In this article, I discuss the fundamental principles of uncovering the truth in situations where the interlocutor may not be entirely honest. Most often, you are deceived not out of malice but for various other reasons, such as personal misconceptions, poor memory, or to avoid upsetting you. Frequently, when it comes to our ideas, we are prone to self-deception. The problem interview methodology allows for the identification of facts with a high degree of reliability.
The overwhelming majority of businesses fail because they offer a product that consumers do not need. This is a well-known statement by Eric Ries, the author of the Lean Startup methodology.
How can you avoid falling into this trap with your project? The solution has long been known – before creating a product, you need to investigate the needs of potential consumers using the problem interview methodology. A comprehensive guide to conducting problem interviews is found in Rob Fitzpatrick's book, "Ask Me Anything: How to Talk to Customers and Validate Your Business Idea When Everyone Else is Lying." This book has just 150 pages, published in Russian in 2015, yet most startups still do not know how to conduct problem interviews.
About Me
My name is Igor Sheludyko.
I have been an entrepreneur in the field of software development and sales since 2000. I hold a higher technical education. I started my career as a programmer, managed small teams, and engaged in both product and custom development.
For the past 3 years, I have been collaborating with the Southern IT Park Accelerator (Rostov-on-Don) as a startup project tracker. During this time, I have personally guided over 20 projects, while the Accelerator itself has hosted more than 200 projects.
What are "problem interviews"?
They are simply conversations in which you ask the right questions. During such conversations, it is important to ascertain the interlocutor's actual past experience regarding the problems of interest to us. It is highly desirable to record the questions and answers from the interviewee. Ideally, the conversation should be recorded on a voice recorder, so you can later verify the accurate interpretation of the responses.
Rule No. 1 – To conduct a conversation, we need a conversation plan.
The conversation plan is based on your hypotheses about consumer needs.
A good plan option is a map of hypotheses, which I mentioned in this article .
After a polite greeting, it's worth briefly explaining what you want to discuss, or rather – to listen to. Your task is to ensure that the other person talks while you listen. It's important to clarify the other person's attitude towards the issues that interest you right away. Ideally, this should be clarified during the appointment and scheduling of the conversation. If the conversation happens unexpectedly, then immediately define the topic of discussion.
To ascertain the other person's attitude towards the issue, you can use questions like:
Have you ever ...?
Have you found yourself in a situation ...?
How often does this happen to you ...?
When was the last time you found yourself in a situation ...?
Are you concerned about ...?
How does ... affect your life?
It's quite possible that your conversation partner may have nothing substantive to say and may be tempted to speak abstractly on the assigned topic, not based on personal experience. It's important to learn to distinguish such situations and not to take what is said as facts. A partner without factual experience can be useful as a link to other people. Ask them to introduce you to their acquaintances who have actual experience on the topic that interests 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, as the conversation partner, responding to your question, may go completely off in a direction you didn't expect. If the partner begins to talk about what you have as hypotheses related to other issues, you can quickly note the connection of the information to relevant hypotheses and continue to explore the raised questions. Later, when this direction has been exhausted, you can return to the original issue.
Rule No. 2 – Don't allow yourself to speak; let the conversation partner have their say.
The most common mistake beginners make during interviews is sliding into a dialogue or even a monologue, passionately talking about their product. This should be avoided at all costs. Once the interviewee realizes that you have invented or developed something, they stop speaking sincerely and either start praising you or arguing with you. The interview becomes a discussion about the product, usually one that doesn't even exist yet, and you begin exchanging fantasies and hallucinations. If this happens during an interview, it should be considered unreliable.
Rule #3 – Ask more open-ended questions
Answers like 'yes', 'no', 'sometimes', and the like provide very little information. To gather more information, ask open-ended questions that require the interviewee to give a detailed response.
Examples of open-ended questions:
Can you recall a time when you found yourself in a situation...?
Can you tell me more about how it was last time?
Can you explain how you handled it then?
Can you elaborate on how you solved this problem?
Do you always act this way?
In other similar cases, how did you handle it?
How are you addressing this problem now?
What difficulties does this solution cause you?
What do you find unsatisfactory about the current solution?
Why did you choose to act this way?
What other options did you consider?
Of course, the questions should be adapted to the flow of the conversation. If the interviewee indicated that, at that moment, the choice they made was the only one, it’s not necessary to ask what other options they considered. This is why a conversation script is less convenient than a hypothesis map; however, without practice, you may not be able to construct questions on the fly during the conversation. So, practice with friends and your co-founders.
Rule #4 – Ask specific questions and seek value in solving consumer problems
Try to 'dig up' details and facts from the interviewee's experience, identifying specific numbers, names, dates, periods, repetitions, places, sources of information, etc., as these facts provide us with the information necessary to assess the awareness of problems.
If a person agrees with you that they have a problem with excess weight and mentions that they exercise occasionally, it’s crucial to find out how often they do so and what types of sports they participate in. If they respond that they swim in a pool, it’s important to determine how often they visit the pool, which pool they use, how they chose it, at what time they swim, how far they swim each time, how much time they spend on this, whether they eat after exercising, and in general, how they eat. This is important because the truth lies in these specific facts.
A misunderstood interlocutor leads to unnecessary features in products and even to products that no one needs. Insufficiently tested hypotheses result in significant costs at later stages.
Understanding the specific circumstances of the interlocutor's experience helps to uncover not only the existence of problems and their awareness but also the value of solving these problems.
The value can lie in economic benefits or savings, as well as in reducing both financial and reputational risks.
Questions that help determine value:
Why is solving this problem so important for you?
What results have you achieved in the past when addressing similar problems?
What happened when you did not solve this problem?
What difficulties did this lead to?
What expenses did this incur?
What did you lose in that situation?
How much time or money did you spend solving this problem?
One of the most important outcomes of problem interviews is the identified, established value of solving consumer problems, expressed in terms of money or time saved or earned.
If we find out how much, on average, a consumer will earn or save by solving the problem, we can use this as a basis for pricing our solution.
Rule #5 – Only ask about past experiences and avoid opinions, abstract reflections, and musings about the future.
This is the second most common mistake made by novice interviewers – allowing the interlocutor to think abstractly about what they would do if they found themselves in the situation we are interested in.
These reflections hold no direct value, as in such a situation our counterpart may behave completely differently.
Numerous experiments indicate that in conditions of danger, stress, necessity, and societal pressure, people act quite differently than when they perceive no threats.
These are the fundamental rules that, if adhered to, will enable you to begin practicing problem interviews.
I highly recommend reading Rob Fitzpatrick's book "Ask Me Anything: How to Talk to Customers and Validate Your Business Idea When Everyone Else is Lying" – it's concise (about 150 pages) and easy to read.
Source: habr.com
