How to make a survey on the method of customer development (Customer Development) and get the most out of it

Original author: Jason Evanish
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Managing a startup involves a wide range of responsibilities. Marketing and sales, amateur HR and accounting, development and project management, in a word, you must be a jack of all trades. We all understand the importance of the Lean Startup approach and Customer Development methods, however, they are difficult to put into practice. By the way, if you have not stumbled upon CustDev.com , run there right now and grab Brant and Patrick's book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development (or Russian translation of the book - Startup Around the Client ).

As soon as you promised yourself to “get out of the office” in order to talk with your customers and really explore the question of the demand for the product on the market (Profit-Market Fit), it is very important to get the most out of this event. For newcomers to the client development methodology, one of the most difficult things is to compile surveys, so I would like to share how I structure the surveys to maximize the impact on them.


How to structure polls according to the method of customer development (and get the most out of them)


There are those who have already written about how they compile the polls, so it is definitely worth getting acquainted with the opinions of Cindy Alvarez and Sachin Aggarwal regarding this issue.

I divide my polls into 3 parts - People, Problems and Your Solution. Depending on the person, on average it takes me 30-45 minutes to do everything about everything. (Note: This framework is best suited for B2B products, but with a little ingenuity, it can also be adapted to B2C)

1) People - or - Who are you?


Before proceeding with the problems and the solutions you propose, you need to find out who you are dealing with. This simultaneously warms up your interlocutor with the help of simple questions, and also gives you the opportunity to establish mutual understanding with him.

Examples of questions you might use:

  • What is your name and what is your role in the company?
  • What place do you occupy in the structure of your department? The whole company?
  • How is your budget formed? Who should approve your purchase?
  • How do you find new products for your work? Do you need any approval for their application?
  • Have you tried something new recently?
  • Describe your normal business day.
  • How much time do you spend on [task X]? (Task X is anything that stands out during their normal working day)


Do not neglect this introductory part of your survey! Of course, you don’t need a novel describing the daily life of your interlocutors, but you should know enough to understand their role in the company, who is the key person and their general technological level. All this will help you in the future to analyze which of the users is most susceptible to the problem of interest to you and the solution you propose.

2) Problems - or - What are your biggest difficulties?


This is the section where you are trying to find out if a person is facing a problem that you think you are solving. Your task is not to bring them to your problem! The less you point out the problem that is already mentioned, the more reason to believe that you are on the right track!

Examples of questions you might use:

  • What are the 3 problems that you had to face at your work.
  • What are the 3 problems associated with [sector X] that you had to meet at your work. (Sector X is the sector your startup belongs to)
  • If you had a magic wand, and with a wave of it, you could get a solution to any of these problems ... what would this solution be?
  • Learn more about anything time-consuming or expensive in their daily work. (Here you can add a little exaggeration to provoke an emotional response, such as "it seems ineffective ..." or "it seems it is expensive ...")
  • How did you handle or solve [Problem X]? (You need to find out if they found the solution themselves. If so ... then ask for a copy of this solution!)


People like to talk about themselves, so give them free rein and let them speak out about their problems (in other words - Shut up and listen!) . As a rule, people offer terrible solutions, but you need to hear their vision of these solutions or see what they invented themselves.
Attention, you have not mentioned your solution or problem. If they don’t tell about your problem specifically, then, ending this section of the survey, you need to directly ask if the problem you think is a problem for them. Whether they agree that this is a problem or not, you need to find out why it was not included in the top of their problems.

3) Your decision - or - Let's see if your idea survives the meeting with the client.


If during a conversation based on questions of the second part, your interlocutor himself mentions a problem that you are working on, then you are on the right track! Even better, if the solution he described using the “magic wand” remotely resembles what you are doing.

Despite what was in the second part, you should discuss what you consider a problem, as well as a solution to this problem. To get confirmation that they are not interested in this idea is as important as finding out that they like it; as a result, you will find out for yourself that either they are not your customers, or if they are yours, what your customers want.

Examples of questions you might use:

  • Introduce them to the problems for which, in your opinion, you have a solution. Do they agree with your view of the problems and their solutions?
  • Is [your solution] suitable for any of their problems?
  • Would you pay for our decision? How many? ( Do not be afraid to name the price you are interested in ... "Will [X] be reasonable?")
  • If they are ready to give your price and they like your idea ... "Are they ready to start immediately?"


If everything goes as it should, and you really solve the problem, then your client may immediately want to launch the product. And you, most likely, will have to learn a lot about what your customers want and what they don’t want, and then your idea will begin to evolve.

This basic structure can give you surprisingly reliable information regarding your ideas and customer wishes.

And finally, a few more important things:


1) Make good notes or write down everything!
After talking with 8-10 people, you need to go back and look at your notes for matches. This is especially true of the first part, where you need to find out what is common in people who agree that you are solving their problem. Then you need to summarize all the records and share the results with your team.

2) Make sure that other team members are present at some meetings.
A good company with a focus on customer-oriented development involves each employee in the work process. At Performable, before acquiring their HubSpot, engineers spent 30% of their time talking to customers on the phone. Nothing helps to do their job better than understanding who they are building / selling / promoting the product for.

3) Keep it simple
This should not seem like a poll! They should feel as if they are talking to a friend about their problems at work. The more comfortable they will feel when talking with you, the more they will open to you.

4) Go beyond the script
The best results are obtained when you delve a little into something that is interesting to your interlocutor. The scenario is a kind of map of the area, but there is no reason why you cannot return to it after a 5-minute digression regarding specific difficulties or how the company works.

5) If they have MVP ... ask him to show!
Nothing gives you a greater understanding of the client than what they came up with on their own to solve the problem. The best you can do is ask them to show you this, which will help you understand what they hope to get from this decision. These people are also the best candidates for allies in your product.

6) Stay in touch
Common politeness - to thank people for their time and help, which will give you the opportunity to contact them in the future if your product changes and becomes suitable for them; or invite them to test your product.

7) End with a request
Always end your polls with gratitude and a request for something. It may be a request to give a copy of their MVP or even better to ask them to introduce you to someone who might be interested in what you are working on. In my experience, similar acquaintances in 80-90% of cases are continued by further polls, while only 1 out of 10 dry emails continues.

8) Be open to new challenges! So great products are born.
As Steve Blank said, " There is no idea that would survive the first meeting with the client ." Don't be afraid to move from your original idea to what your customers really want. If in the second part you tried and found a hot problem ..., find out how they are dealing with it at the moment and how much they are willing to pay for solving it.

In conclusion: you want to find a "hot" problem, not a "just a cool problem." Think about it in this light: if my hair caught fire (in the literal sense), and you would sell buckets of water, and I would definitely buy your product. But if I were wet and I would be cold, I would hardly have bought your bucket of water right now, but I would have in mind for the future.
Find such difficulties and their solutions that customers will want and will pay for.

Do you have something to advise entrepreneurs who conduct surveys using the client development method?

Some time ago on Habré there was a whole controversy, who almost turned into a scuffle - how can one translate Customer Development. Although the term “customer-oriented development” is still closer to me, at the same time “official” translations of books using the term “customer development” began to appear. In the same books, the term “economical startup” is used as the Russian analogue of Lean Startup. Following the formal logic, the English term should be translated as “lean startup” - by analogy with “lean manufacturing”. In general, the terminology is a complete disaster. I definitely do not want to invent my own terminology and coordinate system, therefore I will continue to indicate my position with footnotes.

The translation was made as part of the Tolstoy Summer Camp startup school .

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