Sometimes you shouldn't interview customers
If you click through your LinkedIn feed, I’d be shocked if you didn’t find at least one post praising the merits of speaking with customers.
So what I’m about to say may come as a surprise…
But I don’t think you should be interviewing customers.
Not yet, anyway.
After you’ve read this article, I think even the biggest ‘speak with customers’ advocate will agree with me.
Because, as I mentioned in the last article, in business…
Order of sequence is everything
I was on a first call with a new client of mine.
I asked him, “Who’s your ideal buying persona?”
Him: “Well, I’ve got two. Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and CEOs.”
Queue alarm bells ringing in my head.
Me: “The problem here is that these are two completely different personas. The CSM reports to line managers 3 or 4 rungs below the CEO. We want to develop a position that speaks directly to our ideal persona, and the fears and dreams of a CSM and CEO differ wildly, even if they’re working in the same business.”
This kind of story isn’t uncommon.
With another client, instead of buying personas, it was business profiles.
“We want to go after big retailers like McDonalds and tech scaleups like Freshworks.”
Just like with the buying personas, these are completely different industries.
But what’s wrong with that, you ask?
They didn’t have the resources to target multiple industries and personas. The same is true for you unless you’re a Hubspot or Salesforce.
And, because they’re targeting multiple personas, their messaging is all over the place. It lacks a consistent thread because features and benefits shift from one persona to another.
That means it’s harder to effectively allocate budget and get cut through the noise because the budget is spread too thin in different directions.
And when they spend money on ads, it’s mostly down the drain, because the messaging is inconsistent from ad through to landing page and website. It’s not obvious who and what the product is for.
And this is where customer interviews go wrong
Because most companies interview customers before they’ve settled on a defined company and buyer profile.
This means they speak with a range of different customers. Because each customer has very different pains and gains associated with the product, you get a completely muddled view of what the market truly wants from your brand.
So before we speak with customers, we need to conduct the following exercise
Review all past and present customers, then list the top 10 you’d like more of.
Map out the connecting attributes:
- What industries are they in?
- What’s the buyer’s job title?
- What are their specific problems that your best positioned to solve?
This is our positioning starting point.
With real data in front of us, we can make an informed decision on the Who.
But we’re not done there
Now we have a sense of direction, it’s time to get a little more specific.
Give me a one to three-sentence answer for each of the following questions:
- Who is your product for? Either the buying persona, the company profile, or both.
- What does the product do for them?
- How is it different relative to alternative options?
Now, be careful because there’s a trap here that many fall into.
Even if you have two personas that are really similar, it’s important that you pick just one because it’s likely that their pains and dreams are very different, as are the ways they describe them.
That’s what Loom discovered
They launched as Opentest in 2016, targeting startup developers. The idea was that users would send their MVP app to a product expert in the Opentest community.
Using Opentest’s screen recording software, the product expert would record a 15-minute review of the user experience.
But demand wasn’t there. Startup developers weren’t interested in advice from external ‘product experts’.
So, Opentest pivoted from expert feedback to user feedback. But still, no interest.
One last pivot followed.
They turned the screen recording software into a browser extension, framing it as a product to save back-and-forth email dialogue.
“One video is worth a thousand words.”
They rebranded to Loom.
The same product, but with a new framing of pains and gains, turned a failing startup into a soon-to-be Unicorn.
But let’s get back to our task and apply this thinking to your brand…
List out all product benefits
As many as you can think of. That could look something like:
- Streamline financial workflows
- Reduce operational costs associated with traditional financial services
- Enable users to manage their finances anytime, anywhere
For each benefit, rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 5 (that this benefit resolves).
And this is what you believe to be your customer’s perspective, not your own.
The purpose here is that we’re hypothesising the explicit, most painful points your target customer cares about.
And once you’ve exhausted and scored your list of benefits, take a step back…
We’re about to bundle them
Eliminate anything in the list that didn’t get a 4 or 5.
That may take us from twenty benefits to something like eight.
With the benefits remaining, cluster them into natural categories. If you’re a Fintech, that could be something like Security, Cash Flow, and Compliance.
What we’re trying to find here is a dominant category.
But again, this is just a hypothesis.
We’re identifying our dream customers and filtering for the likely positioning statement that’ll resonate with them.
It’s after running through this exercise that…
We’re ready for customer interviews
Because when we interview the right customers who match our ideal customer profile, we can validate or discard our assumptions about their pains, fears, and dreams.
That’s in the next article.
