and how. Follow the 5 whys! Avoid is, are, would, do you think, and should.

24. ALWAYS FINISH WITH… “What did I forget to ask
ALWAYS FINISH WITH… “What did I forget to ask?” “Is there anyone else you think I should meet?”

25. Interpretation of data – the CORE of Customer Discovery
Turn data into information through pattern recognition! This means STATISTICS!!! 100 interviews over 5 segments, each with two VPs results in only 10 data points! This is not statistically relevant! Make sure you spend as much time interpreting the data as you are collecting it!
Abraham Wald
Applied Mathematics Panel – Columbia University in NY
Army Air Corps had a problem – 50% of the bombers over Europe didn’t come back
Asked to determine HOW to add more armor.
Military officers had the best possible data at the time and still failed to see the useful information!

26. SAMPLE QUESTIONS – start broad, then focus
*tailor these generalized questions to your specific scenario
What are the top three problems customers are trying to solve?
What are they currently doing to solve them?
If your customer could wave a magic wand and fix one thing or generate one outcome, what would it be?
What would it take for your customer to change their behavior and adopt a new technology, process, or solution? Who else would have to be involved to make it happen?

27. Q&A