How to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
135 pages
Published April 4, 2014 by CreateSpace.
Hm. How to tell this. I read this book for exploration and found much more than expected. It is done first as and hands-on-guide for customer service and product development methods. It can help with so much more. And lead to better understanding in transformative praxis. It is practically a guide on how to do insightful process-based interviews, which are not interviews in the business kind of context. You can gain insights by asking the right questions and explore the needs and wants of people with needs and wants without falling into the trap of "oh no, I need to state something, let me come up with something".
Think about ongoing problems for the transformation from capitalism to something different. What are people really in need? From the concept to the practical level. Cut out all propaganda and get down to listen. And then propagate the heard things.
…
Hm. How to tell this. I read this book for exploration and found much more than expected. It is done first as and hands-on-guide for customer service and product development methods. It can help with so much more. And lead to better understanding in transformative praxis. It is practically a guide on how to do insightful process-based interviews, which are not interviews in the business kind of context. You can gain insights by asking the right questions and explore the needs and wants of people with needs and wants without falling into the trap of "oh no, I need to state something, let me come up with something".
Think about ongoing problems for the transformation from capitalism to something different. What are people really in need? From the concept to the practical level. Cut out all propaganda and get down to listen. And then propagate the heard things.
This is basically a guide on how to do talks towards transformation. Towards better propaganda, towards actual change. Hands-on, a learnable skill well explained. Now go and apply it.
Essential reading for anyone thinking about starting a business. The idea is simple, but important: It's too easy for someone to tell you that they like your idea and would buy. So don't talk about your idea, at least not at first.
Start by finding out what their problems are and what they're doing to solve them. Are they paying for something? Have they tried to find a solution? If not, it's not that painful.
The book shows you how to have these conversations in a way where even your mom would tell you the truth.
In theory, this is perfect and while having an actual conversation with this idea in mind, I can do it. My only issue is trying to get introductions to potential customers. How do you ask someone to take time to talk to you without leading them at all? I think the …
Essential reading for anyone thinking about starting a business. The idea is simple, but important: It's too easy for someone to tell you that they like your idea and would buy. So don't talk about your idea, at least not at first.
Start by finding out what their problems are and what they're doing to solve them. Are they paying for something? Have they tried to find a solution? If not, it's not that painful.
The book shows you how to have these conversations in a way where even your mom would tell you the truth.
In theory, this is perfect and while having an actual conversation with this idea in mind, I can do it. My only issue is trying to get introductions to potential customers. How do you ask someone to take time to talk to you without leading them at all? I think the answer is to only say that you want to talk about a problem and hope they agree it's a problem. Don't mention your solution. If they don't agree it's a problem, you've lost the opportunity to learn from them.
If you have a good answer to this, please let me know.
– originally written 2021-06-30
A very nice surprise, I really enjoyed it :-)
It is so easy to fool ourselves thinking we are customer-oriented, customer-first approach, blah blah. But most of us are not. This is simple, practical and the best guide for talking to customers. It is very short and very actionable. Anyone building products, talking to customers, part of a startup or want to startup should read this.
