By ThomasGet an Edge From the Experts on YOUR Product: Your Own Customers
Why you should sit down and listen to your customers
Every time I start an interview with a customer I feel a slight twinge of fear and excitement.
I feel like I’m about to jump off into the void: “What are they going to say about it? How do I sound like I know what I’m talking about“?
And yet, by the end of the same interview, this fear and excitement will have turned into fresh clarity about the product I’m working on.
That’s why I’m such a huge fan of interviewing customers.
Nick Disabato is such a big fan of interviewing customers that he refers to it as “printing money”.
Between me and you, I LOVE the idea of being a money printer.
But seriously, it’s easy to think we understand our customers, and we do, to a certain level.
But do we really, truly know them? Do we understand them so well that we’re able to know what they say they want versus what they’ll actually take out their wallet and pay for?
It’s this level of understanding that allows you to design and market great products.
That’s the real litmus test.
The truth is that it’s hard to get to this level of clarity about your customers.
There are many ways to learn about your audience, but of them all, the most effective way is to sit down and listen to them.
The reason is that customer interviews give you many ways to win:
- learn the words they use to describe their problems, so you can write marketing copy that will convert and design the right solution to the right problem;
- figure out the best ways to reach your audience, so you’ll know how to go-to-market if you don’t yet have a product;
- create personas that are more than just stereotypes;
- create personal relationships with your initial customers that will pay back in extra feedback and patience.
Yet, there is this big lie: product people talk about how important it is to talk to your customers, and yet when you ask most product designers and marketers, they rarely interview their customers.
Put it this way: how many people have you interviewed in the last month?
The reason is that it’s really tough to make them happen.
People don’t just have a spare hour here or there just to talk with you. Therefore, convincing people to take the time to talk to you is really tough in itself. And then you have to figure out what to ask them.
So, I put together a course that will help you do your next 10 customer interviews.
Just ten customer interviews will revolutionise your understanding of your customers. It may seem small, but it masks a surprising amount of complexity.
You can sign up below and I’ll send you a series of emails that will bring you to 10 interviews.
We’ll cover:
- The hardest problem in interviewing customers (and exactly how I solve it)
- How to (gently) persuade people to take the time to talk with you
- The tools I use for customer interviews
- Template questions you can ask when your mind runs blank 😉
- Tactics for systematizing your process and analyzing your results