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Getting to Product Market Fit - An Overview of Customer Discovery & Validation

The document outlines the process of customer discovery and validation as essential steps to achieve product-market fit, focusing on identifying customer needs and validating business hypotheses. It details the stages of customer interviews, mapping the ecosystem, developing a minimum viable product (MVP), and understanding the sales process. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of gathering data over opinions and iterating based on feedback to optimize product offerings and sales strategies.

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Customer Discovery & Validation Jason @Evanish AKA - The First Two Steps to the Epiphany: Getting to Product-Market Fit
Today’s Topics Customer Discovery Overview Customer Development Interview Process Customer Validation Overview
Why Customer Development Move faster Reduce risk Bring process to chaos Stay in tune with customers Replace HiPPO & opinions with data Discover the best market opportunities
The Core: Learn-Build-Measure
Customer Discovery
Who is Your Customer? Phase 1 – State Hypothesis Phase 4 – Verify Phase 3 – Test Product Concept Phase 2 – Test Problem Hypothesis
Map Your Ecosystem Who are the entities in your business? Connect the entities based on the flow of $$ How does the product move through channels to meet users?
The Hypothesis : C-P-S C ustomer Who is using your product? P roblem What problem do they have? S olution How will you solve the problem? Be Specific. It’s better to be wrong than vague.
The Intermediate MVP Map out the basics of your MVP based on the solutions from C-P-S Identify the riskiest parts & test them This is before you build anything…just map out what you think is the solution BUILD
Helping you map it: The Lean Canvas
Why all this work? Save Time and Money by discovering early on if something won’t work. Make course adjustments before you build a large product.
Exit Goals for Customer Discovery You’ve identified a problem a customer wants solved. Your product solve the customer’s needs. You believe you have a viable and profitable business model. You feel you’ve learned enough to go out and sell.
The Customer Development Interview Learn in detail here: http://greenhornconnect.com/blog/how-structure-and-get-most-out-customer-development-interviews
The Structure – 1. Person Who are they? What’s their role? How is your budget handled? How do you find new products for work? How much time do you spend on [Task X]? Goal: Get a baseline background of the person you’re talking to. Be broad. Learn about them and their role in your industry.
The Structure – 2. Problems NOT about the problems you think they have. What are your top 3 challenges you face in your job related to [industry X]? If you could wave a magic wand…what would the solution be? Goal: Get them to say the problem you want to solve is a problem they have (prefer unprompted) Learn about the problems they recognize first.
The Structure – 3. Solution “ That’s interesting” = Kiss of Death. If they’re not anxious to use right away, they’re not a key target. Read body language, voice inflection and energy level for signals of interest. Best reaction is actually following through after the meeting or calls. Now you tell them about your product concept. Goal: Discover if they’re interested in your solution and gather feedback.
Tips for making the most of Interviews Take good notes. Involve other team members. Be Conversational. Go off script. Ask to see any MVPs they’ve made/use. If they’re excited about something, ask if they’ll pay for it. Show them mockups or early concepts if you have them and pay attention to their reactions/feedback. Always Follow up. End with an ask. Be open to new problems and opportunities! Summarize and review your notes with your team.
Where do you find people to interview? 10 – 20% Response Rate
The Best Place to Find Candidates: 30-40% Response Rate
Help not Sales
Manage Expectations Only 10-20% of those you reach out to will respond. Getting started is the hardest, then you can find the channels. Different target customers often are found in different channels.
Now what? Interview in groups of 8-10 people per customer type. Summarize notes and review with others. Look for common patterns matching C-P-S (Customer – Problem – Solution). Compare to your high level metrics to see if anecdotes match data. Iterate if there’s no match.
Customer Validation
Can You Sell It? Phase 1 – Get Ready to Sell Phase 4 – Verify Phase 3 – Develop Positioning Phase 2 – Sell to Visionary Customers
Not time for Glengarry Yet… You’re still in learning mode. … about what customers will buy and how!
Break Down Your Sales Road Map Who influences a sale? Who recommends a sale? Who is the decision maker? Who is the economic buyer? Who is the saboteur? What is the budget for purchasing your type of product? How many calls does it take to make a sale What is the profile of an early customer?
The Gospel According to Blank – Phase 1 : Get Ready to Sell Goal: Take what you learned from Customer Discovery and apply to development of Sales Process
Map out the Food Chain of your Sale
Exercise: Make Your Food Chain Who is the end user? Who is the purchase decision maker? Who seeks out a solution like Yours? What are alternative channels?
Find out how to (reliably) get your foot in the door… At what level do you want to enter? How many people on the organizational map need to say yes? Does each department perceive the problem the same way? In what order do you need to call on people? Who can derail the sale?
The Gospel According to Blank – Phase 2: Sell to Visionary Customers Goal: Get someone to Pay for your product and learn how to repeat the process.
Free != Customer Customer =
Build Your Sales Roadmap What steps are involved in your sales process?
The Gospel According to Blank – Phase 3: Develop Positioning Goal: Based on problem and sales lessons, optimize positioning for your product & company.
Positioning Speak the language of your customer Written by those that interact directly with the customer Verify with Product team to ensure what’s built meets expectations set
The Gospel According to Blank – Phase 4: Verify Goal: Verify all the work you’ve put into Customer Validation to iterate or move onto Customer Creation.
Productive Paranoia Ask Yourself: Is your business *really* on track?
Questions to Ask… Product: Are you repeatedly losing any deals? Why? Are customers satisfied? What else do they expect? Are you building the right features? Were there any pricing issues? Did you lose customers on pricing? Sales: Can you verify the sales process and accurately project its success rate? Can you realistically map your sales pipeline? Are you closing deals?
More Questions to Ask… Channel: Did you factor in the channel costs to the overall costs of your product? How do various channels affect the sales time? What does your sales force look like? Business Model: Based on known factors, how profitable is the business? Will costs be the same as you grow? How much funding do you need to reach profitability?
Customer Validation Wrap Up To Exit means you’ve Proven you found a Customer Problem Found earlyvangelists that will pay you Found a repeatable and scalable sales process Demonstrated a viable business model
Customer Development in a Nutshell Common Sense + Diligent Process + Thought =
Questions?
Further Reading - Books The Lean Startup By Eric Ries Great high level overview of all the principles of a Lean Startup. The Entrepreneur ’ s Guide to Customer Development By Patrick Vlaskovits & Brant Cooper The Cliff Notes for Lean Startups; a must read for everyone on your team. The Four Steps to the Epiphany By Steve Blank The Bible of Lean Startups. Tough read, but excellent content. Running Lean By Ash Maurya A practical guide to build a great lean startup from the creator of the lean canvas. These books, especially 4 Steps, were key sources in creating this presentation & my learning of this methodology
Further Reading – Lean Related Blogs Steve Blank , Godfather of Lean Startups Ash Maurya , Practitioner and action-oriented Dave McClure , Investor, advisor, badass Cindy Alvarez , Product manager at Kissmetrics Andrew Chen , Metrics and Customer acquisition expert
Further Reading – Helpful Presentations The Customer Development Methodology by Steve Blank Startup Metrics are for Pirates by Dave McClure The Top 10 Reasons to not be a Lean Startup By Patrick Vlaskovits & Brant Cooper 20 Ways not to build stuff by Cindy Alvarez How to recruit and interview potential customers by Elizabeth Yin Building Your Customer Development Plan by Cindy Alvarez Minimum Desirable Product: Customer Development for the “ Winner Take All ” Web by Andrew Chen
Contact me…I’m happy to help On Twitter: @Evanish Other sites: About.me /Evanish Email: [email_address] … if I don’t have the answer, I’ll work with you to find it.