My Mum never lies. I really do look good as a Roman.
Whenever founders ask me about how to get started with Customer Discovery I always recommend that they start by reading The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s my go-to book for understanding why it’s so important to do good quality customer interviews and, more than that, it has a ton of fantastic example questions in it.
The book is short and easily read in a couple of hours, but if you are hesitating to buy a copy, let me whet your appetite with a summary of the key takeaways you can expect.
Even your Mom can’t lie to you
The premise of the book is that doing customer research badly is worse than not doing it at all because you can get hooked on false positives that cost you a lot of time and money.
The title “The Mom test” refers to a check you can do on your customer conversations to make sure that you only get real, useful data. You’re asking questions in such a way that “even your mom can’t lie to you”.
The Mom Test:
- Talk about their life instead of your idea
- Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
- Talk less and listen more
Avoid bad data
Fitzpatrick goes further to explain that you need to watch out for bad data that passes for positive feedback. He classifies in 3 groups:
- Compliments
- Fluff (generics, hypotheticals, and the future)
- Ideas
Also, he recommends you avoid bad data by keeping the conversation on THEM, so
- Don’t seek approval for your decision to do this venture.
- Don’t pitch to them
- Do encourage them to keep talking, and sharing data about their problem
Asking important questions
The Mom Test recommends that you should always focus on asking the most business-critical questions first. The key points are:
Love bad news – it will help you close down ideas that aren’t going anywhere
Look before you zoom – Are you trying to solve the most important problem a user has or can you find a more important one?
Look at the elephant – Are you researching the highest risk area? People will always want the same thing but better or cheaper, is the risk in your product?
Prepare your list of 3 – Go into every conversation knowing the top 3 things you want to learn
Keeping it casual
Rob comments that you shouldn’t get caught up in formal interview mode. Instead, aim for a meaningful chat where you ask them about their lives.
The meeting anti-pattern
How can you informally meet lots of your intended customers? Think about how you can shortcut to good conversations, where are these people to be found?
How long are meetings?
You only need a short chat to dig into the important stuff if you have the right questions in mind (your list of 3).
Commitment and advancement
Conversations will turn into more formal meetings as you progress through customer discovery to product development and sales. Make sure you have clear signals of progression at each meeting – you don’t have precious time to waste with “polite” conclusions.
Meetings succeed or fail
If you don’t get a clear time, reputation or financial commitment from a meeting, it’s a fail.
How to fix a bad meeting
Ask them to commit. It’s not a real lead until you’ve given them a concrete chance to reject you.
Crazy customers and your first sale
First customers are “Early evangelists” and not like the main market. Keep them close but don’t be blinded by early success.
Finding conversations
Following on from “Keep it casual”, finding a source of people to talk to is a bit of an art, The Mom Test provides some tips.
- Get creative, leverage and create connections to find people
- Immerse yourself in the community you want to serve
- Organise Meetups
- Speak and teach
- Blog
One of my favourite practical tips is Rob’s structure for asking for help by email:
Asking for and framing the meeting
- You’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. Don’t mention your idea.
- Frame expectations by mentioning what stage you’re at and, if it’s true, that you don’t have anything to sell.
- Show weakness and give them a chance to help by mentioning your specific problem that you’re looking for answers on. This will also clarify that you’re not a time waster.
- Put them on a pedestal by showing how much they, in particular, can help.
- Ask for help.
And, a final thought on how many conversations you should have:
You should keep talking to people until you stop hearing new information.
Choosing customers
Fitzpatrick recommends that you pick one customer segment to serve initially, so you can focus and make progress. You can solve specific problems much more easily than generic problems. Which segment is giving you the strongest signals? If you aren’t finding consistent problems and goals, you don’t yet have a specific enough customer segment. You need to know who they are and where to go to find them.
Running the process
- Prep – have your top 3 questions ready
- Review and take good notes – capture and share with the team ASAP
- Involve all your team in interviews at some point, only 2 people per interview
- Never outsource being present at interviews
- Find a way to make, keep, analyse and share notes.
- Keep it lean, don’t stall your business in upfront research
So there you have it, the key takeaways from The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. I hope you go on to buy the book as it’s one of the core library I recommend to all entrepreneurs or anyone else involved in customer discovery.