The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

by Rob Fitzpatrick

You: “That Google Reader thing is a mess. What are you doing about it?”

When it’s not clear whether a problem is a must-solve-right-now (e.g. you’re selling a painkiller) or a nice-to-have (you’re selling a vitamin), you can get some clarity by asking cost/value questions like the following.

Rule of thumb: Start broad and don't zoom in until you’ve found a strong signal, both with your whole business and with every conversation.

We're liable to spend a huge amount of time exploring a real and urgent problem, only to hop into the deadpool due to our customer’s budgeting issues.

I’ve also seen this strike several of the recent companies who want to use mobile/realtime deals to drive foot traffic to bars and clubs. They run customer conversations with bar owners who confirm that: yes, they would like more customers on the slow nights; and yes, they would pay you if you could send customers on demand. The founders take this as strong validation (“They have the problem and committed to pay!”) without recognising that the vast majority of the risk is in the product, not the market.

Then the founders talk to consumers and ask if they would use an app which always pointed them to booming parties with cheap booze. Again, obviously yes. But that doesn’t tell us whether we can actually achieve that critical mass of users.

What all this does mean is that if you’ve got heavy product risk (as opposed to pure market risk), then you’re not going to be able to prove as much of your business through conversations alone. The conversations give you a starting point, but you’ll have to start building product earlier and with less certainty than if you had pure market risk.

Pre-plan the 3 most important things you want to learn from any given type of person (e.g. customers, investors, industry experts, key hires, etc). Update the list as your questions change.

It also makes it easier to face the questions that hurt. When we go through an unplanned conversation, we tend to focus on trivial stuff that keeps the conversation comfortable. Instead, decide on the tough questions in a calm environment with your team.

Your 3 questions will be different for each type of person you’re talking to. If you have multiple types of customers or partners, have a list for each.

Rule of thumb: You always need a list of your 3 big questions.

In Steve Blank’s original book on Customer Development, 4 Steps to the E.piphany, he solves this by recommending 3 separate meetings: the first about the customer and their problem; the second about your solution; and the third to sell a product.

Let’s say I’m trying to build tools to help public speakers get more speaking gigs and I bump into one at a conference. I’m not going to try to set up a meeting. Instead, I’m just going to immediately transition into my most important question: “Hey, I’m curious—how did you end up getting this gig?” As a side bonus, we’re also now having an interesting conversation and I’m far more likely to be remembered and get a meeting later.

When you strip all the formality from the process, you end up with no meetings, no “interviews”, and a much easier time all around. The conversations become so fast and lightweight that you can go to a industry meetup and leave with a dozen customer conversations under your belt, each of which provided as much value as a lengthy formal meeting.

Rule of thumb: Learning about a customer and their problems works better as a quick and casual chat than a long, formal meeting.

The Meeting Anti-Pattern is the tendency to relegate every opportunity for customer conversation into a calendar block.

Beyond being a bad use of your time and setting expectations that you’re going to show them a product, over-reliance on formal meetings leads us to overlook perfe...

If we do it right, they won’t even know we were talking about our idea.

I was once considering a product idea to make office managers more efficient. I played with the possibilities on Friday, figured out the big questions over the weekend, and then went to an industry event on Monday. A handful of office managers were there and without any of them realising we’d “had a meeting”, I'd learned that the big problem was really about debt collection rather than efficiency.

got there by just being interested and chatting with them over a beer: “X seems really annoying, how do you deal with it?” “Is Y as bad as it seems?” “You guys did a g...

Learning from customers doesn’t mean you have to be wearing a suit and sipping ominous boardroom coffee. Asking the right questions is fast and touches on topics that people find quite interesting.

You can talk anywhere and save yourself the formal meetings until you have something concrete to show.

Rule of thumb: If it feels like they’re doing you a favour by talking to you, it’s probably too formal.

For example, it only takes 5 minutes (maximum) to learn whether a problem exists and is important.

Even within a more formal meeting, you still might want to keep it casual if you’re hoping to get non-biased feedback.

Each held a name and a phone number. “Our analysts kill most of them before they ever reach us, and then we trash a bunch more. We only end up with a few that are serious contenders. Then we just call every couple weeks to see how it’s going.” I said it didn’t sound so bad and he agreed that it works pretty well. And then he asked me what I wanted to talk about. But I didn’t need anything else, because I’d learned what I came for: they don’t have the problem.

Rule of thumb: Give as little information as possible about your idea while still nudging the discussion in a useful direction.

When you fail to push for advancement, you end up with zombie leads: potential customers (or investors) who keep taking meetings and saying nice things, but who never seem to cut a check. It’s like your startup has been friend-zoned.

Rule of thumb: “Customers” who keep being friendly but aren’t ever going to buy are a particularly dangerous source of mixed signals.

Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless.

Just like compliments aren’t data when you’re trying to learn about a problem, they also aren’t progress when you’re trying to validate a product. Hearing a compliment can still be useful though—it’s a warning flag that the person you’re talking to is trying to get rid of you.

Rule of thumb: The more they’re giving up, the more seriously you can take what they’re saying.

To fix it, you need to shift from fuzzy future promises into concrete current commitments. For example, you could ask for a letter of intent, a pre-purchase, a deposit, or intros to other decision makers and team members. The reason Kickstarter is so wonderful is because it forces customers who say they would buy it to actually pull out a credit card and commit.

A product designer was once showing me a brilliant smartphone tripod and mount he was designing. He demoed the 3D-printed prototype unit for me and I immediately asked him how much it would cost to buy it. He laughed and said he’d gone through a dozen prototypes already because people kept buying them. That’s a good sign.

Rule of thumb: It’s not a real lead until you’ve given them a concrete chance to reject you.

This sort of rejection isn’t helpful because it doesn’t teach you anything. Hard pitching gives binary feedback: you either nailed it or you didn't. That’s okay when you’re making fine adjustments (tweak this feature) but bad for bigger questions (does anybody care at all about what I’m doing).

Keep an eye out for the people who get emotional about what you’re doing. There is a significant difference between: “Yeah, that’s a problem” and “THAT IS THE WORST PART OF MY LIFE AND I WILL PAY YOU RIGHT NOW TO FIX IT.”

In the consumer space, it’s the fan who wants your product to succeed so badly that they’ll front you the money as a pre-order when all you’ve got is a duct-tape prototype. They’re the one who will tell all their friends to chip in as well. They’re the person reading your blog and searching for workarounds.

Rule of thumb: In early stage sales, the real goal is learning. Revenue is a side-effect.

The only thing people love talking about more than themselves is their problems. By taking an interest in the problems and minutia of their day, you’re already more interesting than 99% of the people they’ve ever met.

Rule of thumb: If it’s not a formal meeting, you don’t need to make excuses about why you’re there or even mention that you’re starting a business. Just ask about their life.

Rule of thumb: If it’s a topic you both care about, find an excuse to talk about it. Your idea never needs to enter the equation and you’ll both enjoy the chat.

By immersing myself in the community I met a load of people and soon had all the connections and conversations I could handle (I ultimately decided that big speakers and big conferences were a bad customer segment and walked away—not every conversation has to end in finding out your idea is awesome).

Get your product out there, see who seems to like it most, and then reach out to those types of users for deeper learning.

Want to figure out the problems HR professionals have? Organise an event called “HR professionals happy hour”. People will assume you’re credible just because you happen to be the person who sent the invite emails or introduced the speaker.

You’ll have an easy time chatting to them about their problems.

It’s the fastest and most unfair trick I’ve seen for rapid customer learning. As a bonus, it also bootstraps your industry credibility.

Spend the time to teach. You can teach at conferences, workshops, through online videos, blogging, and by doing free consulting or office hours. You'll refine your message, get in touch with a room full of potential customers who take you seriously, and will learn which parts of your offering resonate (before you’ve even built it). Then simply chat up the attendees who are most keen.

Blogging about an industry is also a good exercise to get your thoughts in a row. It makes you a better customer conversationalist.

By simply organising the call and playing host, he immediately absorbed all the credibility of the top universities and got direct phone access to a pile of great leads.