Business owners hire sales experts, user researchers, and experts in marketing. All in efforts to answer one question:
What do people want?
It's the question behind every serious attempt to generate revenue, innovate, or scale. In other words,
What most urgent need, if solved immediately, will generate the highest revenue, and maximum business growth?
However, many founders leave money on the table due to solving problems customers are not desperate enough to pay for.
This keeps happening because you're asking all the wrong questions, asking them the wrong way, and paying attention to wrong signals from the people that should be your customers.
Last year, I joined a startup working on an exciting new business solution
The founders asked us product managers "What features should we include in the MVP?"
So we talked to customers. Surveys, interviews. We got our answers, and we built the product.
Launch day came, marketing and sales experts did their thing. However, customer turnout was low. Another great solution, dead on arrival.
We decided what we wanted to solve, who we wanted to solve it for, then sent out generic surveys trying to obtain customer permission for a decision that had effectively already been made. Wrong approach.
Here's how to fix that:
Stop trying to validate your solution. Start trying to understand their reality. How?
Ask better questions.
1. Ask about what you've observed happening currently in their lives. Instead of asking customers to rate on a scale how interested they are in the solution you're offering
Bad example
"How interested would you be in a software that manages your inventory automatically?"
Good example
"I noticed your staff counting products by hand before your opening this morning. Is that something you do every day?"
2. Ask about specifics from their past, related to your observation. Instead of describing what your exciting new solution will be like
Bad example
"If we created something that solved this problem, would you pay to use it?"
Good example
"The last time your stock count didn't match your records, what was it like for you?"
3. Ask what they think concerning the future, related to your observation. Instead of asking what they'd love for you to add to your solution
Bad example
"What features would you like us to add?"
Good example
"If this challenge keeps happening over the next one year, how do you think it'll affect your business?"
Notice it's all about their reality, not your solution upfront.
4. Say less. Listen more. Instead of prompting them with leading questions
Bad example
"Our idea is to automate inventory because it'll save you time and reduce human error. Don't you think that would help your business?"
Good example
"That's interesting. How then did you handle it after you realised the stock count was wrong?"
Let them do the talking, in response to your steering
Bonus:
Prefer one-on-one conversations over general surveys. 10 properly done one-on-one conversations are better than 500 general surveys, as the former gives opportunity to keep responses fluid, and discover rich nuanced insights from your target customers early on. Use surveys as a supporting tool to elicit information, and make better business decisions.