Customer development notes

A great little list by Cindy Alvarez: » 10 Things I’ve Learned About Customer Development (2014).

The overriding lesson in this list (and in customer research in general) is that you can’t simply trust what people say during an interview…because people being interviewed are biased to please you (or not look stupid). Instead, you must verify with previous behavior…make sure that people are indeed already doing what they say they would do. If someone says they would spend money for your product, for example, you should verify that they are indeed spending money on a competing solution. If they are, it doesn’t mean that they would buy your product, but it does mean that they’re the type of person you should be talking to. If they aren’t then you can basically throw out their answer because they aren’t in your target audience.

In general, future behavior is predicted by past behavior…so tread carefully. People say all sorts of pleasing things in interviews and it’s incredibly easy to take their initial, positive answer as the truth. In most cases digging a little deeper will be much more insightful.