Interviewing Customers No. 1

TALKING TO REAL PEOPLE

Until now, you have practiced "opportunity identification" without actually talking to customers. It's time for you to take that first step, go out into the world, and actually talk with customers. This exercise is meant to get you a little practice speaking with real people about their real problems, and it will serve as a foundation for the next few weeks. After this exercise, you will have made a HUGE step toward becoming an entrepreneur and developing an entrepreneurial mindset. 

Here's what you need to do (and this is how you should write up the blog post for this exercise):

1) Find an opportunity. At this point, the opportunity may only exist in your head as a "potential" opportunity. But you definitely need to have at least an idea of what kind of opportunities might exist. Without at least an idea of an opportunity, your customer interviews will tend to be unfocused, and you will have a difficult time gleaning useful information.

2) Figure out who might have the unmet need. Opportunities don't exist independent of other people -- without people, there aren't any opportunities! Our mission, as entrepreneurs, is to find enough people with a common unmet need so that when we try to solve their need, there's enough people willing to 'buy' our solution. When you conduct your customer interviews, you want to be sure you're talking to people who share the same need. Think of it this way: if we're trying to sell Ford F-350s, it doesn't make much sense to talk to an undergraduate student at Columbia University who've lived their whole lives in Manhattan, but it might make a lot of sense to talk to West Texas cattle ranchers!

3) Come up with a list of questions. There's a few tricks about how to do this best. A video of me explaining the "dos-and-dont's" of customer interviews will be recorded on Tuesday, January 26.

4) Go talk to customers! And I mean "go." Don't try to call them. Don't try to Skype them. Interviews are best done face-to-face. For this exercise, you need to interview 5 people. You also need to video record each interview. (Make sure your interviewee knows you're recording them!) Finally, you CANNOT know the people you are interviewing. You're shooting for honest feedback. The last place you'll get honest feedback is from your friends and family. 

5) Tell us what you learned about the opportunity. You started this exercise with an idea of what opportunity might exist. What do you think about that opportunity now that you've asked 5 'potential customers' about it? 

6) Tell us what you learned about interviewing customers. Of all of the exercises in this class, the customer interview exercises are among the most likely to make you nervous. That's OK! Talking with customers makes ME nervous, too! But this is also one of the most powerful experiences you can have as an entrepreneur. Take a little time and tell us about it!

So that's it. In your blog post, be sure to describe each step of the process outlined above. Also, post the videos of your interviews. Don't worry about being embarrassed -- we're all posting customer interviews, so you'll get to see each others', too. The thing is to keep in mind that interviewing customers is just like any exercise -- the more we do it, the better we get at it. And we have to start somewhere! So have fun with this one. 

Lastly, be sure to include "Customer Interviews No. 1" in your title and the "Week 4" label. Once you've completed this exercise, don't forget to Share the post URL and make the Declaration. 

Text for declaration:

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY: 

Congratulations! This is one of the hardest exercises in this class, and I'm sure you learned a lot just in attempting it. Don't worry -- you'll have more practice at interviewing customers, and I know you'll feel more confident each time you do it. 

Once you have completed this exercise, please make the Declaration below. 

I have published a blog post that includes the following elements:

• A description of a potential opportunity that I believe exists.
• A description of kind of person who tends to have the problem that is the basis for the opportunity I identified.
• A list of questions or interview strategy that I used with each customer.
• Video recordings of the interviews -- I posted 5 videos, one for each potential customer I interviewed. 
• A reflection on what I learned about my opportunity idea.
• A reflection on what I learned about interviewing customers.

I have proofread the blog post.

I have included the phrase "Customer Interview No. 1" in the title. 

I have included the label "Week 4."