Customer Discovery is Not Supposed to be Torture
We all know that the best way to find out what people want is by talking with them. Finding out what someone’s biggest problems are and digging into why those problems aren’t being solved can lead to amazing business opportunities. Then, why do so many new entrepreneurs groan and whine about having to get out of the building and do a bit of customer discovery?
There are a handful of reasons that I’ve found through a bit of my own “customer discovery” as to why this is the case. This list is by no means comprehensive – each person is different, and their reasons for wanting (or not wanting) to conduct customer interviews vary widely. Most of the reasons can be placed in one of the following buckets:
Fear of Rejection
One of the toughest things to hear when you’re excited about a project is that nobody wants what you’re selling. Perhaps the problem they have can be solved at a lower price point than the one you are offering. Maybe the problem isn’t as severe as you first thought. Something could be a crisis for you but just a minor inconvenience for others – not something worth paying to solve. The product you have developed may not solve a problem for anyone. The list of rejection scenarios is vast.
Rejection is difficult, even for the most seasoned salesperson. You never lose that small feeling of disappointment when you can’t convince someone to buy what you’re selling, even when you have convinced hundreds or thousands of others in the past. Someone who has just begun his entrepreneurial journey and may not have a long history of sales experience may not do well when potential customers reject his proposed solution or his hypothesis that a problem even exists. After a few rejections, the new entrepreneur may decide that the customer does not really know a problem exists and may just start building a solution.
There is no good way to brace yourself for rejection, other than to mentally prepare yourself for the strong possibility that you may have to change course multiple times due to customer feedback. Fear is not an option in this profession, and overcoming this fear is the true test of a founder.
Issues With Social Anxiety
Like the feat of rejection above, social anxiety is a real problem and can be difficult for some new founders to overcome. There are founders on the entire spectrum from those who are severely introverted to people who are extremely extroverted. You don’t have to be the life of the party in order to conduct customer interviews – these are one-on-one conversations with people you potentially want to pay for your solution in the future. Therefore, basic human decency comes into play in this situation.
The folks who worry the most about issues with social anxiety during customer discovery are the folks who are the newest to the process and see it as an extension of networking. Interviewing people on the street is much more difficult than pre-scheduled interviews at coffee shops or in your office. If you struggle with social anxiety, play to your strengths – pre-schedule as many interviews as you can, and with the rise of video conferencing technology, the ability to interview people from the comfort of your favorite living room chair is easier than ever before.
Fear of rejection and social anxiety are two reasons any entrepreneur should consider talking with a therapist on a regular basis. While I can help new entrepreneurs improve their skills and ask better questions, I am not equipped to help people with the above issues. Just like keeping the lines of communication open with your customers, you should feel the same way about keeping in touch with a professional who can help you work through your worries and fears if severe enough.
The Process Is Too Scientific
The strangest reason I’ve heard that someone does not want to conduct customer discovery is that they thought the process was “too scientific.” In my decade of experience asking customers about their problems, never have I felt that the process was at all “scientific” beyond collecting some basic data. The process should feel like a conversation with another human being, not a test subject in a lab.
If you feel as though the process is “too scientific,” you’re worried too much about answering specific questions and not focusing enough on listening to the customer. While there is some baseline data you will want to collect depending on your KPIs, each conversation should meander a bit. Focusing too much on a tight set of questions may cause you to miss key insights that could guide you toward a better solution for your customers’ problems. This is why it’s critical to either interview potential customers with a partner or recording the interview audio to examine with the rest of your team.
Scared of Idea Theft
Do people steal ideas? Of course. Patents wouldn’t be necessary if everyone were honest.
However, just because you have an idea does not mean that you are the person or part of the team that will best execute the idea. Accelerator programs look more closely at the team and the dynamics between the members of the team than they do at the business idea for this reason. In my years of experience working with founders, some of the ideas have been amazing but the people who pitched just aren’t a good fit to make the idea real.
If someone were to steal your idea, they may not have the “secret sauce” that you do – the know-how or the ability to build the idea into a viable business. The stars would have to align in order for someone to steal your business through questions you ask during customer discovery. The chance of someone stealing your idea through the process of customer discovery is nearly zero – it isn’t zero, but the chance of it happening is so incredibly rare that I can’t even think of it happening in our local startup community. Your questions should be focused on a problem to solve, not the business you hope to build. Your questions shouldn’t be focused on the solution you want.
I Just Know People Want This!
Yes, we all love technology. But technology for its own sake does not a business make. Most of your customers will not care one bit about the nuts and bolts of the product, just that the product solves a major problem. There have been a lot of interesting technologies developed in the past few years – we saw the rise of blockchain and the explosion of businesses surrounding the technology, followed by NFTs and the concept of Web3. However interesting the technology, many of these businesses failed because they didn’t solve any particular problem for a defined customer base.
You don’t know what your customers want – you are only guessing. Customer discovery is the only way to know whether you’ve guessed correctly or not. Even if the piece of technology you developed solves the problem for you, there might be a better or cheaper option out there already solving the same problem for others. Your solution might also be too complicated for your customer base, or the product may fit into the “nice to have” bucket rather than the “need to have” bucket.
Never assume that people will want something. The planet is littered with e-waste created by companies that thought they knew better than the customer. Don’t waste your money creating unnecessary technology for a customer base that may not exist.
Your Customer Knows Your Customer
The best person to ask about a problem is the person suffering from a problem, unable to find a viable solution. If the data you are receiving from customer interviews is not validating your hypothesis, be willing to dig deeper and find out what the real problems are that face your customers. You might be looking at something from the wrong angle – the problem you believe is massive might be part of a much larger (and more lucrative) problem that needs to be solved.
Your willingness to iterate and pivot based on the information you receive will determine your success as an entrepreneur, so embrace the unknown! Your customers will guide you toward the answer, so relax and let them do just that. Use everything they tell you to improve your business, your products and your services. Even if the process seems painful up front, customer discovery will pay dividends for you in the future.