## Bad questions - Do you think it’s a good idea? - You’re asking for an opinion which is useless, and more often or not people will try and be polite which leads to [[false positives]] - Alternatives: - Can you show me how you currently do things? - Which parts do you love and hate? - Which tools did you use before settling on this one? Are you actively searching for a replacement? - Do you have the budget or need for a better alternative? - Would you buy a product which did X? - By asking for an opinion, more specifically, a hypothetical future situation, the answer will usually be “yes” which is useless. - Alternatives: - How do you currently solve X and how much does it cost? - Can you walk me through what happened the last time X came up? - Have you tried solving the problem? Why not? - Have you found solutions that felt lacking? - Do they care enough to have googled a solution to their problem? If not, it’s probably not a burning issue - How much would you pay for X? - Still a super opinionated question - but more dangerous because adding a number to something makes you feel like the data is more valid even though it’s not - Alternatives: - How much does the problem cost you? - How much do you currently pay to solve it? - How much is the budget you’ve allocated here? - What Would your dream product do? - This question can help you set up better questions, but by itself, is pretty useless. The real idea here is to try and understand why they want X Y Z features, and identify real issues, not just get a list of requests - Would you pay X for a product which did Y? - Again, people will say anything you want them to especially in hypothetical situations, even if they think they mean it. - Focused on your product instead of their life - Alternatives: - What do they already do now? (Not what they think about the future) - General [[pricing]] advice: you should also price the product on what it means to the customer, not you - You could also ask for the money upfront to see if they’ll pay which is validation in itself ## Good questions (See the alternatives for each section above) - Why do you bother? - Helps get from the perceived problem to the real one. - Sometimes people will tell you what they want, but what they want is just a shitty fix to the underlying problem. This can help uncover the real problem and help you find a real fix to it - What are the implications of that? - Helps distinguish between the “that’s-kind-of-annoying-but-i-can-deal-with-it” and “i-will-pay-to-solve-that” problems. AKA If it’s a pants on fire problem (need to have) vs a small annoyance (nice to have) - Usually the nice to have implications won’t be more than a simple fix because they don’t actually care that much - Talk me through the last time that happened - Often times by watching you can get the full, un opinionated, unbiased story of what’s actually going on and what is actually important to people - This can also answer a bunch of questions you haven’t asked yet just by observing, as well as questions that you never thought to ask, as well as illuminate problems that you didn’t know were even present - How does your product fit into their days? - What else have you tried? - If there’s nothing here, is it really that big of an issue to them? - How much does it cost / what do they hate/love about it? - How much are those fixes worth and would it be traumatic for them to switch to a new solution? - Good example: if someone says they would def pay for a solution to something - ask them when the last time it came up was. If it was recent (good sign) ask them how they tried to fix it… if they couldn’t even google search for a solution, why would they pay money for it? - It’s easy to get someone emotional about a problem if you lead them there - How are you dealing with it now? - You can get a lot of good [[pricing]] information from this question to know the general amount they’d be willing to pay - I.e $100/month vs $120k/yr - Also of course gives you information on how much the problem means to them. Are they taking drastic action or nothing at all? - Where does the money come from? - Must ask in B2B setting, not B2C. - Who’s budget will the purchase come from and who else within their company holds the power to torpedo the deal? - More often than not you’ll be talking to someone who doesn’t control the actual budget - Knowledge of their purchasing process is powerful is super useful long term - Who else should I talk to? - End every conversation like this - Leads can quickly multiply via intro (probably better for B2B) - If it’s a no, you’re either screwing up the meeting by being too formal/pitchy/clingy or they don’t actually care about the problem you’re solving. - Is there anything else I should have asked? - Another end of meeting question - Since they have more domain expertise than you will, they’ll likely be sitting there while you completely miss the most important point - Asking this gives them the chance to potentially fix your questioning - and they well - Once you know the industry better, you won’t need to rely/ask this question as much ## ”Does this problem matter to you” questions These are generic questions that let you know if the user even has the problem you’re trying to solve or not. If they don’t, you probably don’t want to continue down your line of questioning or else you’ll risk [[false positives]] and [[bad data]] - (assuming you’ve decided on a product. Otherwise you can get data on what this potential market does care about). - How seriously do you take _? - Have you looked into what your options are? - What are you doing to solve it? - How much time do you spend on it each week? - What are 3 big things you’re trying to fix or improve right now? ## General principals of questions - **You aren’t allowed to tell them what their problem is, and in return, they aren’t allowed to tell you what to build. They own the problem, you own the solution.** - Ask about their life **as it already is** - You want to understand them and their problems, not build a list of feature requests - The goal is to get to the [[Truth]], hard cold objective facts, not them validating your idea, and not just what you want to hear - Take anything “nice” they say with an extra grain of salt - No good question will be about asking what you should build - **Deciding what to build is your job - Having a problem to solve is your customer’s** - The questions you want to ask are the ones about your customer’s lives - Their problems - Cares - Constraints - Goals - You take these things, and use your own vision to find a solution, then you can validate whether that solution is good or not - You can tell something is an important question when its answer could completely change or disprove your business - Every time you talk to someone, you should be asking at least one question which has the potential to destroy your currently imagined business ## General rules of thumb - Customer conversations are bad by default. It’s your job to fix them. - Opinions are worthless - Anything involving the future is an over optimistic lie - People will lie to you if they think it’s what you want to hear - People know what their problems are, but don’t know how to solve these problems - You’re shooting blind until you understand their goals - Some problems don’t actually matter - questions can help you find them - Whenever possible you want to be shown not told - Watching someone do a task will show you where the problems and inefficiencies really are, not where the customer thinks they are - If they haven’t looked for ways of solving it already, they’re not going to look for (or buy) yours - People stop lying when you ask them for money - While it’s rare for someone to tell you precisely what they’ll pay you, they’ll often show you what it’s worth to them - People want to help - give them an excuse to do so - You should be terrified of at least one of the questions you’re asking in every conversation - Pre plan a list of 3 big questions based on what you want to learn from each type of person you’re dealing with. Knowing what information you need can guide your questions to be a lot better than not knowing what you’re looking for. - Learning about a customer and their problems works better as a quick and casual chat than a long, [[Formality|Formal]] meeting.