Running a startup puts a ton of responsibilities on your plate. From marketing to sales, hacky-HR to accounting, development to project management, you’re wearing a million hats.
The same can be true for Product Managers. You can find yourself involved in many projects, tons of meetings, and more competing priorities from your stakeholders than you’d like.
Yet, through all this busy-ness, whether you’re an early stage founder, or a product manager, you need to make time to talk to customers. It’s the lifeblood of building something people want, getting to Product-Market Fit, and launching successful new products and features.
As you commit yourself to “getting outside the building” to talk to your customers, it’s essential you make the most of those discussions.
Talking to customers…but how?
One of the hardest things for newcomers to customer development and product management to get right is the questions they ask in their interviews.
Done well, you can learn priceless insights that help you prioritize and build the right things, while descoping things that turn out not to matter. Done poorly, you fail to get sufficient signal across interviews, and waste you and your customer’s time.
Fortunately, I’m here to help you today.
I’ve taught dozens of product managers and founders this process hands on (and thousands more through posts like these), and it’s led to fantastic results for them. By using this structure, you avoid biasing your customers or putting them on the defensive. You also maximize your learning so that you can get the best insights in the fewest number of interviews.
With that in mind, let’s dive in, so you can learn how to have great customer interviews, too.
How to Structure (and get the most out of) Your Customer Development Interviews
The biggest mistake I see otherwise well-intentioned founders and PMs make is that they come to their customer interviews with no preparation.
Showing up and just saying, “Tell me about…” or “What do you think of my demo/product?” is a huge missed opportunity; you don’t know what you don’t know at that point, and lose out on a lot of great insights you could learn if you asked the right questions, in the right order.
Ask the right questions at the right time.
You can make a great impression and learn a lot more by following this simple, 3-step process I share below: 1) People, 2) Problems, and then 3) Your Solution.
A few quick notes before we break those down:
- Timing: Depending on the person, this question flow generally takes 30-45 minutes to go through. If you can get a customer to agree to a 1 hour call, that’s ideal, but you can prioritize the best questions if you have only 30 minutes.
- Business Model: This structure is best suited to B2B customer development, but with a little creativity, you can definitely adapt this for B2C interviews, especially if the B2C product involves the customer making a direct purchase (i.e.- subscription or e-commerce).
- Order: This order (People -> Problems -> Your Solution) is extremely intentional. You must go in this order, or it will hurt your results of your interviews. More on why later in this post.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the 3 sections, in order:
1) People – Aka – Who Are You Interviewing?
Before you get into anything about problems, or your solution, you need to figure out who you’re actually talking to. This both warms up your interviewee with some softball questions and gives you an opportunity to build some rapport with them.
It also helps you get to know them and the parts of their life around the edges of the problems you’re potentially solving for them.
Important: Do not shortchange this opening section of questions!
You don’t need a novel on their daily life, but you *do need* enough to be able to understand their role within their company, who key players are, and a general baseline of their sophistication.
All of this will help you later pattern match who the user type that is most receptive to the problem you’re solving and the solution you offer, as well as who is not a fit. This is priceless for your product, your marketing, and your sales processes.
Some example questions you can ask:
- What is your name and role at your company? (If you can find this out in advance, always look it up to save asking the question)
- How do you fit into your company’s department structure? Overall in the company?
- How do you discover new products for work? Do you need any approval to try them?
- Have you tried anything new recently? How did it work for you?
- What is a typical day like on your job? What are you main routines?
- What is your budget like? Who has to approve your purchases?
- How much time do you spend doing [task X]? (Task X being anything they mentioned in their typical day that stood out to you or related to your product/business)
Pro Tip: When you’re preparing for your interviews, give yourself a section before your People questions to fill in things you can look up on your own.
This can be things like: Their name, Job Title, Company Website, Linkedin profile, Company name/size/industry, location, internal analytics profile from your company, and anything else you can find out about them that shows context about who they are and their behavior in your product.
Then, add any questions to your script that come to mind as you gather this info to really make the most of your interviews like their usage of parts of your product, unusual things in their profile, etc.
Going into these interviews, I never know which aspects of getting to know them will be the key, which is why adding the extra notes beforehand helps; you’ll be looking back at all your interviews to figure out what common patterns and differentiators are.
2) Problems – Aka – What are your greatest pains?
This section is where you try to find out whether the person has the problem you believe you’re solving. Your goal is to not lead them to your problem. The less you lead them while still hearing your problem being mentioned, the more validation you have!
People love to talk about themselves, so let them go nuts here and really rant about their problems (i.e.- Shut up 🤐 and listen!). Generally, people are terrible at proposing solutions, but you want to hear generally what they envision as solutions or see what they’ve cobbled together themselves.
Some sample questions you can ask:
- What are your biggest initiatives and goals right now? How are they going so far? (To understand their priorities and which they need help with most)
- What are your top 3 challenges you face in your job right now? Why did you choose those? Why that order?
- What are your top 3 challenges you face in your job related to [industry X]? (Industry X being the one your startup/business is in)
- If you could wave a magic wand and instantly have a solution to any of those problems…what would the solution be?
- Dig deeper into their typical day on anything that sounds painful or expensive. (You can add some hyperbole here to get them to rant a bit by saying things like “that sounds inefficient…” or “that sounds expensive…”)
- How have you dealt with or solved [Problem X] so far? (You’re looking to find out if they’ve hacked a solution together themselves. If they have…ask for a copy of it!)
- How does your work in this area interact with your coworkers? (Look for collaboration problems, needed features, and others you should interview)
- What do you have to report to your manager or other teams related to this? (Look for reporting needs, buyer expectations, and how this problem may impact others)
Notice, you haven’t mentioned your solution, nor problem yet. If they don’t mention your problem specifically, then as you finish this section of questioning, you can directly ask them if what you think is a problem is a problem for them. Whether they agree it’s a problem or not, you want to then probe why it wasn’t one of their top problems.
The beauty of this approach is that you’ll learn a lot about their day to day, and what they perceive as their most pressing problems. This can often help refine what you’re working on, or reveal a pivot that can change the fate or trajectory of your business.
3) Your Solution – Aka – See if your idea survives customer interaction
In your discussions in part 2, if your interviewee brings up your problem you think you’re solving, then you’re on the right track! Bonus points if the way they describe solving it with their “magic wand” remotely resembles what you’re doing.
No matter what happens in part 2 you should discuss with them what you thought the problem was and what your solution is. Getting validation that they wouldn’t be interested in the idea is just as helpful as finding out they love it; either they’re not a customer, or you are learning what your customers want instead.
Some sample questions you could ask:
- Walk them through the problems you believe your solution solves. Do they agree?
- Does [your solution] solve any of your problems? Why or why not?
- What looks most helpful or important to you? How will that help you?
- What’s missing from what I’ve shown you to help solve your problems? Why is that important to you?
- How do you see this fitting into your routines? What would be important to make it fit well for you?
- Who else on your team, or at your company, would be interested in this? How do you think it would help them?
- Would you be willing to pay for our solution? What budget do you have for something like this? (Don’t be afraid to probe for the pricing you know you want…”Would [X] be reasonable?” It’s imperfect but gets you started.)
- If they’re willing to pay for your product and like the idea then… “Would you be willing/ready to start right away?”
If all goes well and you really are solving a pain, then your customer should want access to your product or new feature right away. More likely, you’re going to learn a ton about what they do and do not want and your idea will begin evolving. You’ll also find out others at the company you may want to talk to that have needs if your customer will start using your product.
Keep in mind: The way you present the solution can be flexible for the state of your business or the development of this feature:
- Describe it in words: Tell them what you have in mind, or sketch it on a napkin or paper.
- Show them mockups: Share your screen or turn your laptop/tablet towards them to show what you have in mind.
- Send them a clickable prototype: Especially if you’re interviewing them on video, sending a prototype link is a great way for them to see and feel what you have in mind. (In that case ask them to share their screen and narrate their thoughts as they go through it)
- Give them staging or feature-flagged access: Once you’ve launched, this is the most powerful because they can try it exactly as you intended. (And again, have them share their screen and narrate.)
In all cases, the goal is to give them something they can react to. Don’t let the simplicity of what you have stop you from learning.
In fact, you can learn a ton in these interviews when you literally have nothing to talk about in the Solution section; I’ve launched products and new features multiple times where the first round of interviews had little to no solution discussion, and we only followed up later for solution-focused feedback built on what we learned in the People & Problem sections.
Making the most of your customer interviews
This basic structure can carry you a long way towards some great validated learning about your idea and your market’s desire for it. It can help refine your idea or feature, help you determine if you should pivot, and reveal new opportunities that can help you grow faster.
There’s a few more things to keep in mind that I’ve learned over time. Applying these tips can help you become a real pro at interviewing customers.
1) Take good notes and record everything!
Once you’ve interviewed 8-10 people, you should be going back over all of your notes and look for patterns. This includes especially looking for patterns in the Part 1 section to see what all the people that agree you are solving their problem have in common.
Summarize your notes then and share with your team, so everyone benefits from what you learned, and you can iterate together on your solution based on what you learned.
In particular, having a recording (and more recently, AI transcription) can really help here, because then you can re-listen to and review great interviews, as well as share snippets or the whole interview with your colleagues.
2) Have other team members sit in on some interviews
A good customer development focused company will have everyone involved in the process. Performable, pre-HubSpot acquisition, had their engineers spending 30% of their time on the phone with customers. Nothing helps someone do their job better like understanding who they’re building/selling/marketing for.
Equally important, when you have colleagues join, you have a buddy who can help you take notes. (More advice on note taking here)
3) Be conversational
Using a script like this should not feel like an interview! They should feel like they’re just having a conversation with a friend about their problems at work. The more comfortable they feel with you, the more they will open up. This is part of the value and intention of the People section of questions.
By preparing your interview script in advance, you can more confidently run your interviews knowing exactly what you want to talk about. Be sure to use language that feels comfortable and natural to you, and don’t be afraid to iterate on any questions that aren’t getting the response you hoped.
4) Go off script
The best insights comes when you dig a little deeper on something that strikes a chord in the discussion. The script is there to be your roadmap, but there’s no reason you can’t return to it after a 5 minute digression about a specific pain, or discovery about how the company operates.
5) If they’ve made an MVP…ask to see it!
Nothing gives you more insight to a customer than what they’ve hacked together themselves to solve a problem. The best thing you can do is ask to see it, which will give you an idea of what they’re hoping your solution will provide. These people are also the strongest candidates to be great, helpful early adopters of your product.
If the hacked solution is actually a competitor’s product they’re frustrated with, ask them to share what they love and hate about it; that’s just as valuable as any hacked or cobbled together solution.
6) Always follow up
It’s common courtesy to thank people for their time and help. It also opens the door to follow up with them in the future if your product changes and is a fit for them, or to invite them to try it out when it’s live/launched.
Also, if you promised a free gift card (or other compensation) for their time, be sure to keep your promises and send it to them promptly. And if you hear about any bugs they report, be sure to fix them and then let them know.
All of these things score major points and make a great impression, which will make it easier to get people to interview in the future as well as build good will with current and future customers.
7) End with an ask
Always end your interviews by thanking them and asking them for something. It may be to get a copy of their MVP, or even better, ask for an intro to someone they know that might be interested in what you’re working on.
In my experience, these intros have an 80-90% success rate in becoming new customer development interviews, whereas cold emails asking customers you’ve never spoken with only have a roughly 10% success rate.
8) Be open to new problems! That’s how great products are born.
As Steve Blank has said, “No idea survives first interaction with a customer.“ Don’t be afraid to shift your focus from your first idea to what you’re actually hearing customers want. If you probe in part 2 and find a burning problem…find out how they currently solve it and what they’d pay to solve it.
Sometimes these shifts are subtle, because what you thought was most important is secondary to a bigger problem. That’s when you tell marketing and sales about a shift in positioning.
Other times, this is a huge shift and you need to change what you’re building significantly. That’s when you should have a bigger team-wide discussion.
Either way, having detailed notes, recordings of your calls, and some examples from customers of what they want instead can be the difference between what you found falling on deaf ears, or being embraced as strong evidence of a change in focus or full blown pivot being necessary.
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In the end, you want to find a “hair on fire” problem, not a “nice to have problem.” Think about it this way: If my hair is on fire (literally), and you’re selling buckets of water, I’m definitely going to buy your product. But if I’m cold and wet, I’m not likely to buy your bucket of water right now, but might consider it in the future.
Find customer pain and a solution they desire and will pay for. Rinse. Repeat.
From launching your first product, to adding the nth feature to your company’s product suite, interviewing customers is an essential skill. By using the People -> Problem -> Solution framework and being well prepared for each interview, you can spend more time building the right things and less time adding things that no one cares about.
Further Reading:
Looking to truly master the art and science of interviewing customers? Read these other posts:
- Learn how to take notes like a pro to maximize your learning here.
- Compliment these style of interviews with Jobs to Be Done style interviews that reveal why customers buy.
- Having trouble with no shows to your interviews? Here’s how to reduce the flake rate of your interviews.
- And don’t mistake feature voting for talking to customers. Learn why they’re a sign of incompetence and terrible product management.
Earlier in November, I started out on a journey to see if there was an opportunity to build a product that would help companies in being a lean startup. The thought was that with