How to create a survey on the method of customer development (Customer Development) and get the most out of it

Startup management implies a wide range of responsibilities. Marketing and sales, amateur HR and accounting, development and project management, in a word, you have to be a jack of all trades. We all understand the importance of a Lean Startup approach and Customer Development methods, however, it is difficult to put them into practice. By the way, if you haven’t stumbled upon CustDev.com yet , run there right now and grab Brant and Patrick ’s book (or Russian translation of the book - Startup around the client ).

As soon as you promise yourself to “get out of the office” in order to talk with your customers and truly explore the question of the relevance of the product on the market (Profit-Market Fit), it is very important to get the most out of this event. For newcomers to a client's development methodology, one of the most difficult things is to compile surveys, so I would like to share how I structure polls in order to achieve maximum benefit from them.

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How to structure surveys according to the client's development method (and get the most out of them)

There are those who have already written about how they make up polls, so it is definitely worth getting to know the opinion of Cindy Alvarez and Sachin Aggarwal regarding this issue.

I divide my surveys into 3 parts - People, Problems and Your Solution. Depending on the person, on average, everything about everything takes me 30-45 minutes. (Note: This structure is best suited for B2B products, but with a little ingenuity, it can be adapted to B2C)

1) People - or - Who are you?

Before proceeding to the problems and solutions you propose, you need to find out who you are dealing with. It simultaneously warms up your interlocutor with the help of simple questions, and also gives you the opportunity to build mutual understanding with him.

Examples of questions you could use:

• What is your name and what is your role in the company?
• What place do you occupy in the structure of your department? Whole company?
• How is your budget formed? Who should approve your purchase?
• How do you find new products for your work? Do you need any approval for their application?
• Have you tried something new recently?
• Describe your usual working day.
• How much time do you spend on performing [task X]? (Task X is something that stands out during their normal work day.)

Do not neglect this introductory part of your survey! Of course, you don’t need a novel describing the daily lives of your interlocutors, but you should know enough to understand their role in the company, who is the key person and their overall technological level. All this will help you in the future to analyze which of the users are most susceptible to the problem you are interested in and your proposed solution.

2) Problems - or - What are your biggest difficulties?

This is the section in which you are trying to find out if a person is facing a problem that you think you are solving. Your task is not to bring them to your problem! The less you point to a problem that is already mentioned, the more reason to believe that you are on the right path!

Examples of questions you could use:

• What are the 3 problems you had to face at your work?
• What are 3 problems with [sector X] that you had to meet in your work? (Sector X - the sector to which your startup belongs)
• If you had a magic wand, and with a wave of it, you would be able to get a solution to any of these tasks ... what would this solution be?
• Learn more about something time consuming or costly in their daily work. (Here you can add a slight exaggeration to create an emotional response, such as “it seems ineffective ..." or "it looks like it is expensive ...")
• How did you do or solve [Problem X]? (You need to find out if they have found the solution themselves. If yes ... then ask for a copy of this solution!)

People love to talk about themselves, so give them free rein and let them speak out about their problems (in other words - Shut up and listen!) . As a rule, people offer terrible solutions, but you need to hear their vision of these solutions or see what they came up with themselves.
Attention, you have not mentioned your solution or problem. If they do not tell about your problem specifically, then, ending this section of the survey, you need to directly ask if the problem you think is a problem for them. Whether they agree with the fact that this is a problem or not, you need to find out why she did not enter the top of their problems.

3) Your decision - or - See if your idea outlives the meeting with a client.

If during a conversation based on the questions of the second part, your interlocutor himself mentions the problem you are working on, then you are on the right track! Even better, if the solution described by him with the help of a “magic wand” remotely resembles what you are doing.

Despite the fact that it was in the second part, you should discuss what you consider a problem, as well as a solution to this problem. To get confirmation that this idea is uninteresting to them is as important as knowing that they like it; as a result, you will find out for yourself whether they are not your customers, or if they are yours, what your customers want.

Examples of questions you could use:

• Familiarize them with the problems that, in your opinion, you have a solution. Do they agree with your vision of the problems and their solutions?
• Does [your decision] fit any of their problems?
• Would you pay for our decision? How many? ( Do not be afraid to name the price you are interested in ... “Will [X] be reasonable?”)
• If they are ready to give your price and they like your idea ... "Are they ready to start immediately?"

If everything goes as it should, and you really solve the problem, then your client may immediately want to launch the product. And you most likely will have to learn a lot about what your customers want and what they do not want, and then your idea will start to evolve.

This basic structure can give you surprisingly reliable information regarding your idea and the wishes of your customers.

And finally, a few more important things:

1) Make good notes or write everything down!
After talking with 8-10 people, you need to go back and view your tagging for matches. This is especially true of the first part, where you need to find out what is in common with people who agree that you are solving their problem. Then you need to summarize all the records and share the results with your team.

2) Make sure there are other team members in some meetings.
A good company with a focus on customer-oriented development involves every employee in the workflow. In Performable, before purchasing their HubSpot, engineers spent 30% of their time talking to customers by phone. Nothing helps to do your job better than understanding who they are building / selling / promoting a product for.

3) Keep it simple
This should not seem like a poll! They should feel as if they are talking to a friend about their problems at work. The more comfortable they feel during a conversation with you, the more they will open to you.

4) go beyond the script
Best results are obtained when you delve a little bit into something that is interesting to your interlocutor. The scenario is a kind of map of the area, but there is no reason why you cannot return to it after a 5 minute retreat, regarding specific difficulties or how the company works.

5) If they have MVP ... ask them to show!
Nothing gives you a greater understanding of the client than what they invented themselves to solve the problem. The best thing you can do is ask to show it to you, which will help you understand what they hope to get from this decision. These people are also the best allied candidates for your product.

6) Stay in touch
Regular politeness is to thank people for their time and assistance, which will give you the opportunity to contact them in the future if your product changes and becomes suitable for them; or invite them to test your product.

7) Finish the request
Always end your polls with thanks and a request for something. This may be a request for a copy of their MVP or even better to ask them to introduce you to someone who may be interested in what you are working on. In my experience, such acquaintances are continued in 80-90% of cases by further surveys, while only 1 in 10 dry emails continues.

8) Be open to new problems! So great products are born.
As Steve Blank said, " There is no such idea that would survive the first meeting with a client ." Do not be afraid to move away from your original idea to what your customers really want. If in the second part you tried and found a hot problem ..., find out how they are coping with it at the moment and how much they are willing to pay for its solution.

And finally: you want to find a “hot” problem, and not “just a cool problem.” Think of it in this light: if I had my hair on fire (literally), and you were selling buckets of water, and I would definitely buy your product. But if I would get wet and I would be cold, I would hardly have bought your bucket of water right now, but I would have this in mind for the future.
Find such difficulties and their solutions for which customers will want and will pay.

Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs who conduct surveys using the client’s development method?

Some time ago, there was a whole controversy on Habré, which almost turned into a scuffle - how to translate Customer Development. And although the term “customer-oriented development” is still closer to me, at the same time, “official” translations of books using the term “client development” began to appear. In these books, the term “economical startup” is used as the Russian equivalent of Lean Startup. Following the formal logic of the English term should be translated as "thrifty startup" - by analogy with the "lean production". In general, with terminology, complete trouble. I don’t really want to invent my terminology and coordinate system, so I will continue to denote my position with footnotes.

The translation was made as part of the Tolstoy Summer Camp start-up summer school.