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Text of the page (random words):
ng to ask your customers when the time comes to interview them crawl partner interviews after you look at that script it s time to do the crawl phase of developing your interviewing skills and increasing your comfort level 1 daily interviews start doing partner interviews with someone close to you on a daily basis your partner could be your business partner your life partner your housing partner e g roommate etc anyone you see on a daily basis 2 ask about challenges ask about all aspects of their day but be sure to focus the bulk of your attention on the challenges your partner is experiencing on a daily basis ask what the hardest part of their day was was there anything tough about work today anything hard with the kids difficulties at school often times when people recap their day something negative will come up practice asking for more information about that and 3 be curious dig deep into what is challenging them and see if you can elicit some emotions about those challenges imagine yourself in their position and relate how you would feel to the emotions that they re experiencing when you feel the emotions your interviewee experiences you re doing it right click to tweet your goal here isn t to offer a solution right there and then your goal is just to listen hear their problems and hear the words they re using to describe those problems when you re genuinely listening you re not trying to fix their problems and that s the skill you want to build click to tweet another technique is to focus on asking five questions in a row during this conversation before you answer any don t get pre occupied with counting the number of questions you ask but this idea can help you set the intention to really focus the attention on your interviewee remember now is not the time to offer solutions once you re comfortable with partner interviews say after practicing it for a week or so on a daily basis it s time to take a walk walk family friends during the walk phase you re going to expand the scope of people you interview to include your friends and family through casual conversations that we normally think of as small talk take the opportunity to ask the person you re chatting with about the hardest part of their job or the hardest part of their daily routine you can do that by asking something like you what are you up to these days friend oh i m looking for a new job you oh that sounds __ hard fun tiring etc __ what would you say is the hardest part about that this type of questioning will help you focus in on their challenges and then once you re talking about their challenges get curious once they describe their challenge ask them what it feels like to do that say something like you that feels like it would be _ emotion frustrating disappointing etc __ to me does it feel that way to you this will help you make an emotional connection with your interviewee again when you re connecting at the emotional level you re starting to really understand the perspective of your customers finally you ll want to ask what they re doing to try and solve this challenge remember this is not your opportunity to solve the problem but to simply ask them what steps they re taking this is going to get you ready to start asking questions about your competitors concentrate on asking five questions before being asked any don t worry about counting the questions just make an effort to ask more questions than you answer and listen more than you speak use this as an opportunity to restrain yourself you re going to have solutions but you really need to practice not offering them if you really think you have something that could help them great just don t mention it during that conversation wait a couple hours or a couple days and then offer them the solution during this phase it will become second nature for you to ask about people s challenges and become genuinely interested in them in fact you ll notice that only will your small talk conversations become generally less awkward you ll find they re more fun and rewarding for you and the person you re talking to this habit of being interested in other peoples problems you re forming will eventually free you from to feel tied to a rigid customer interviewing script down the road you ll feel more comfortable interviewing customers because you ll have found a genuine low stress way to have a conversation with them after you have a half dozen of these conversations you ll have walked your way to higher quality interviewing skills now it s time to start running run networking events here you re going to really put what you ve learned to use start by going to a local meetup or startup event and begin asking the questions that are on the customer interview script these are largely the same questions you re going to ask during your actual customer interviews but with people who only feel like your actual customers that way you can be as awkward as you want without you having to worry about losing a customer ask them what s the biggest challenge you re facing get curious ask about the last time they encountered that problem understand both when it happened and what happened when they encountered that problem ask why it was hard ask about the solutions they re trying and what s not ideal about those solutions by this point you should be able to rattle off 10 questions or so before anyone asks you anything this is because you re getting comfortable with this approach but also because you re talking to someone who is really passionate about their problems they re fellow startup founders don t offer solutions during the conversation take notes about the problems that they re encountering and follow up with an email the next day offering suggestions on solutions to their problem by the way this approach to networking is the core of the silicon valley culture great networking is genuinely caring about connecting with someone else and helping them not only are you building your customer interviewing skills you re building your network and networking skills as well after you ve repeated this process at two or three networking events you ve successfully crawled walked and run your way to confident interviewing skills now it s time to fly fly interview your customers by this point talking to people about their challenges and connecting with them on an emotional level will feel like second nature so don t forget to get your interview script remember what it was like for your previous interviewees people really enjoy someone genuinely connecting with them and being interested in their problems you re not inconveniencing them by genuinely listening to their problems you re not only a great customer interviewer by this point you re also a great listener a fantastic networker an budding non sleazy sales person a strong communicator want some more help if you d like some extra help on developing your interviewing skills including how to accelerate your skill development the above can all be done within a week some additional tips on eliciting and asking about emotions other ways to talk about emotions without things feeling uncomfortable what it feels like to be interviewed this experience will make you immeasurably more comfortable because you ll know what your interviewees are experiencing check out the interviewing like a pro exercise in the focus framework this exercise is the 12th exercise in the 1st workbook in the focus framework what s next now you know how to crawl walk run and fly your way to overcoming your customer interviewing anxiety after having conducted dozens of interviews with non customers you ll have developed your interviewing skills to the point that you feel confident and comfortable interviewing anyone especially your early adopters share this twitter facebook buffer pocket google linkedin email by justin wilcox april 10 2017 how many customers should you interview updated april 10 2017 if you re wondering how many customer interviews you should conduct you re not alone this is a really common question and there are a few common answers first let s discuss those common answers and what they re lacking so you can understand the benefits of a different approach not useful answer 1 interview until you stop learning unfortunately this approach isn t very useful because whenever you talk with anyone you ll be learning something new so the question ends up being when have you learned enough that you can move on to the next step which is just as difficult a question to answer as how many people should i interview so you re no better off than you were before not useful answer 2 you should do x number of videos per week or y number of total interviews i m really not a fan of this approach if your goal is to interview until you have a certain number of conversations you ll end up focusing more on the quantity of interviews and less on the quality which will end up being a huge waste of time let s talk about a different approach one that i find much more helpful the 3 of 5 rule here s how i conduct interviews and how i recommend you conduct yours start by interviewing a batch of 5 customers one at a time analyze those interviews repeat steps 1 and 2 until at least 3 of the last 5 people you ve interviewed are early adopters by the way if you haven t read my articles on early adopters yet you need to stop reading this and read them now not only will they help you throughout your startup journey it will be hard to make the most of the rest of this article without that context early adopters you ll recall from my previous posts early adopters are customers who have the problem you re trying to solve know they have the problem you re trying to solve are actively seeking a solution to that problem if 3 of the last 5 people you talk to are actively seeking a solution to the problem you re trying to solve you ve found your early adopters once you ve found your early adopters you re ready to move on to your offer testing why batches of 5 interviews because interview quality is exponentially more important than interview quantity the whole point of doing these interviews is to do qualitative research this is your chance to do a deep dive with individual customers you can better understand what problems they re seeking solutions for why they re seeking those solutions and where they re looking for solutions you ll worry about doing quantitative research later on in offer testing but for right now you need to focus doing a small number of high quality in depth interviews with the right people if you try to interview more than five people at a time you may accidentally force yourself to widen the scope of people you re willing to talk to before you know it you re interviewing people across different customer segments and ultimately you ll be unable to find a pattern of the problems you re trying to solve the other reason i recommend interviewing customers in batches of 5 is patterns emerge very quickly when you re interviewing early adopters you ll quickly see your early adopters will describe the same problems in the same way once 60 3 out of 5 of the people you re talking to describe the same problems in the same way you ve found your early adopters once you ve confirmed you ve found your early adopters on this small scale you ll be ready to do your offer testing where you validate you can find your early adopters on a large scale large enough to give you confidence you can achieve product market fit keys to efficient effective interviews to get the best return on your interviewing investment be sure to 1 use externally observable behaviors eobs to interview potential early adopters if you don t know what eobs are or haven t memorized the definition of early adopters yet read this article and this one 2 use the 3 of 5 rule a interview customers in batches of 5 b analyze the results niche and repeat if necessary c you re done interviewing when 3 of the last 5 people are early adopters want some help now you know the fundamentals behind how many interviews you need to conduct but it s completely normal to still run into some trouble like you re interviewing customers but no pattern is emerging you re having trouble even getting 5 interviews you re not sure if you re asking the right questions if any of the above applies to you or you just want some more detailed guidance on customer interviewing take a look at the 5 interview checkpoint it s the 11th exercise in the first focus framework workbook series and it will help you analyze your interviews determine if you ve met the 3 of 5 rule find a pattern amongst the problems figure out what to do if you aren t getting interviews know what to ask during your interviews the focus framework is used by thousands of founders to help them take action finding product market fit check it out and see if it can help you what s next now you know exactly how many customers to interview and when you re ready for offer testing go out and talk to your customers share this twitter facebook buffer pocket google linkedin email by justin wilcox march 27 2017 april 3 2017 the customers you should be interviewing updated april 3 2017 in this article you ll learn exactly who you should be interviewing where and how to find them in part 1 of this series on early adopters we talked about two aspects of early adopters what are early adopters who are yours make sure you ve read early adopters part 1 who they are it s fundamental you understand the underlying principles of early adopters before you dive into part 2 in the previous article we discussed that early adopters are customers who have the problem you re trying to solve know they have the problem and are actively seeking solution for it today we re going to dive in deeper and explore where to find your early adopters we start with the 3rd piece of the early adopter definition actively seeking a solution that s the secret to finding your early adopters and early adopters are the secret to building a successful startup if you can find early adopters people who are actively seeking a solution to the problem you want to solve there s an incredible fit between both of your needs you need them to build a business and they need you to solve their problem you ll get to collaborate with your early adopters to build a mutually beneficial startup on the other hand if you re not able to find your early adopters you know from part 1 that you won t be able to lock in your early majority this means you won t find product market fit if you re not able to find people who are actively seeking a solution to the problem that you want to solve right now the world isn t ready for your business yet it doesn t mean you re starting a bad business if you can t find early adopters it just means the timing isn t right as you can see it s absolutely critical you find your early adopters so let s talk about how do you find your early adopters you can find your early adopters u...