Rob Fitzpatrick from The Startup Toolkit and Salim Virani from Leancamp presented this at Made by Many's Lean Startup workshop during Internet Week Europe 2011.

1. Practical customer development
salim@saintsal.com - http://leanca.mp
robftz@gmail.com - http://thestartuptoolkit.com

2. I’m sure you’ve heard of customer development
• Just “talking to people” is generally a waste of time
• You pitch and sell
• They lie, meander, request features, and give opinions
• Customer development is about turning those into useful conversations
• Certain problems are best untangled by talking
• What you ask and how you ask it matters

3. Customer development is useful for...
• Every enterprise sales company
• Figuring our pricing, workflow, and marketing language
• When the data says something and you don’t fully understand it
• They aren’t converting and I don’t know why
• They ARE converting and I don’t know why!

4. Every startup is different
• This seems to work for us and we’ve seen good results
• But for you it’s an experiment
• It may not be relevant for what matters to you right now
• Feel free to hack these techniques
• Terms & conditions
• You have to let us know how it goes! (We get paid in feedback.)

5. Where could 5 customer interviews get you?
Actual phrases used by customers.
(Great for positioning & copywriting.)
A way to group interviews and
analyse them as a team

6. “I want more readers on my blog.”
Your customers are unanimous in their request.
Problem validated?

7. Your customers are full of shit
• They don’t know if they are lying
• But they are
• They are telling you a symptom
• Not the root problem
• Symptoms are often bundled with a product/feature suggestion
• Recognising symptoms and finding root causes is your bread & butter

8. ‘Five Whys’ does root cause analysis
• Normally used to find the origin of your process problems
• Start with your server crashing and find the source of the problem
• Repeat
• Invest appropriately at all problem layers
• In CustDev, can also be used to unpack your customer’s supposed problem
• Helps map out your assumptions about their problem
• Find additional layers at which you can add value and/or make money

9. “I want more readers on my blog.”
Everyone workshop: 5 minutes
Why is this a problem? Why might a business want more readers?
Write each potential reason down on an index card.

10. Topic map
• Group the cards in a way that makes sense to you.
• Designer types call this a Cart Sort
• When you have groups that make sense, name the clusters. Those are your topics.
• Name topics so you can bring up in a conversation which won’t lead towards a
conclusion or your underlying problem hypothesis.
• Ask yourself if the underlying problem assumption was true, would they bring it up? If it
wasn’t true, would they not bring it up? This makes a good topic.
• e.g. Problem cards say “fame” & “hype” so the group name is “personal motivation.”
• So you can say, “tell me about your personal motivation” and then they can volunteer
fame or hype themselves. Or not. This is how you learn if it’s really a pressing problem.

11. You need to write it down. Why?
• Highlights invalid signals from both yourself and customers
• Learning you’re wrong is actionable
• Customers’ exact wording tells you how they imagine the problem and what
they search for
• Pivot smarter, without re-doing custdev
• Choose what you need to learn, and THEN how to measure it
• Focusing too early on specific answers leaves value on the table

12. Visual reference icons
• Emotions point to opportunities and problems
• Alternate solutions inform customer problems,
workflow, channel, and pricing
• Customer problems and barriers warn you of
possible conversion friction
• Over time, add new icons you find helpful
This technique was developed by Ian Collingwood for usability studies, and repurposed for
custdev by Sal, who also added know-how shared by Cindy Alvarez.

13. Forming good questions
• The mom test
• If your mom would lie to you to avoid hurting your feelings, its’ a bad
question
• Ask about them (and what they have already done), not their opinions (about
what they would do)
• Ask to show not tell

14. Some strong questions
• Please show me how you... Please tell me what... I’m trying to learn... Please help me
understand... Can I ask why? Can you please tell me more about that?
• When does this happen? How recently/fre- quently does this come up? Can you
think of other times this comes up? Who else is affected by this?
• How do you decide? What is the process you go through? Give me a detailed play by
play. What do you do before/after you do this?
• If this were free... how long to install and who needs to approve it?
• Other people have to told me that...
• What else do you wish you could be doing? If you had a magic wand, what would
you change? What else should I have asked?

15. Exploring
• If you hit a strong signal, explore around it.
• Problem? Who else?
• Barrier? What next? What have other
people tried?
Friends Say
Complaints
THINKING & FEELING
Clients Say Boss says
HEARING
SEEING
SAYING Friends Say
Topic Map DOING
Praise

16. Pricing
• Custdev isn’t for closing sales
• But sometimes you’ll close them as a side-effect
• It’s about learning HOW to sell
• Don’t ask if they would buy it for X
• Ask about their budget, what they spend on their current solution, etc
• It’s okay to ask about money
• Don’t forget implementation & training costs!

17. Who here spends time or money on their blog?
Form into groups of 3 around a blogger
Try to group up with the blogger you know least well

18. Practice interviewing
• Pairing is good. One interviewer, one
notetaker.
• Use the icons as your record notes.
• The order doesn’t matter, but bring up
each topic during the interview. “So tell
me about topic.”

19. There’s a reason they’re called index cards
• Find all your cards that resonate with each topic. Discuss.
• Which topics had supporting signals? Which didn’t? Which problem
hypotheses were validated or not?
• Find all your cards that have a specific symbol. Discuss.
• Learn anything new?

20. Retrospective
• How was it relevant to your biz?
• What isn’t relevant at all to your biz?
• Any big challenges we missed, glossed over, or otherwise trivialised?

21. Get the latest PDF
• Covers this technique in more detail
• Get updates with new techniques & revisions
• Email us
salim@saintsal.com
robftz@gmail.com