One Pager: Customer Discovery First Meeting Cheat Sheet
This is one page that you can take into a Customer Discovery meeting when testing a new business idea. The first few meetings are crucial and it’s essential to get off to a good start so that you can really understand your customers.
ABC: Always, Be, Customer (Discovering!)
Start the meeting off by letting them know what the perfect outcome of the meeting for you would be.
Goal: Discover their pains. Don’t sell them your idea, just listen (mostly)!
“Hey there 🤗 I was hoping we could discuss how you get X done and dive into a few of the pains it takes to get it done.”
A. Always start by asking the customer about their life.
Listen mostly. Ask questions. The customer talks. Build a relationship.
By asking them questions you will slowly get out of your mind and into theirs. You will start sensing how they feel in that moment about the jobs they must do every day and the pains they face. Once you find a pain that you feel is interesting to dive into, dive in…
B. Be diving into specific pains and problems
Ensure you’re learning facts rather than getting opinions from your customer. 100% inspired and/or stolen from The Mom Test.
Ask questions like these:
- How do you solve X now?
- Why bother?
- What are the implications?
- Talk me through your workflow
- What else have you tried?
- Where does the money come from?
Once they’re voicing their problems openly and you feel comfortable, ask at least 1 scary question like:
- Imagine your company failed. Why did it fail?
- Imagine it’s a huge success. Why?
C. Customer commitment / advancement
Test whether or not they see value in working with you on your problem discovery mission by asking for at least one of the three following investments. Again, 100% inspired and/or stolen from The Mom Test.
- Time: when can we next meet and what are the goals to have achieved by then?
- Reputation: can you (put your name on the line) and intro me to decision makers within your organisation so I can discover more about these problems?
- Money: do you want to pay a deposit or sign a letter-of-intent to pay me/my company to solve this problem?
And never forget the classic meeting enders — these two will help you improve and uncover gems.
- Who else should I talk to? — They’re in your problem mindset, so their brain will easily filter a person within their social network that has a similar set of issues. This is really powerful.
- What should I have asked you that I didn’t? — This often uncovers blindspots in your ways of questioning and will help you to improve with each meeting.
Background
I was introduced to Customer Development early on in my career — one of the first “here read this before you start” books I was given was The Four Steps to the Epiphany. That was basically my intro to the world of having a job and being paid a salary (of sorts). So, Customer Development has been a golden thread throughout my career and I feel like I never really did get to the bottom of how to do it “right”. But like all great loves of my life, one leaves space for them grow and blossom into new things each day.
