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

They’ve cobbled together a home-brew solution,

When you hear a request, it’s your job to understand the motivations which led to it. You do that by digging around the question to find the root cause. Why do they bother doing it this way? Why do they want the feature? How are they currently coping without the feature? Dig.

Questions to dig into feature requests: “Why do you want that?” “What would that let you do?” “How are you coping without it?” “Do you think we should push back the launch to add that feature, or is it something we could add later?” “How would that fit into your day?”

Questions to dig into emotional signals: “Tell me more about that.”

“That seems to really bug you — I bet there’s a story here.” “What makes it so awful?” “Why haven’t you been able to fix this already?” “You seem pretty excited about that — it’s a big deal?” “Why so happy?” “Go on.”

Rule of thumb: Ideas and feature requests should be understood, but not obeyed.

In short, remember that compliments are worthless and people’s approval doesn’t make your business

better. Keep your idea and your ego out of the conversation until you’re ready to ask for commitments.

Rule of thumb: If you’ve mentioned your idea, people will try to p...

Rule of thumb: The more you’re talking, the worse you’re doing.

Every time you talk to someone, you should be asking at least one question which has the potential to destroy your currently imagined business.

Rule of thumb: You should be terrified of at least one of the questions you’re asking in every conversation.

The worst thing you can do is ignore the bad news while searching for some tiny grain of validation to celebrate.

In this context, “best” means learning, not selling.

Rule of thumb: There’s more reliable information in a “meh” than a “Wow!” You can’t build a business on a lukewarm response.

Zooming in too quickly on a super-specific problem before you understand the rest of the customers life can irreparably confuse your learnings.

This is where the conversation goes horribly wrong. Instead of figuring out whether staying fit is actually a real problem, we’re prematurely zooming in on it. Any response we get is going to be dangerously misleading.

let’s dig into the motivations.

so we can abandon ship and leave him to his day.

In good conversation, asked first why to get at motivation, then continued by digging deeper seeing if theyve ever done X and the last time theg did X.

The premature zoom is a real problem because it leads to data which seems like validation, but is actually worthless. In other words, it’s a big source of false positives.

we’ll start more generic, since we aren’t sure that fitness is a must-solve problem:

“What are your big goals and focuses right now?”

big problems with marketing?

safely zoom in on the problem of marketing since we’re pretty much 100% certain it’s a must-solve problem that people are ready to pay for.

What are your big problems right now? If we aren’t sure it’s a must-solve problem, we can start more generic to see if they care enough about the problem category to mention it unprompted.

Generic problem\goals statement that tests for immediacy. Follow up with focused problem questions, digging or asking about a problem if it was not mentioned to see if its a real problem

Then you’ve just prematurely zoomed in on a non-problem.

To have a useful conversation, you need to zoom back out to ask about my blog in general, rather than marketing my blog.

Of the topics here, one of them (Google Reader and audience size) is related to marketing, so you can anchor on that and figure out whether I’m a customer or just a complainer.

Now that you’ve let me raise the topic, you know it’s on my mind and can more safely zoom in to talk about that specifically.

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.

Unfortunately, we've missed the elephant, which is that the poorest schools may not have the budgets available to pay us what we need to sustain and grow a business.

Product risk — Can I build it? Can I grow it?

Customer/market risk — Do they want it? Will they pay me? Are there lots of them?

you’ll have to start building product earlier and with less certainty than if you had pure market risk.

Don’t stress too much about choosing the “right” important questions. They will change. Just choose whatever seems murkiest or most important right

now. Answer those will give you firmer footing and a better sense of direction for your next 3.

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

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

reduce it from a meeting to a chat. If we do it right, they won’t even know we were talking about our idea.

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

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.

You’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision

Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. Don’t mention your idea. Frame expectations by mentioning what stage you’re at and, if it’s true, that you don’t have anything to sell.

Show weakness and give them a chance to help by mentioning the specific problem that you’re looking for answers on. This will also c...

Put them on a pedestal by showing how much they, in par...

Explicitly ask f...

Or, in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness ...

Once the meeting starts, you have to grab the reins or it’s liable to turn into them drilling you on your idea, which is exactly what you don’t want