(2015-12-10) Get In The Van And Other Tips For Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback

'Get in the Van' and Other Tips for Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback. Michael Sippey has been shipping software since that meant literally shipping software... The No. 1 most important rule: You must speak to your customers every day.

a common refrain emerged from these conversations. In brief, customers needed a software solution for transaction reconciliation. And Sippey had an idea for a product that would fit the bill

met with his boss. “She leafed through it, and just said, ‘All right, you need to go talk to Frank.’” The Frank in question was Frank Robinson, an Advent board member and pioneer in what he dubbed “market validation,” now more commonly known as customer development.

I ended up with a huge document describing every single function and feature that the product should include.

but you don’t really know what problem you’re solving yet. You don’t really understand the customer at all.

Lesson One: Set up at least 30 meetings, or you won’t have a good product

Problem Interview: We think you have this problem.
Do you have this problem?
How are you solving this problem today?
How much are you spending to solve this problem?

10 Minutes: Here’s how we’re thinking of solving the problem.

The last question Sippey always asks is one of his favorites: “If you had $100 for our development budget how would you spend it?

Sippey recalls another market validation experience, this time for a new digital jukebox product he worked on for a while following Advent. “The idea was that we were going to sell it to bar owners directly.

Do we have a problem to solve here?’ And they were like, ‘Nope.’” Turns out that while those bar owners liked the idea, they weren’t the buyers the team should have been speaking to. Jukeboxes are generally owned and operated by third-party distributors

We learned that we were completely wrong in the initial assumption about who our target customer was," says Sippey. "We were only able to do that because we got in the van and talked to people.”

Lesson Two: Get in the van.

You’ve got to have your lead engineer, your lead QA person, your lead support person, and the sales person with you at all of these meetings.’”

getting that same team back in the van when the meeting is over. “Score each meeting right away,”

Lesson Three: Focus on their problem, not selling your solution.

The point is that we’re supposed to be solving a problem for people, and understanding that problem on a really fundamental level,” says Sippey. “Only then can you create a product that actually resonates with the market, and a business that can scale beyond any one feature.”