Asking the tough question in Customer Development
“On a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being ‘definitely not’ 10 being ‘fuck yeah’, how likely would you be to use this product?”
I know I always get that strange feeling in the stomach when I ask this questions at the end of a solution or MVP interview. And you know that the person sitting on the other side of the table is most likely feeling the same (not always). The whole point of the exercise is to learn and that involves asking tough questions, so how you feel is irrelevant, so suck it up tough guy.
What really matters is getting honest feedback. Some people will not hold anything back and tell you how it is straight into your face. I love those people :) However, a lot of people will want to be “nice” to you and not hurt your feelings. Nice is in quotes because they are actually accomplishing the complete opposite, waisting your time. So, when I see hesitation after this question, I usually follow it up with something like this:
1. (a little intro to break the silence)
“It’s important that you are totally honest. If you’re not, we can’t understand your needs and make changes to the product that are needed.”
2. (the easy bit)
“So, if you feel like you would use the product, tell me why, where you see the value and how you would use it day to day.”
3. (the important bit)
“However, if you don’t feel like this product is for you, is there anything that would make it more valuable. Are there any features that would add enough value to push you over the line? How would you create a product like this with yourself in mind?”
So, you break the silence, you give them an option to like it but with a caveat that they have to justify why and then you give them an easy way out if they don’t like it. What they tell you when they don’t like the product is marginally important, so don’t take down the list of features they suggest and run off to build them. More importantly you got your signal and that’s what matters.
