How to conduct productive customer interviews?

My point is stop looking for validation. If you are thinking of starting a business, this post will be beneficial. If you face misunderstanding at work, this will help you as well.

Hello, Hello! This is Shantanu. I write on topics in business, marketing, and culture every Sunday out of Singapore. I am on a journey to build my business. I failed once. Right now, I am recuperating. So, I am writing and sharing my thoughts. 

To our new subscribers - a hearty welcome! You are the best! 💖

Exactly 2 years back on 14th June, I landed at Changi and made Singapore my home. I got the perfect welcome - a room in the Stanford overlooking MBS (I paid for it lor) and the SHN (stay at home - why wasn’t it called stay at hotel?) was reduced from 14 days to 7 days. Then NTU asked me to stay away from the campus for 7 more days. So I stayed at an Airbnb, which was and still is illegal here. The host lady wanted me to maintain a pin-drop silence because her neighbor often called the police on her. I was financially “comfortable” then. It feels like a long time. I have been fighting on multiple fronts and went financially bust, aka broke, in the process. Yes, you can call me stupid. But that’s that. Regret is the last thing I want in life. Nonetheless, things are improving and looking positive. 

Here is a photo from my room in June 2021. This is how SG won my heart 💘

Clicked from a room on the 12th floor in The Stamford.

I didn’t write properly last week. I had been away the whole weekend at a bachelor party. I thought I would say “Sorry I am on a break” and leave it there. I didn’t have my laptop, so I typed on my phone. Trust me, typing an article on the phone is way more difficult than writing Whatsapp texts. Maybe it’s time to get that long-wished-for Apple iPad Air. 

This week I decided to write something special. I was on an entrepreneurial journey for the last 14 months. Initially, I feared customer interviews. Networking and connecting with leaders is a difficult job - you can get rejected, chided, and advised. Over time I aced it. Now I can get the core pain point out from “anyone” within 30 mins straight. Even the toughest of the people open up. How do I do it? What are the tricks? Imagine I am giving you this for free in this capitalistic market (quote from a recent K drama. Yes, I am back to watching them. Again 🤐 ). 

Let’s take how a typical entrepreneur would conduct an interview. This happens more often than you can imagine. Here are some sample questions -

1. “So, do you think this idea might work?”

2. “What is your opinion?”

3. “The market is not organized, lots of small-sized players, we can aggregate and take a slice of the pie. It would be great, won’t it?”

4. “I am writing a one-pager to explain my business idea to prospective investors.”

All these questions scream - GIVE ME VALIDATION NOW. It’s human and I understand. We seek constant validation in our lives with people around us - parents, partners, managers, and strangers. However, this is where founders get it wrong, especially first-time founders. I am guilty of the same crime. 

The most important job of a founder is to find the pain point of users without you asking “Is this a problem for you?” 

At EF, this was the first thing taught to us - use The MOM test for customer interviews. It needs a significant amount of practice and we fail often. After this article, please do read the book by Rob Fitzpatrick. This is how he introduces the book:

How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you.

What to look for in a customer interview?

You must realize that everyone tries to be nice to each other, especially your mother. Your mom will never say that your idea is shit when she has seen you working hard on your business. The same goes for your friends. Even strangers wish to be nice. Hence, customer interviews should be such that whatever they say that don’t seem to hurt you. 

You must always look for stories- real-life and work stories. The best is to find the problem in its natural habitat. Here are 10 guidelines I follow for myself -

1. Go with a hypothesis to prove or disprove. For eg. - “Small enterprises, with under USD 100K in annual sales, are looking for saas based procurement platform” is a hypothesis. Another example - “Wealthy professionals, with USD 5K+ monthly salary in Bangkok, are looking for high-end interior designers”. Even if you have experienced the pain point yourself, don’t assume it to be true for everyone. Talk to at least 50 people (ideally 100) and understand if they face the same issue and how they solve it now.

2. Don't look for validation in a customer interview. Do not try to ask if your idea will work. Most probably they wouldn’t know but still, they would reply in the affirmative.

3. Do not accept statements and opinions. You are looking for behavior and not opinion. A person might believe something and do something else. Hence, ask for stories as in point 1.

4. Accept rejection. Don’t try counter-questioning when someone says this won’t work. Instead, ask them for stories.

5. Finally, keep it short. Ideally, you should get your answer in 15 mins tops. I have seen people talking for 1 hour. They are just frustrating the other party and frustrated people can be dishonest just to let go. 

6. Follow-ups - Don’t call back if you haven’t worked on the information provided in the last call. You can share updates on Whatsapp or email. 

7. Always take notes. Always. There is no leeway to this rule. Please don’t fool yourself by claiming you have a great memory. 

8. Please prepare for every meeting. You cannot go in with the same set of questions for every interview. Go on LinkedIn or Twitter where the interviewer is active and understand his work and thoughts. One of my co-founders went unprepared for a meeting and when I confronted him, he answered - “Bro, I don’t work like you. I prepared questions in my head”. I knew he was fooling himself and wasting my time. 

9. Avoid compliments at all costs. If you hear - “Oh great, this sounds like the perfect idea”, “Man this will work wonders” - run away. Decline compliments every single time. If an idea really mattered to someone, they would say - “can I pay for the solution now?”

10. Nudges are fine. If the problem you want to discover is procurement and the user starts talking about his international trip, please bring them back to the topic. 

Here is a good example of a customer interview I took last year - Harish, Our Food. There is no confidential information in the document 🙂

Something similar happens in sales meetings as well. Imagine you have built your product and now reaching out to people to sell. You start seeing responses where they say - “let us talk after 1 month”. Then it becomes 2 months, 4 months. These people are trying to be nice and avoid saying no to your face. That’s how humans behave in a social setting. 

How to conduct a sales meeting?

Sales is never a pitch. Sales is understanding and solving a problem for someone. The solution begins by getting an understanding of the problem. Here is a year-old screenshot that I always refer to stay in line. This doesn’t mean I don’t err. 

Screenshot from the book - The MOM test

Customer discovery interview allows you to find a specific customer segment that is ready to pay to solve the pain point. 

One quick way to check if you are actually having a good customer call is to check who is speaking more. I used Otter.ai to record calls and my best calls were when the customer spoke for atleast 70% of the time. It is signal that the customer is doing the talk and you are listening.

How to send cold emails and LinkedIn requests?

Here is the structure to send a cold/warm email, again thanks to Rob.

Give people a purpose for the meeting using vision, framing, pedestal, weakness, ask framework.

Here is how it looks.

1. Vision: the problem you are solving or industry you are trying to improve  - "we're trying to improve at-home education for busy parents"

2. Framing: this is not a sales meeting  - "we're a startup working on this problem, but we're miles away from any solution and have nothing to sell you"

3. Pedestal+Weakness: how they, in particular, can be helpful to you - "you've got so much experience in education and homeschooling with your experience as a tutor. If you were willing to talk to me about how parents are currently dealing with this issue - what you've seen, what works, what doesn't - it would help us out so much. Weakness -  We're having a really hard time finding out what industry players really think about it"

4. Ask  - "hey can I talk to you? Ask you some questions about the industry and how you've done stuff in the past"

Bonus - Here is my 12 months of framing efforts in a single document. It shows my journey, including all the hoops I took. The document is fun. If you read it well, you can track my entire entrepreneurship journey. It ends at the fundraising stage.

Apart from these, I would have liked to share a few Google meet recordings. However, most of them are confidential. I have also stopped my premium Otter.ai membership and it isn’t allowing me to listen to old conversations. 🥹

Okay, I stop here this week. This week’s post had a bit of nostalgia. There are a few new stories that I want to write soon. Let’s vote on what you would like me to talk about. I am giving more context before the poll since Substack does not allow me add more words.

1. The best marketer in the world - Hawker aunty at my workplace. I am in awe of her marketing skills. 

2. My challenges in the digital advertising world.

3. Digital advertising options and how to select the best one for your needs.

4. Why do I like Singapore so much?

Thank you so much for reading till the end. Apart from Substack, I write frequently on Twitter and Linkedin. 

I hope you have a relaxing weekend. Also, have a great week ahead 🙂

Hahah, Jisoo is my favorite 🤐

Flowers
Shan