18 Dec Start a Business – Interviews with the Customer
Dec 18, 2024
Steve Blank, an American entrepreneur and educator, and a founder of the lean startup movement, has a famous quote:
``There are no facts inside your building, so get outside.``
Simply put, you can sit in your office all day long and invent as many guesses as you wish about your business. However, if you don’t make a reality check by going out and asking real people what they actually need, you are simply playing the game “I own a business for the sake of having it.”
That may surprise you, but this step is very often skipped by many business owners. Fortunately, we are not going to fall into this trap of feeling too confident that we know the answers to all questions. Today, we are going to conduct one of the most important exercises during this workshop session — interviewing people.
If you haven’t finished the previous exercises, I strongly recommend you do so before you continue with the interviews:
What Is The Goal Of The Interviews?
After completing the previous exercises, you already have an idea of what problem the customer has, the solution you offer, and who your customer is. With these things in mind, your next step is to speak with those people and ask them questions related to the problem you have identified and the solution they are searching for.
The ultimate goal of the interviews is to find out a few things:
- Is the customer profile accurate, or do you need to adapt it? Maybe your customer is a different person, and you need to change the customer profile to find the right person for your next interviews.
- Is the problem you have identified a real one? How many people have it? Is it something people actually need to be solved, or can they peacefully live without buying your solution?
- If the problem you have identified is real, is your solution what people are looking for? How do they imagine the solution should look?
As you can see, the ultimate goal is to stress test all of our hypotheses.
Rules To Follow
If you want to conduct the interviews in the right way, here are the things you should avoid doing:
- Forget about surveys. Sending a list of questions and asking people to answer and send them back to you is a mistake. The chances of the potential customer misleading you with their answers are very high, and you may get the wrong impressions and make incorrect conclusions. All interviews must be face to face.
- Do not speak with friends or relatives. By default, they are interested in pleasing you. They are biased and will definitely mislead you.
- Do not limit yourself to interviewing people who match your customer profile. Also, interview people who are outside of this area, simply because you may find that your customer profile is wider or you have more than one customer group.
- Do not ask questions requiring simple answers like Yes or No. This type of answer doesn’t provide information because they only confirm or deny a statement. They don’t tell you anything about how the customer feels or thinks—essentially what you’d like to understand.
- Do not ask your customer to imagine things. Imaginary situations do not help you. You need real-life situations the customer has experienced to understand the real problems they face and the solutions they need. Let me put it this way: if someone asks me, “Let’s imagine you are in a foreign country without cash and you have lost your passport. What would you do?” I will certainly invent a few solutions, but is this a real situation that happens often to many people who need a business to solve that problem for them? You get the point. By imagining, you may put the customer in non-existing situations, which will eventually lead you to make wrong conclusions.
- The interviewer must listen, and the interviewee must talk. Some people like to talk too much. If the interviewer is one of these people, it may be a problem because there is a chance the interviewee will not have the opportunity to share what they feel or think. If you are someone who likes to talk too much, just this time, let people talk. Do not guide people during the conversation. Let them talk. The interview is supposed to be a fluent, normal conversation.
- Do not share your excitement. If you share your excitement with the customer, you may make them biased, which is not in your favour. Try to be as neutral as possible. Remember, you are trying to understand what people think and feel. You are not trying to make them think or feel certain things.
- Do not manipulate or prime the customer. For example: “I think you feel sad when this and that happens…” Stop! Do not tell the customer how they feel. Again, you are not trying to make them think or feel something because this will lead you to wrong conclusions.
- Never tell the customer that you want to sell them something. This may push them away. Imagine someone asking to speak with you and starting with, “I want to sell you this.” Most likely, you won’t like it and may want to leave.
- Take as much time as is necessary. Good interviews can last from a few minutes to an hour or even more. Remember, this is a conversation, and sometimes conversations can be long.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that the interview should resemble a normal conversation where you, as the interviewer, are genuinely interested in the other person and their experience. On the other hand, the interviewee must be encouraged to talk.
You, as the interviewer, play the role of a guide who listens to the person in front of you and asks simple questions.
Exercise 6:
Go out and talk with people. Follow the rules listed above.
Books
If you’re interested in reading more about the interviewing process, I strongly recommend these two books: “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and “The Lean Product Playbook” by Dan Olsen.
Else
There is one major misconception about business when you start for the first time: thinking that interviews with customers are conducted just once before you start your business.
That’s incorrect.
The interviews should never end. This is an ongoing process, simply because people change and the market changes, and if you do not adapt, your business may eventually die.