The Mom Test

A mom was unable to lie to us because we never talked about our idea. That's kind of weird, right? We find out if people care about what we are doing by never mentioning it. Instead, we talk about them and their lives.

The mom test:

- Talk about their life instead of your idea.

- Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future.

- Talk less and listen more!

Rule of thumb: Opinions are worthless!

Learn through their actions, instead of their opinions.

Rule of thumb: Anything involving the feature is an over-optimistic lie.

Rule of thumb: People will lie to you if they think it's what you want to hear.

Rule of thumb: People know what their problems are, but they don't know how to solve those problems.

Rule of thumb: You are shooting blind until you understand their goals.

Rule of thumb: Some problems don't actually matter.

Rule of thumb: Watching someone do a task will show you where the problems and inefficiencies really are, not where the customers think they are.

I was checking out an idea with a potential customer, and they excitedly said, "Oh man, that happens all the time! I would definitely pay for something that solved that problem."

That's a future promise statement without any commitment to back it up. So I needed to learn whether it was true or not. I asked, "When is the last time this came up?" Turns out it was pretty recent. That's a great sign. To dig further, I asked, "Can you talk me through how you tried to fix it?" He looked at me blankly, so I nudged him further.

In the abstract, it's something he would definitely pay to solve. Once we got specific, he didn't even care enough to search for a solution, which does exist, incidentally.

Rule of thumb: If they haven't looked for ways of solving it already, they are not going to look for or buy yours.

Common wisdom is that you price your product in terms of value to the customer, rather than cost to you.

Is there anything else I should have asked?

Good question. Usually by the end of the meeting, people understand what you are trying to do. Since you don't know the industry, they will often be sitting there quietly while you completely miss the most important point.

Anchor fluff.

Fluff comes in three cuddly shapes.

⦁ Generic claims (I usually, I always, I never).

⦁ Feature tense promises (I would, I will).

⦁ Hypothetical maybes (I might, I could)

When someone starts talking about what they would always or usually or never do, they are giving you generic and hypothetical fluff! Follow the mom test and bring them back to specifics in the past. Ask when it last happened for them to talk you through it, how they solved it, and what else they tried.

The world's most deadly fluff is: "I would definitely buy that!"

Write them down, but don't rush to add them to your to-do list. Startups are about focusing and executing on a single, scalable idea rather than jumping on every good one that crossed your desk.

Consider how much easier our lives would have been if we'd understood the motivation behind the request.

Rule of thumb: Ideas and feature requests should be understood but not obeyed.

Stop seeking approval.

Rule of thumb: If you have mentioned your idea, people will try to protect your feelings.

Rule of thumb: the more you are talking, the worse you are doing!

Love bad news: one of the reasons we avoid important questions is because asking them is scary. It can bring us the upsetting realization that our favorite idea is fundamentally flawed or that the major client is never going to buy. Although it seems unfortunate, this is why we need to learn to love bad news. It's solid learning and it's getting us closer to the truth!

Rule of thumb: There is more reliable information in a 'meh' than a 'Wow!'. You can't build a business on a lukewarm response.

Rule of thumb: Start broad and don't zoom in until you have found a strong signal. Both with your whole business and with every conversation.

Always preplan the three most important things you want to learn from any given type of person. Preplanning your big questions makes it a lot easier to ask questions which pass the mom test and aren't biasing.

In his original book on customer development, "4 Steps to the Epiphany," Steve Blank solves this by recommending three separate meetings:

1. About the customer and their problem

2. About your solution

3. To sell a product

By splitting the meetings, you avoid the premature zoom and biasing them with your ideas.

If the solution isn't a three-meeting series, then what is it? You may have noticed a trend throughout the conversation examples we've seen so far, keeping it casual.

When you strip all the formality from the process, you end up with no meetings, no interview questions, and a much easier time. The conversation becomes so fast and lightweight that you can go to an industry meetup and live with a thousand customer conversations under your belt, each of which provides as much value as a formal meeting.

Rule of thumb: Learning about a customer and their problems works better as a quick and casual chat than a long formal meeting.

Rule of thumb: If it feels like they are doing you a favor by talking to you, it is probably too formal.

The potential speed of the early conversations is one of the big reasons to keep it casual and skipping the meeting. Scheduling and going to a meeting has a lot of overhead for a 10-minute chat. Even explaining that you are starting a company and would love to ask a couple questions can take you 5-10 minutes. You'll make progress a lot faster if you're able to leave your idea out of it for as long as possible.

'' There are a couple of people I can introduce you to when you're ready. ''

To fix it, try to convert fuzzy promises into something more concrete. The more specific it is, the more seriously you can take it. For example:

- Who does he want to introduce you to?

- What does "ready" mean?

- Why can't he make the intro now?

This isn't about being pushy.

I would definitely buy that!

Bad meeting. danger!

To fix it, you need to shift from fuzzy feature promises to concrete current commitments. For example, you could ask for a letter of intent, a pre-purchase or deposit, or interest from other decision makers and team members. Kick Starters is so wonderful because it forces customers who say they would buy it to actually pull out a credit card and commit!

Rule of thumb: It's not a real lead until you've given them a concrete chance to reject you.

Keep an eye out for the people who got emotional about what you are doing. There is a significant difference between:

- Yeah, there's a problem.

- That's the worst part of my life and I will pay you right now to fix it.

Rule of thumb in early-stage sales: the real goal is learning. Revenue is just a side effect.

Finding conversations:

Beyond hard hustle, you should also stay open to serendipity. There are lots of ways you can get lucky when you are in the mood for it!

The only thing people love talking about more than themselves is their problems. By taking an interest in the problems and mini-issues of their day, you are already being more interesting than 99% of people they have ever met!

Organize meetups.

Teaching is undervalued as both a learning and selling tool.

Warm intros are the goal. Conversations are infinitely easier when you get an intro through a mutual friend that establishes your credibility and reason for being there.

Rule of thumb: Kevin Bacon's 7 degrees of separation applies to customer conversations. You can find anyone you need if you ask for it a couple of times.

You will get ignored a lot, but again, who cares? You are not trying to minimize your failure rate; you are trying to get a few conversations going.

The framing format I like has five key elements:

1. Vision

2. Framing

3. Weakness

4. Pedestal

5. Ask

Example

Hey Pete,

I'm trying to make desk and office rental less of a pain for new businesses (vision). We are just starting out and don't have anything to sell, but want to make sure we are building something that actually helps (framing). I have only ever come at it from the tenant's side and I'm having a hard time understanding how it all works from the landlord's perspective (weakness). You have been renting out desks for a while and could really help me cut through the fog (pedestal).

Do you have time in the next couple weeks to meet up for a chat? Often parent is this ask (full stop)?

But do have a plan for the meeting and be assertive about keeping it on track.

To commute or to call?

One of the solutions to the time cost of these conversations is to move them onto Skype or phone calls.

In most situations, I don't think the added value is worth the information you lose by not being in the room. I get confused enough by what people are telling me in person. Losing access to their face and body language feels like shooting myself in the foot!

More subtly, calls damage the delicate power dynamic of these conversations. When someone is having a coffee with you, there's a potential to chat as friends. You can just shoot the breeze about the industry for a bit. You can keep it casual. They are enjoying the conversation.

How many meetings?

In my experience, that could take as few as 3-5 conversations, if you have a relatively simple industry and a focused customer segment.

This isn't about having a thousand meetings; it's about quickly learning what you need and then getting back to building your business.

Rule of thumb: keep having conversations until you shouldn't stop hearing this stuff.

But they didn't start there! If you start too generic, everything is watered down!

- Your marketing message is generic.

- You suffer from feature creep.

Google helped PhD students find obscure bits of code. Ebay helped collectors buy and sell Pez dispensers. Evernote helped moms save and share recipes.

Rule of thumb: If you aren't finding consistent problems and goals, you don't yet have a specific enough customer segment.

Running the process.

It's easy to misinterpret what the customer said. The customer and learning has to be shared with the entire founding team promptly and faithfully. That relies on good notes, plus a bit of pre- and post-meeting work.

The most extreme way to bottleneck is to go to the meetings alone and take crappy notes which you don't review with your team. At that point, your head has become the ultimate repository of customer truths, and everyone just has to do what you say!

Symptoms of a learning bottleneck:

-You just worry about the product. I learned what they need to know.

-because the customers told me so.

-I don't have time to talk to people. I need to be coding!

Where speed is measured by building features instead of by de-risking and validating the business.

Preparation questions to unearth hidden risks:

If this company were to fail, why would it have happened?

What would have to be true for this to be a huge success?

What do we want to learn from these guys?

Rule of thumb: If you don't know what you are trained to learn, you shouldn't bother having the conversation.

You can't outsource or hire someone to do customer learning. There are exceptional team dynamics where it works, but generally speaking, the founders need to be in the meeting themselves.

Rule of thumb: notes are useless if you don't look at them.

Signs you are just going through the motions:

- You are talking more than they are.

- They are complementing you or your idea.

- You told them about your idea and don't know what's happening next.

- You don't have notes.

- You haven't looked through your notes with your team.

- You got an unexpected answer and didn't change your idea.

- You weren't scared of any of the questions you asked.

- You aren't sure which big question you are trying to answer by doing this.

The persistent presence of any of these problems suggests that you are doing something wrong and wasting your time.

Here are the steps I go through to stay on track. Feel free to ignore or tweak as needed given your situation and company. It is as lightweight as I have been able to get it and should reduce rather than increase the amount of time you need to spend on conversations.

The process before a batch of conversations:

1. If you haven't yet, choose a focused, findable segment.

2. With your team, decide your big 3 learning goals.

3. If relevant, design on ideal next steps and commitments.

4. If conversations are the right tool, figure out who to talk to.

5. Create a series of best guesses about what the person cares about.

6. If a question could be answered via test research, do that first.

During the conversation:

1. Frame the conversation.

2. Keep it casual.

3. Ask good questions which pass the mom test.

4. Deflect compliments, anchor fluff, and dig beneath signals.

5. Take good notes.

6. If relevant, press for commitment and next steps.

After a batch of conversations

- with your team, review your notes and key customer quotes.

- If relevant, transfer notes into permanent storage.

- Update your beliefs and plans.

- Decide on the next three big questions.

Spend a week, maybe two.

Rule of thumb: it's going to be okay.