Pre-Sales GUIDE: CUSTOMER/BUYER DISCOVERY INTERVIEWS: Do's &

Dont's

Table of Contents
A) THE DON'T LIST: WHAT NOT TO DO IN YOUR CUSTOMER-DISCOVERY NEEDS/PAIN INTERVIEWS
.......................................................................................................................................................................... 3
1. You treat speculation as confirmation: DON'T......................................................................................... 3
2. You lead the potential customer: DON'T.................................................................................................. 3
3. You just cant stop talking: DON'T........................................................................................................... 3
4. You only hear what you want to hear: DON'T.......................................................................................... 4
5. You treat a single conversation as ultimate truth: DON'T........................................................................4
6. Fear of rejection wins out: DON'T............................................................................................................ 4
7. You talk to anyone with a pulse: DON'T.................................................................................................. 4
8. You wing the conversation: DON'T.......................................................................................................... 4
9. You try to learn everything in one sitting: DON'T.....................................................................................5
10. Only the designer does Customer Discovery: DON'T............................................................................5
11. You did customer discovery in your first week, but havent felt a need to do it since: DON'T................5
Bonus 12 (added). You ask the customer to design your product for you: DON'T.......................................5
B) THE PLAN LIST: Plan THE CUSTOMER DISCOVERY INTERVIEW COMPREHENSIVELY, BEFORE
SCRIPTING IT IN DETAIL AS A TEAM:........................................................................................................... 6
1. GO FISH WHERE THE FISHES SWIM: PLAN!.......................................................................................6
2. HAVE A PLAN: PLAN!............................................................................................................................. 6
3. TALKING TO STRANGERS IS UNNATURAL: PLAN!.............................................................................6
4. Write & Practice OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS: PLAN!............................................................................7
5. ASK WHY? (AND OTHER W WORDS): PLAN!.....................................................................................7
6. AVOID HYPOTHETICALS, LENGTHY OR CREATIVE DESCRIPTIONS: PLAN!...................................8
7. SHOW DONT EXPLAIN: PLAN!............................................................................................................. 8
8. LISTENING IS UNCOMFORTABLE: PLAN!............................................................................................ 9
9. LOVE THE UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE: PLAN!.................................................................................9
10. KEEP THEM TALKING: PLAN!............................................................................................................. 9
11. STOP THEM TALKING: PLAN!........................................................................................................... 10
12. THEY (COULD BE) A CUSTOMER: PLAN!........................................................................................ 10
C) WRITE/SCRIPT THE INTERVIEW AS A TEAM (but conduct them as individuals or in pairs NOT as a
Team):............................................................................................................................................................ 11
1. One person at a time: DO...................................................................................................................... 11
2. Know your goals and questions ahead of time: DO...............................................................................11
3. Separate behavior and feedback in discussion: DO..............................................................................11
4. Get psyched to hear things you dont want to hear: DO........................................................................11
5. Disarm politeness training: DO............................................................................................................ 11
6. Ask open ended questions: DO............................................................................................................. 12
7. Focus on actual behavior, not speculative or abstract feelings: DO......................................................12
8. Listen, dont talk: DO............................................................................................................................. 12
9. Follow your nose and drill down: DO..................................................................................................... 12
10. Parrot back or misrepresent to confirm: DO......................................................................................... 12
11. Always ask for introductions: DO......................................................................................................... 13
12. Write up your notes as quickly as possible & share them on the blog: DO..........................................13
Afterwards: Look for patterns and apply judgement- share them on the blog: DO.....................................13

A) THE DON'T LIST: WHAT NOT TO DO IN YOUR CUSTOMERDISCOVERY NEEDS/PAIN INTERVIEWS

In a startup, no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.
The lean startup sales negotiation method encourages that you and your team get out of
the building with a mixture of experiments and qualitative research. Doing face-to-face
work gives you several benefits. It helps you learn how others experience and think about
the thing you are selling. It helps you uncover evidence about your assumptions, or lack
thereof.

Here are some anti-patterns to watch out for in your style and approach in
interview-conversation and your need to prepare and defeat them:
1. You treat speculation as confirmation :

DON'T

Here are some question types that I dont like and if you ask them, you
should heavily discount the answer: would you use this? would you pay for
this? would you like this?
I cant say that I *never* ask these questions, but I always prefer behavioral
questions over speculation.
As contrast, here is a behavior-focused interaction: Tell me about a time
when you bought airline tickets online. What did you enjoy about the
process? What frustrated you about the process? What different systems or
methods have you tried in past to book tickets?
2. You lead the potential customer:

DON'T

Leading the witness is putting the answer in the interviewees mouth in the
way you ask the question. For example: We dont think most people really
want to book tickets online, but what do you think? Examine both how you
phrase your questions and your tone of voice. Are you steering the answer?
Ask open-ended, neutral questions before you drill down: what was that
experience of buying online tickets like?
3. You just cant stop talking:

DON'T

Some people cant help themselves they are overflowing with excitement
and just have to pitch pitch pitch. There is nothing wrong with trying to pre-sell
your product that is an interesting experiment unto itself but you should
not mix this in with behavioral learning.
If you do try to pre-sell, dont just ask would you pay for this? but rather ask
them to actually pay, and see what happens. Some people ask the question,
how much would you pay for this? but I do not. Instead, try actually selling at
different price points. I much prefer having the potential customer experience
something, rather than speculate over something.

4. You only hear what you want to hear :

DON'T

I see some people go into interviews with strong beliefs about what they like
and dislike. When you debrief after their Customer-Discovery conversations,
it is magical how everything they heard aligns perfectly with their opinions.
Our brains are amazing filters. Leave your agenda at the door before starting
a Customer-Discovery conversation. One way to solve this is to have two
people for each interview one person to ask questions, and the other to
listen deeply & take notes.
5. You treat a single conversation as ultimate truth :

DON'T

Youve just spoken to a potential customer and they have really strong
opinions. One instinct is to jump to conclusions and rush to make changes.
Instead, you need to be patient. There is no definitive answer for how many
similar answers equals the truth. Look for patterns and use your judgement. A
clear, consistent pattern at even 5 or 10 people is a signal.
6. Fear of rejection wins out:

DON'T

This is one of the biggest blockers to people really discovering customer

pains, in my experience. Both fear of a stranger rejecting your advance or
rejecting your idea. Many excuses, such as I dont know how to find people
to talk to, are rooted in this fear. JFDI. Customer discovery isnt just about
street intercepts. You can recruit people on Craigslist, Facebook and LinkedIn
groups, and good old fashioned face-to-face networking.
7. You talk to anyone with a pulse :

DON'T

I see some teams taking a shotgun approach. Instead, define your

assumptions around who your customer will be, and who your early adopter
will be. You might even do a lightweight persona (see the book Lean UX for
examples). Zoom in on those people and try to validate or invalidate your
assumptions about your customers. It is ok to occasionally go outside your
target zone for learning, but dont boil the ocean. Focus, learn, and pivot if
necessary.
8. You wing the conversation:

DON'T

If you go into a Customer Discovery conversation sloppy, that is how you will
be perceived and you will achieve poor results. Instead, write up your
questions ahead of time and force-rank them based on the risks and
assumptions you are worried about.
Your exact method doesnt matter as much as the actual act of prioritizing
your risk areas.
During your actual interview, do not literally read your questions from a piece
of paper, but rather keep things conversational (remember, you are getting

the subject to tell you stories). If you uncover something interesting, follow
your nose and dont be afraid to diverge from your initial priorities.
9. You try to learn everything in one sitting :

DON'T

Rather than trying to go as broad as possible in every conversation, you are

actually better off zooming in on a few areas which are critical to your
business. If you have a huge range of questions, do more interviews and split
the questions.
10. Only the designer does Customer Discovery :

DON'T

It is ok to divide and conquer most of the time, but everyone on the team
should be forced to get out and talk to real people. Note: you will probably
have to coach newcomers on #5s point about not jumping to conclusions.
11. You did customer discovery in your first week, but havent felt a
need to do it since:

DON'T

It is always sad to see product teams start things off with customer discovery,
and then completely stop once they get going. It *is* perfectly fine to let
customer discovery work ebb and flow. If your learning curve flattens, it can
make sense to press pause on customer discovery or change up how you are
doing customer discovery. However, you want to build a regular qualitative
cadence into your product process. It will provide a necessary complement to
your quantitative metrics, because it will help you understand the reasons
why things are happening.
Bonus 12 (added). You ask the customer to design your product for
you:

DON'T

Theres a famous line attributed to Henry Ford, If I had asked people what
they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Remember, it is not the
customers job to design the solution. It is *your* job. It is the customers job
to tell you if your solution sucks. Get feedback, yes. Remember that the
further away you are from a working product, the more you have to filter what
you hear through your judgement and vision.

B) THE PLAN LIST: Plan THE CUSTOMER DISCOVERY

INTERVIEW COMPREHENSIVELY, BEFORE SCRIPTING IT
IN DETAIL AS A TEAM:
1. GO FISH WHERE THE FISHES SWIM: PLAN!
I recently heard this from an agency pitching social media work ( take your
proposition to social networks where your customers are, rather than
assuming theyll come to you) but the statement holds true for customer
discovery. Its not enough to get out of the building and hope to randomly find
people that care. Youve got to go to where your target market hang out, and
better still, find them in a place where your questions will be relevant. If your
idea is related to movies, go hang out around cinemas. If your idea is
focussed on high end retail, theres little value in talking to people outside a
down-market outlet. Fabulyzer's business is about fat-related health &
wellbeing
2. HAVE A PLAN: PLAN!
Be clear who you want to talk to. You may learn interesting stuff from talking
to random people on the street, but how relevant is what they say to your
proposition? How will it provide useful insight or validate your assumptions?
Once youve framed in your mind who you are going to talk to, be clear what
you want to learn. This means DOCUMENTING your hypotheses and crafting
an interview checklist to test these against- share these on the blog to get
peer feedback. The checklist may be on paper or in your head; its a list of
areas you want to address. Its purpose is to give you a clear and consistent
framework to structure your questions around so when you complete the
interview youll have data that will contribute to validating or refuting your
hypotheses. It is not a list of questions, rather prompts to work with and keep
you focussed.
For example, probing recent fat-awareness experience may lead you to ask
tell me about the last time you chatted to someone about fat and health?.
Having the fat-chat experience prompt will help keep you on track and avoid
the person deviating on their passion of rom-com movies.
3. TALKING TO STRANGERS IS UNNATURAL: PLAN!
So youve got a plan and you are out prowling the streets. The first thing to do
choose your target. Know who you want to talk to. Having created buyer
personas may help paint a picture of what they might look like. Seen
someone? If they are harried and clearly in a rush you are wasting your time.
Look for people who are waiting, people who dont have purpose in their gait.
Youve now got to do something totally alien to you. Approach a complete
stranger, persuade them in a split second that you are friendly, (not interested
in their money) and engage them in a conversation.

The opening move is simple. Smile! Have an opening line prepared. Dont
start with do you have a minute because you want to be talking to them for
more than a minute. Be succinct, practice before you go out and be prepared
to be sidestepped. Once youve engaged them, have an opening question,
maybe something general around the topic you are exploring before
focussing into the pain points and problems they face.
4. Write & Practice OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS: PLAN!
You dont want them answering yes or no, you want them to answer
questions with dialogue. This is easier said than done. If I ask you do you
brush your teeth twice a day, there can only be one answer; yes or no. But if
I say Tell me about brushing your teeth I dont give you the opportunity to
abruptly end the conversation, you have to talk.
Undoubtedly you will find yourself inadvertently asking a closed question and
the response is an abrupt yes or no. Dont worry, follow up by probing for an
explanation of this response. For example why do you say that? Why is a
beautiful word, let it become your friend and ally. So good in fact, it needs
expanding upon. Cue Tip Five
5. ASK WHY? (AND OTHER W WORDS): PLAN!
Childrens minds are like sponges, they have an insatiable appetitive to learn
and discover the world around them. As a parent this becomes obvious when
they discover the effectiveness of why. Go back to your childhood ignorance
and learn to love the word why again. It can be used to great effect, and is a
core analysis tool for understanding the root cause of a problem. The Five
whys is one of the techniques championed by the Lean movement. When
you ask someone why there is an issue, their first answer will rarely be the
underlying reason. Youll get a superficial answer. To get to bottom of the
problem you have to ask why repeated times. The Wikipedia entry describes
the process well:
Problem: The car wont start
Why? The battery is dead
Why? The alternator is not functioning
Why? The alternator belt has broken
Why? The alternator belt was beyond its useful service and not replaced
Why? The car was not maintained according to the recommended schedule
Why? Replacement parts are not available because of the extreme age of the
vehicle
Solution 1. Start maintaing the vehicle based upon the recommended service
schedule (5th Why)
Solution 2. Purchase a different car that is maintainable.
Dont stop with the why though, there are a few more words that begin with W
to introduce into your questioning.
Who Who does it?

When When do they do it?

What What do they do? What is the trigger for them doing it?
Where Where do they do it?
With With whom do they do it with?
And How. How do they do it.
For each of these questions probe around their needs, wants and desires
(see my post about customer value proposition for more insight into this).
6. AVOID HYPOTHETICALS, LENGTHY OR CREATIVE DESCRIPTIONS :
PLAN!
Imagine you wanted to know more about a brand, and you had your phone to
hand and youve got our app on it and you take a picture of the brand the
actual item- and over-layed on the picture is rich information about the brand
do you think that would be a good idea?
You are creating a hypothetical situation that has no relevance to the person,
describing a need that they dont have (as you ask the question), using
language they dont understand ( brand), a description that means nothing to
them (put an app on my phone and take a picture to display information
eh?) Ending with a closed question. They will either be polite and say yeah!
sounds great (the most likely response given your passion and enthusiasm) ,
or no, I cant see myself using it (and that response speaks volumes. They
cant see them-self using it. If you were to show them)
7. SHOW DONT EXPLAIN: PLAN!
Words are slippery things that are easily misunderstood. I often ask a group
of people to, behind their back or under the table) tear a sheet of paper in
half. Without fail almost everyone tears it like this.
Ive torn mine like this.

Same words, same instructions, totally different result.

So, without something concrete or tangible to frame the product description

against, your description could easily be misunderstood or misinterpreted.
This is more likely when you are passionate about your product or service.
Youll find it easy to wax lyrical about it, probably framing its description
around your personal experiences and assumptions of what is good (see
above).
They say a picture tells a thousand words. So use a picture to explore your
concept. A sketch.
Use that to frame the questions. Ive used post-it notes to simulate a mobile
phone screens are scribbled on each page and they are pulled off as the
user moves through the experience.
8. LISTENING IS UNCOMFORTABLE: PLAN!
Listening is hard, especially in an interview when you need to be doing three
things:
Receiving information
Making sense of the information you are hearing
Then asking the right follow up question.
Watch people in a conversation in the pub and you wont see much of the first
two of these happening. People hear a soundbite and get fixated on that,
preparing to talk on that point rather than listening to all that is said. This is
lazy listening. You need to be an active listener. What does that mean?
Listen & show you are listening. Nod your head, gently grunt uh-huh. Repeat
what youve heard.
You said listening is uncomfortable. What do you mean by that?
9. LOVE THE UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE : PLAN!
Normal conversation is often just banter, a statement by one person, a retort
by another. Thats easy. But its not listening. If you are really listening, it is
OK to take time to absorb what you have just heard. Far better than cutting
them off mid-sentence. Learn to love uncomfortable silences, it gives you
more time to think. In fact, last the person your talking to feel uncomfortable
with the silence Let them break it, not you.
10. KEEP THEM TALKING: PLAN!
Of course there are some people who are monosyllabic whose responses
give little away. Tell me about your most recent visit to the cinema I saw a
film. It was OK. Thats hardly a conversation. These responses can be offputting and appear that the person is just not interested. Often they just need
a little warming up. Luckily there are a bunch of prompts that you can use to
probe deeper and open them up to your questioning:
What do you mean by that?

Can you explain that a little more?

What else do you do?
Why do you say that?
How do you feel about that?
What are you thinking
11. STOP THEM TALKING: PLAN!
Conversely youll find some people are yaketty yak and just dont stop talking.
Worse, theyll take an initial idea and take it to places you have no interest in
going. Ask them about their trip to the cinema and before long they are telling
you all about the partner they went with and how they are no longer
associated with them. You need to interrupt their flow in a friendly and
endearing way. Dont appear bored or agitated by their narrative, just nod,
smile and then take control
Thats really interesting. You said earlier that
I know what you are saying! [smile & nod]. Can we return to what you were
saying about
Can I please stop you there for a moment and go back to
12. THEY (COULD BE) A CUSTOMER: PLAN!
At the end of the interview thank them for their time. Theres no reason why
you shouldnt ask for their contact details if you can promise to follow up with
something. Give them a flyer, provide them with a URL, invite them to try your
website. Remember, that although they may not be interested they might
believe in your solution being relevant for other customers, and having seen
you (and liked you) they could become a passionate advocate for your
product.

C) WRITE/SCRIPT THE INTERVIEW AS A TEAM (but conduct

them as individuals or in pairs NOT as a Team):
1. One person at a time: DO
Focus groups are a group-think, distraction-filled mess. Avoid them and only
talk to one person at a time. If desired, you can bring someone with you to
take notes some UX designers like this approach. Personally, I tend to do
one-on-one interviews because I think people loosen up and thus open up a
bit more, but it can be nice to have a note-taker, which allows you to focus
entirely on the conversation and body language.
2. Know your goals and questions ahead of time: DO
Have your assumptions and thus learning goals prioritized ahead of time.
Decide who you want to talk to (age, gender, location, profession/industry,
affluence, etc), and target interviewees accordingly. Prep your basic flow and
list of questions. You might veer off the plan to follow your nose, which is
great, but go in prepared.
3. Separate behavior and feedback in discussion: DO
Decide up front if your focus is going to be on learning a users behavior and
mindset, and/or getting direct feedback or usability insights on a product or
mockup. Do not mix the two in the discussion flow or things will get distorted.
Put behavior and mindset first in your discussion flow. During this part, dont
let the interviewee go too deep in terms of suggesting features, but keep
them focused on if they have a problem, how they think about the problem
space, and if and how they have tried to solve it in past.
If you want to get feedback on a product, whether on paper or digital, do this
after digging into behavior and mindset.
4. Get psyched to hear things you dont want to hear: DO
If you dont do this, you might find yourself selling or convincing, or even
hearing what you want to hear. This is called confirmation bias and we are
all very susceptible to it. Your initial goal should be learning.
You might, however, run an experiment where you test the market, test
pricing, and do try to close a sale. That is great, but keep this part of the
conversation separate. As with product feedback, keep this out of the
behaviour/mindset portion of the discussion.
5. Disarm politeness training: DO
People are trained not to call your baby ugly. You need to make them feel
safe to do this. Ask them up-front to be brutally honest, and that this is the
very best way they can help you. If they seem confused, explain that the
worst thing that could happen is to build something people didnt care about.

6. Ask open ended questions: DO

Do not ask too many yes/no questions. For example, minimize such
questions as do you like Groupon? Instead ask what kinds of deals do you
look for, if any? What motivates you to hunt for deals? How do you
discover deals? Do you get frustrated with the deal sites out there?
Sometimes it is hard not to ask a yes/no question, but always follow up with
an open-ended question like why? or tell me more about that experience.
7. Focus on actual behavior, not speculative or abstract feelings: DO
To emphasize #3: people are not very good at predicting their actions,
knowing what they want, or knowing their true goals. Your job is not to ask
the person for the solution. It is *your* job to figure out the best solution, and
then validate that your solution is actually right.
People *love* to talk about features and solutions. When you are in learning
mode, dont let that dominate the conversation. Try to keep things factual. Get
them to tell you stories about how they previously experienced a problem, if
they tried to solve it (or why not), and what happened.
Get them to tell you stories about not using/using other products that are in
the same space. You do want to dive into their emotions, but you can trust a
discussion of historical emotions much more than one speculating what ifs.
Some people like to ask the question, if you could wave a magic wand and
make this product do whatever you want, what would it do. Occasionally
interesting things can come from this, but I would advise that you take the
answers with a grain of salt.
8. Listen, dont talk: DO
Try to shut up as much as possible. Try to keep your questions short and
unbiased (i.e. dont embed the answer you want to hear into the question).
Dont rush to fill the space when the customer pauses, because they might
be thinking or have more to say.
Make sure you are learning, not selling! (at least not until that part of the
conversation, if relevant)
9. Follow your nose and drill down: DO
Anytime something tweaks your antenna, drill down with follow up questions.
Dont be afraid to ask for clarifications and the why behind the what. You
can even try drilling into multiple layers of why (see Five Whys), as long as
the interviewee doesnt start getting annoyed.
10. Parrot back or misrepresent to confirm: DO
For important topics, try repeating back what the person said. You can
occasionally get one of two interesting results through this. In the first, they
correct you because youve misinterpreted what they said. In the second, by
hearing their own thoughts, theyll actually realize that their true opinion is

slightly different, and they will give you a second, more sophisticated answer.
Another approach is to purposefully misrepresent what they just said when
you parrot it back, and then see if they correct you. But use this technique
sparingly, if at all.
11. Always ask for introductions: DO
At the end of every interview, see if you can get leads to another 1 to 3
people to talk to.
If it is not obvious to everyone by now, let me just be clear that you want to
avoid doing these interviews with friends and family. There are lots of creative
ways to recruit interviewees (the tactics vary depending on who you need to
get to), but getting referrals will make the process a lot easier.
12. Write up your notes as quickly as possible & share them on the
blog: DO
The details behind a conversation fade fast, so if you havent recorded the
session, write up your notes and color commentary as soon as you can. I
brain-dump into a shared Google Doc so the rest of the team can see it.
(Note: I typically have not recorded sessions for fear of making interviewees
more self-conscious or careful, but other entrepreneurs have said to me that,
while it takes some rapport-building at the start, pretty soon people forget
about a recorder.)
Afterwards: Look for patterns and apply judgement- share them on the
blog: DO
Customer discovery interviews will not give you statistically significant data,
but they will give you insights based on patterns. They can be very tricky to
interpret, because what people say is not always what they do.
You need to use your judgement to read between the lines, to read body
language, to try to understand context and agendas, and to filter out biases
based on the types of people in your pool of interviewees. But it is exactly the
ability to use human judgement based on human connections that make
interviews so much more useful than surveys.
Ultimately, you are better off moving fast and making decisions from credible
patterns than dithering about in analysis paralysis.