In this article, I talk about the most basic principles of finding the truth in conditions where the interlocutor is not inclined to be completely honest. Most often, you are deceived not for malicious intent, but for many other reasons. For example, due to personal delusions, bad memory, or to not upset you. Often, when it comes to our ideas, we are prone to self-deception. The method of problematic interviews allows you to identify facts with a high degree of certainty.
The vast majority of businesses die because they offer a product that consumers don't want. This is a famous quote by Eric Rees, the author of the Lean Startup methodology.
How not to fall into this trap with your project? The solution has long been known - before creating a product, you need to explore the needs of potential consumers using the technique of problem interviews. For a comprehensive guide to problem interviewing, see Rob Fitzpatrick's book, Ask Your Mom: How to Communicate with Clients and Prove Your Business Idea is Right When Everyone Is Lying. This book is only 150 pages, it was published in Russian in 2015, but nevertheless, most startups still do not know how to conduct problem interviews.
About Me
My name is Igor Sheludko.
I have been an entrepreneur in the field of software development and sales since 2000. I have a higher technical education. I started my career as a programmer, also led small teams, and was engaged in both product and custom development.
For 3 years now I have been cooperating with the Southern IT Park Accelerator (Rostov-on-Don) as a tracker of startup projects. During this time, more than 20 projects have passed through my caring hands as an individual tracker, and more than 200 projects have passed through the Accelerator in general.
What are problem interviews?
It's just a conversation in which you ask the right questions. During such a conversation, it is important to find out the actual past experience of the interlocutor regarding the problems of interest to us. It is highly desirable to record the questions and answers of the interlocutor. Ideally, record the conversation on a voice recorder, so that later you can make sure that the answers are correctly interpreted.
Rule #1 - To have a conversation, we need a conversation plan.
The conversation plan is based on your hypotheses about customer needs.
A good version of the plan is the hypothesis map, which I wrote about in this article. .
After a polite greeting of the interlocutor, it is worth telling in general terms what you want to talk about, or rather, listen to. Your task is to make sure that the interlocutor speaks, and you listen. It is important to immediately find out the attitude of the interlocutor to the problems that interest you. Ideally, this should be clarified even when scheduling a meeting and the time of the conversation. If the conversation happened suddenly, then immediately indicate what will be discussed.
To find out the attitude of the interlocutor to the problem, you can use questions like:
Have you everā¦?
Have you been in a situation...?
How often does ... happen to you?
When was the last time you were in a situation...?
Are you worried about...?
How does... affect your life?
It is quite possible that your interlocutor will have absolutely nothing to say on the merits and he will be tempted to talk on a given topic in an abstract way, not based on personal experience. It is worth learning to distinguish between such situations and not to perceive what has been said as facts. An interlocutor who does not have actual experience can be useful to you as a link with other people. Ask him to introduce you to his acquaintances who have actual experience on the topic of interest to you.
A hypothesis map as a conversation plan is much more convenient than a list of questions, a conversation script, or any other linear plan, since the interlocutor, answering your question, may go completely wrong where you expected. If the interlocutor starts talking about what you have as hypotheses related to other problems, then you can quickly note the connection of information with current hypotheses and continue to dig into the issues raised. Then, when this direction is exhausted, you can return to the original problem.
Rule #2 - Don't let yourself talk, let the other person talk
The most common mistake novice interviewers make is to slip into a dialogue or even a monologue, talking about their product with inspiration. It is absolutely impossible to do so. As soon as the interlocutor understands that you have invented or developed something, he stops speaking sincerely and starts either praising you or arguing with you. The interview turns into a discussion of a product that usually doesn't exist yet, and you start exchanging fantasies and hallucinations. If this happened to you during the interview, then this interview should be considered unreliable.
Rule #3 - Ask more open-ended questions
āYesā, ānoā, āsometimesā and similar answers provide very little information. To get more information, ask open-ended questionsāones that require the other person to give a detailed answer.
Examples of extended questions:
Can you remember a time when you were in a situation...?
Tell us more about how ... was the last time?
Can you tell us how you did then?
Can you elaborate on how you solved this problem?
Do you always do this?
In other similar cases, what did you do?
How are you solving this problem now?
What difficulties do you face with this decision?
What do you not like about the current decision?
Why did you do it this way?
What other options did you consider?
Of course, the questions should be adapted to the course of the conversation. If the interlocutor told you that at that time the solution he chose was the only one, you should not ask what options he was still considering. That is why a conversation script is less convenient than a hypothesis map, but without practice, you may not be able to immediately construct questions in the course of a conversation. So practice on your friends and your co-founders.
Rule #4 - Ask as specific questions as possible and look for value in solving consumer problems
Try to ādig upā details and facts from the interlocutorās experience, finding out specific numbers, names, dates, periods, number of repetitions, places, sources of information, etc., since it is these facts that give us information to assess the degree of awareness of problems.
If a person agrees with you that they have an overweight problem and says that they do sports from time to time, then it is very important to find out how often they play and what sports. If he answers that he swims in the pool, then it is important to find out how often he visits the pool, which pool, how he chose it, what time he practices, how much he swims at a time, how long it takes him to do this, does he eat after class sports and how he eats in general. This is important because the truth lies in these concrete facts.
A misunderstood interlocutor leads to unnecessary functions in products and even to products that no one needs. Insufficiently carefully tested hypotheses lead to significant costs in subsequent stages.
Finding out the specific circumstances of the interlocutor's experience helps to find out not only the existence of problems and their awareness, but also the value of solving these problems.
The value may lie in economic benefits or savings, reducing risks, both financial and reputational.
Questions to help find value:
Why is solving this problem so important to you?
What results have you achieved in the past by solving similar problems?
What happened when you didn't solve this problem?
What difficulties did this lead to?
What costs did this lead to?
What did you lose in that situation?
How much time or money did you spend on solving this problem?
One of the most important results of problem interviews is the found, clarified value of solving consumer problems, expressed in money or time that is saved or earned when solving a problem.
If we know how much, on average, a consumer will earn or save by solving a problem, we can build on this when choosing a price for our solution.
Rule #5 ā Ask only about past experiences and avoid opinions, abstract thoughts, and speculation about the future
This is the second most common mistake of novice interviewers - to allow the interlocutor to reason abstractly - what he would do if he were in the situation of interest to us.
These arguments do not carry any direct benefit, since in the event of such a situation, our interlocutor may act completely differently.
Numerous experiments show that in conditions of danger, stress, need, pressure from society, people act in a completely different way than when they are not in danger.
These are the most basic rules that will allow you to start practicing problem interviewing.
I highly recommend reading Rob Fitzpatrick's book "Ask Mom: How to communicate with customers and prove the correctness of your business idea when everyone around you is lying?" ā it is small (about 150 pages) and easy to read.
Source: habr.com
