Reading - The Mom Test

I’m reading a chapter of this everyday. I’ll note my main takeaways in this post. Note, when there’s a piece of dialogue, C is the customer and M is me - the idea guy.

Chapter 1: The Mom Test

Once you avoid mentioning your idea, you start to ask better questions. Mentioning that it is your idea biases the people you’re conversing with and leads to dishonest, unhelpful answers. So, avoid doing so for as long as possible.

Here are 3 simple rules:

• Talk about their life and problems, not yours. People love to yap about themselves.
• Ask for specifics in the past, not about some uncertain future. People tend to be overly optimistic & generic about the future.
• Listen more. Talk less.

Chapter 2: Avoiding Bad Data

There are three forms of bad data:

• Compliments
• Fluff (generic, hypothetical & the future)
• Ideas

Deflect Compliments

Unless the opinion comes from an industry expert, it’s useless. Only facts and commitments are worth the effort. Avoid compliments by not talking about your idea.

If you do get a compliment, deflect it and return to the crux of the conversation. Deflecting involves redirecting the conversation to have the customer talk more about themselves and their problems.

An Example

C: Great idea, I think it’ll work out.
M: Speaking of that problem, how do you guys work around it here?

Always try to answer these questions:

• Why did that person like the idea?
• How much money would it save him? How would it fit into his life?
• What else has he tried which failed to solve his problem?

Anchor Fluff

Fluff comes in generic (I usually or I always), future (I will or I would), and hypothetical (I might, I could) flavours. In case of fluff: Ask when it last happened, for them to talk you through it, how they solved it, and what else they tried. 

Never ask “Would you pay for X?”. The answer is always fluff.

Fluff-inducing questions include:

• “Do you ever…”
• “Would you ever…”
• “What do you usually…”
• “Do you think you…”
• “Might you…”
• “Could you see yourself…”

They can be used to lead into a mom-test conversation though. Like asking, “Have you ever had this problem?”, then continuing with the in case of fluff questions.

You can also drill down into a fluff statement to get a concrete example:

C: “I always have this issue!”
M: “Really? When last did it happen?”

Important: If someone has never tried searching for a solution to a problem, they are a complainer - not a customer.

Dig Beneath Ideas

Entrepreneurs get a lot of ideas, but as one, you should not write every idea you get into the to-do list. When someone gives a feature request, figure out the motivation for the request.

• What are they trying to achieve?
• How would the feature help them get there?
• How important is it?
• Why do they bother doing it this way?
• Why do they want the feature?
• How are they currently coping without the feature?

This helps avoid feature creep, and in some cases, you can figure out an easier way to solve the problem hidden behind the request.Similarly, if someone gives off a strong emotional signal about a topic - dive into it.

For example, if the person you’re talking to seems frustrated about something, ask:

• “That seems to really annoy you. What’s up?”

Or if they seem excited about something, ask:

• “You seem excited heh, why? Is it a big deal?”

Stop Seeking Approval

The main cause of compliments is seeking approval. Keep the conversation focused on the other person and ask about specific, concrete cases and examples. Never bring up your idea, ego, business or circumstances ELSE people will try not to hurt your feelings!

Cut Off Pitches

If you find yourself in pitch mode, cut it off and return to talking about the customers situation. It happens because you’re excited about the idea, but don’t let it kill you.

If they say they really want to hear about what you’re working on, promise that you’ll tell them at the end of the meeting or loop them in for an early demo, and that you just want to talk a bit more about their stuff before biasing them with your idea.

Talk Less

Even if someone misunderstands what you’re talking about, allow them finish before correcting them. Hearing their POV/mental model can give a new view of the situation that you may not have found yourself. Also, no one likes being interrupted. In a nutshell, the less you talk, the better.

Chapter 3: Asking Important Questions

While it is important to ask non-biasing questions, it’s even more important for you to not over compensate and ask trivial or useless questions.

One way to prevent this, is to ask the hard, important questions. These are questions whose answers affect the existence of your startup.

The best way to find these questions is to run thought experiments. Imagine that the company has failed and ask why that happened. Then imagine it as a huge success and ask what had to be true to get there. Find ways to learn about those critical pieces.

Rule of thumb: You should be terrified of at least one of the questions you’re asking in every conversation.

Love Bad News

Although bad news is upsetting, it can save you a lot of time and money. It’s better to go out, talk to customers, find out they don’t care about your idea, and close up shop without having spent a dime.

Lukewarm answers = disinterest. If you receive a lukewarm answer you can try to understand the nature of their apathy, but don’t try to pitch them until they join you, it never works.

Remember, customers never know if a product will succeed - only the market knows.

Rule of thumb: There’s more reliable information in a “meh” than a “Wow!” You can’t build a business on a lukewarm response.

Look Before You Zoom

Like mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, a person isn’t a customer if they haven’t tried solving a problem they claim to have.

If you aren’t sure whether the problem you’re solving is a must-solve, it helps to be more generic when starting a conversation, so you can figure out if the person you’re talking to has problems you are looking to solve. If they do have the problem, you can zoom in and figure out if they are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

If you are sure the problem you’re solving is a must-solve, you can immediately zoom in on it in a conversation. For example, if you’re solving marketing for small businesses, you can start with “So what are your problems with marketing?”.

How do you know if this problem matters?

Try these or variations of these:

• “How seriously do you take your business?” 
• “Do you make money from it?”
• “Have you tried making more money from it?”
• “How much time do you spend on it each week?”
• “Do you have any major aspirations for your businese?”
• “Which tools and services do you use for it?”
• “What are you already doing to improve this?”
• “What are the 3 big things you’re trying to fix or improve right now?”

Rule of thumb: Start broad and don’t zoom in until you’ve found a strong signal, both with your whole business and with every conversation. And remember, if the person hasn’t tried solving this problem, they are not a customer but a complainer.

Look At The Elephant

Asking the big questions is scary. It’s easy to avoid them to find some comfort. Startups have multiple failure points and it’s important to focus on every single one, not ignore the elephant in the room and hope it goes away.

There are two main kinds of risk to consider:

• Product risk — Can I build it? Can I grow it? Will they keep using it?
• Market risk — Do they want it? Will they pay? Are there enough of them?

There are failure points to consider within each bucket. Both must be considered.

However in some cases - like if you’ve got heavy product risk (as opposed to pure market risk) - you’re not going to be able to prove as much of your business through conversations alone. The conversations give you a starting point, but you’ll have to start building product earlier and with less certainty than if you had pure market risk.

Prepare Your List of 3

Always have a list of the 3 important questions you need to ask for your business at any given time.

Planning these ahead of time makes it easier to pass the Mom test in a conversation.

Curate the questions to the different types of segments of customers you have. Always have them in mind so you can casually pop one off instead of asking the customer to grab a coffee.

Keep it casual.

Chapter 4 - Keeping It Casual

In his original book, 4 Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank recommends scheduling 3 separate meetings: the first about the customer and their problem; the second about your solution; and the third to sell a product. By splitting the meetings, you avoid zooming in on a ‘problem’ too early and biasing the customer by mentioning your idea.

There are problems with this approach though.

• it takes a lot of time. You gotta schedule the meeting, find a free calendar block, commute to the meeting, do introductions, finally talk about what you came to talk about. In doing so, you risk the chance of biasing the customer because you have to tell them why you want to talk to them in the first place.
• At the start, founders are often not credible enough for customers to commit to meeting with them.

It’s difficult and expensive to go with this approach. Expensive because a founder’s most valuable resource is time.

The solution to this? Keeping it casual.

The first meeting doesn’t need to be scheduled. You can start a casual conversation with a potential customer, slide in one of your big 3 questions, and get out before they realise you’ve had them validate your idea.

You can return to schedule a meeting when you have something concrete to show & need to close a sale.

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

The Meeting Antipattern

Asking the right questions is fast and touches on topics people find quite interesting. You can talk anywhere and save yourself the formal meetings until you have something concrete to show.

Setting up a meeting sets an expectation that you have something to sell them. A casual conversation is good for both parties because you’ve given them a chance to talk about themselves and their problems - who doesn’t like talking about themselves?

Rule of thumb: If it feels like they’re doing you a favour by talking to you, it’s probably too formal.

How long are meetings?

As you go from product validation -> finding existing solutions -> understanding their workflow -> closing a sale, the meetings take longer.

Early chats are quick, later chats require more talking to cover the ins and outs of each situation.

Note: You’ll make progress a lot faster if you’re able to leave your idea out of it for as long as possible.

Putting It Together

Even within a scheduled meeting, you’d do well to keep it casual and non-biasing for maximum value.

While making small talk, you can slide in a big 3 question and get an answer, while the customer has no clue you’re planning to sell something to them later on.

Just make sure you have an answer for when they ask you “So what did you wanna talk about?”

Rule of thumb: Give as little information as possible about your idea while still nudging the discussion in a useful direction.

Chapter 5 - Commitment and Advancement

In sales, moving a sales relationship to the next stage is called “advancement”. At this point, they make it clear whether they are a customer or not. After the previous chapters, we should know enough about the industry and it’s problems to start showing our product and asking customers for some form of commitment.

• Commitment — They are showing they’re serious by giving up something they value such as time, reputation, or money. 
• Advancement — They are moving to the next step of your real-world funnel and getting closer to a sale.

Rule of thumb: “Customers” who keep being friendly but aren’t ever going to buy are a particularly dangerous source of mixed signals. Don’t friend zone your startup.

All Meetings Succeed or Fail

There’s no such thing as a meeting going well. Either it succeeded, and the customer made some sort of commitment. Or they are being wishy washy, and are never going to commit or you never asked in the first place to give them the chance to reject you.

To avoid wasting time with meetings you must:

• Not go in asking their opinion about your product (compliment seeking)
• Ask for a clear commitment or next steps

It goes without saying that you must know what your next steps are before you’re able to ask. It’s best if you ask and are rejected, than to never ask and waste time.

If people are willing to commit, it’s a strong sign that they are telling the truth.

Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless.

The currencies of conversation

Commitment doesn’t need to be cash, it could fall into one of these buckets:

Reputation

• Intro to peers or team
• Intro to a decision maker (boss, spouse, lawyer)
• Giving a public testimonial or case study

Time

• Clear next meeting with known goals
• Sitting down to give feedback on wireframes
• Using a trial themselves for a non-trivial period

Cash

• Letter of intent (non-legal but gentlemanly agreement to purchase)
• Pre-order
• Deposit

Of course, all these categories can be combined at once. The real world is flexible!

Rule of Thumb: The more they give up, the more seriously you can take their words. But if they’re handing out compliments, you can take it as a sign that they want you gone.

Some Examples For Handling Non-Commitment

• Stalling: ask for an early commitment, or ask why it can’t be done today
• Compliments: Deflect, get back to business
• Promises to introduce you to people when you’re ready: find out who they are, and why it can’t be done ASAP, and what the hell ready means.
• What are the next steps: Great result. You better have the next steps on hand.
• “I would definitely buy that”: Generic fluff, ask for a financial commitment.
• “When can we start the trial”: Depends. some products are easy to try. You can gauge how committed they are by increasing the cost: asking for a case study, asking them to use it with more of their teammates, and so on.
• “Can I buy the prototype?”: Excellent outcome!
• “When can you come meet the rest of the team?”: Excellent outcome!

How To Fix a Bad Meeting

Ask for some commitment. Don’t try to strongarm them, just ask for some form of commitment and give them the chance to directly reject you.

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

Don’t Pitch Blind

At this point, you know enough about the industry, surely. But this doesn’t mean you go around applying the same template to everyone. Find out what makes each customer tick, and you’re more likely to close with them.

Crazy Customers

You want to find the crazy customers. These people or companies:

• Have the problem
• Know they have the problem
• Have the budget to solve the problem
• Have already cobbled together their own makeshift solution

They want you to succeed and are often irrational about it.

When someone isn’t that emotional about what you’re doing, it’s pretty unlikely that they’re going to end up being one of the people who is crazy enough to be your first customer. Keep them on the list, but don’t count on them to write the first check.

Secondly, whenever you see the deep emotion, do your utmost to keep that person close. They are the rare, precious fan who will get you through the hard times and turn into your first sale.

In summary, after you’ve learned the facts of your industry and customers and designed the solution, you start pushing for advancement and commitments to separate dead leads from real customers.

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

Chapter 6 - Finding Conversations

Now that you know about the mom test, you can go talk to your ‘potential customers’ and get useful info without them lying to you. But if you’re in search of new customers, here’s how to do it.

Going To Them

You have to start with cold conversations. But if you are respectful, and show an interest in the person and their problems, it could be the start of a great, warm relationship.

Cold Calls

Most people don’t like cold calls, so you’ll likely get ignored a lot. But you only need one yes to get the ball rolling. Don’t give in to despair.

Seize Serendipity

Sometimes, you might just randomly run into the kind of person you’re looking to meet. Seize the opportunity by having a nice, interesting, casual conversation with them. Remember, people like to talk about themselves and their problems over anything else.

Rule of thumb: If it’s not a formal meeting, you don’t need to make excuses about why you’re there or even mention that you’re starting a business. Just have a good conversation.

Find a Good Excuse

If it’s a topic you and the customer care about, find an excuse to talk about it. Your idea never needs to enter the equation and you’ll both enjoy the chat.

Immerse Yourself in Where They Are

Find the places your customers often are, and put in the effort to be in those places regularly. If you do so, you’ll have more opportunities to meet new people and ask the questions you need answers to.

Landing Pages

Put your website out there, email everyone who signs up and say hello. That’s it.

Or, simply get the product out there, see who likes it most, and reach out to those users.

This approach brings the customers to you.

Bringing them to you

Bringing the customers to you gives you more credibility, and often saves more time and leaves you less frustrated than you’d be having to sneak into conversations with them.

Here are some ways to do this:

Organise Meetups

Want to figure out problems people within an industry have? Organise a meetup between people in that industry. It’s that simple and it boosts your credibility & name recognition within it

Speaking & Teaching You refine your message. You boost your credibility. And you find out what parts of your message resonate most, and chat with those people who are keen on it

Industry Blogging

Write a blog about the industry as you learn. It contributes to your credibility.

Get Clever

Just think outside the box bro. it’s really that simple. find some unique way to get people to listen to you. host an award for best pitch in Lagos?

Creating warm intros

Conversations are infinitely easier when you get an introduction from a mutual, as it establishes your credibility and breaks the ice early on.

7 seven degrees of separation

Everybody knows everybody. All you gotta do is ask.

Industry Advisors

Find someone in the industry, shell them some equity & have them introduce you to folks.

Universities

Speak to professors! Their projects are often funded by industry folk, and anyone who invests in research is bound to be interested in new projects in their field!

Investors

These guys usually have a rolodex of contacts. Ask the people who have bought into your idea about who they can introduce you to.

Cash In Favours

Reach out to the people who promised a favour and ask for it. Use the format for framing emails / these sorta requests so you don’t waste their time and yours.

Asking for and framing the meeting

Sometimes meetings can’t be avoided, but it doesn’t mean we have to make it boring and interview-esque. We can frame these meetings in a way that lowers the guard of potential customers, making it a bit more fun, casual and conversational.

The framing format has 5 key elements.

• You’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X, usher in wonderful vision Y, or fix stagnant industry Z. Don’t mention your idea.
• Frame expectations by mentioning what stage you’re at and, if it’s true, that you don’t have anything to sell.
• Show weakness and give them a chance to help by mentioning your specific problem that you’re looking for answers on. This will also clarify that you’re not a time waster.
• Put them on a pedestal by showing how much they, in particular, can help.
• Ask for help. Ask good questions

Or, in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask. The mnemonic is “Very Few Wizards Properly Ask [for help].”

Once the meeting starts, you have to grab the reins or it’s liable to turn into them drilling you on your idea, which is exactly what you don’t want.

A good approach is to repeat what was said in your email and then immediately drop the first question. If you were introduced by a mutual, then use them to glaze the customer a little more.

These conversations are easy to screw up. As such, you need to be the one in control. You set the agenda, you keep it on topic, and you propose next steps. Don’t be a jerk about it, but do have a plan for the meeting and be assertive about keeping it on track.

Remember the goal is to stop having cold conversations but instead have warm intros & casual conversations that both parties enjoy, which helps you learn more about your product and industry.

To commute or to call

Phone calls are conducive, in that you don’t need to commute. But you lost the ability to read body language, or casually talk about the weather or other random stuff you could do while grabbing coffee.

It’s also much easier to make friends in person than over a phone call, which is what you want long-term.

The Advisory Flip

Don’t go into these meetings looking for customers, people can smell neediness. Instead, go searching for knowledgeable people who are excited about your idea.

Remember our goal at this point is to learn, before we move to advancing & possibly making some sales.

How Many Meetings?

The UX guys say you should keep having meetings until you’re no longer hearing new information.

If you have a small, focused customer segment, this could take as few as 3-5 meetings. If you have had more than 10 and it’s still fuzzy, then your segment could probably use some tightening

Remember, it’s about quickly learning what you need, and then getting back to building your business. You should be able to answer almost any customer question and move onto new ones within a week. 

Rule of thumb: Keep having conversations until you stop hearing new stuff.

Chapter 7 - Choosing Your Customers

Startups usually don’t die of lack, but instead drown in too many options. Doing a little bit of everything & talking to everyone are easy ways to get overwhelmed.

Segmentation

Although the biggest companies seem to serve everyone, they actually started small, solving a problem for a specific group of people.

Talking to a bunch of different people brings conflicting feedback, which can leave you confused and wondering where to even start.

Before we can serve everyone, we have to serve someone. Get specific. Think about who is most likely to buy, then make moves to find those people.

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

Customer Slicing

For customer conversations, you want to have really specific segments because having these conversations takes time. If you end up getting 5 mixed messages each time, you won’t have the confidence you need to move forward.

Customer slicing involves taking a customer segment and slicing repeatedly until you have a tangible set of people you can talk to (and expect the same feedback from).

Start with a broad segment and ask:

• Within this group, which type of this person would want it most?
• Would everyone within this group buy/use it, or only some of them?
• Why do they want it? (e.g. What is their problem or goal)
• Does everyone in the group have that motivation or only some of them?
• What additional motivations are there?
• Which other types of people have these motivations?

We now have a two groups of segments: the first is a collection of quite specific demographic groups and the second is a series of motivations.

There will be generic ones, so go within those segments, and repeat those questions, slicing and slicing again.

Next we’re going to look at our groups’ behaviours and figure out where to find them.

• What are these people already doing to achieve their goal or survive their problem?
• Where can we find our demographic groups?
• Where can we find people doing the above workaround behaviours?

If any of the segments are unfindable, you need to slice them until they are. There’s no point in knowing who your customers are if you can’t find them. Segments are who-where pairs.

With the who-where pairs in hand, we can start decide who to pursue in order of who seems most:

• Profitable
• Easy to reach
• Rewarding for us to build a business around

Remember:

• Find demographics
• Understand behaviour (and workarounds)
• Figure out where to find them
• Speak to them

Rule of thumb: Good customer segments are a who-where pair. If you don’t know where to go to find your customers, keep slicing your segment into smaller pieces until you do.

Talking To The Wrong People

There are 3 ways this might happen:

• Your customer segment is too broad
• You have multiple segments and missed some of them
• You are selling to businesses with a complicated buying process and have overlooked some of the stakeholders

Don’t just talk to the most senior or important people you can find. You want to talk to people who are representative of your customers, not the ones who sound impressive on your status report.

Chapter 8 - Running The Process

You need to have a process around your customer conversations to extract full value. You also want to avoid bottlenecks, like having the business guy going around talking to customers & returning with a list of notes that aren’t properly shared with everyone else.

Symptoms of a learning bottleneck

• “You just worry about the product. I’ll learn what we need to know.”
• “Because the customers told me so!”
• “I don’t have time to talk to people — I need to be coding!”

Avoiding bottlenecks has three parts: prepping, reviewing, and taking good notes.

Prepping

1. Know your list of big 3 questions. Make a point to ask the scary questions.
2. What steps will we take next after the meeting?
3. Before a conversation, write down best guesses on what the person you’re talking to wants and cares about. If your customer segment is focused, everyone will have the same core beliefs
4. If there are questions that could be answered with research - answer them
5. Do basic due diligence by googling the customer and their company
6. Involve the entire team when prepping

When prepping, these two questions help tease out hidden risks:

• If this company fails, what would have killed it?
• What would have to be true for this company to be a huge success?

In short, we’re trying to figure out: “What do we want to learn from this customer?”

Rule of thumb: If you don’t know what you’re trying to learn, you shouldn’t bother having the conversation.

Reviewing

After every conversation, review the notes with the team & update the big 3 questions and beliefs. At the end of a review, all the learning must be on paper and in every team members head.

Note these:

• Key quotes
• Main takeaways
• Problems or potential problems

Also review the conversation too. Which questions worked and which didn’t? How can we do better next time?

Everyone making big decisions should show up. Meeting go best with two people: one talking, one taking notes. Both making sure to catch any conversation errors or bad questions & immediately jumping in to resolve the problem.

You can’t hire out this process. It’s a guaranteed way to get bad signals. But you can hire someone to help lead these conversations, as long as you’re there with them, listening and watching for mistakes.

How To Write It Down

Good notes are the best way to keep your team in the loop. They make it hard to lie to yourself about the state of the industry and your business.

Write down “exact quotes” wrapped in quotation marks, or just the Big Idea. Use symbols to capture important emotions or context.

Emotions

• Excited
• Angry
• Embarrassed
• Exasperated

Emotions greatly affect the meaning of a given statement, so any strong emotions must be noted down.

Their Life

• Pain or Problem
• Goal or Job to be done or Aim
• Obstacle
• Workaround
• Context or Background

Combine these with emotion symbols where appropriate. Pains and obstacles carry a lot more weight when someone is embarrassed or angry about them. 

Obstacles are preventing a customer from solving their problems even though they want to. They’re important because you’ll probably also have to deal with them.

Specifics

• Feature request or purchasing criteria
• Money or budgets or purchasing process
• Mentioned a specific person or company
• Follow up task

If they mention someone they know, ask for an introduction. If it’s a rival, do some research on them.

Where To Write It Down

You want to take your customer notes so that they are:

• Able to be sorted, mixed, and re-arranged
• Able to be combined with the notes of the rest of your team
• Permanent and retrievable
• Not mixed in with other random noise like todo lists and ideas

I believe the best options are Google Docs or a wiki of markdown docs viewed with Obsidian. The former is easy to share and access, while the latter allows us to add frontmatter for common information & searchable tags we can use to tag the symbols from the previous section.

Regardless, when talking to the customer, a notepad is probably best as it is the least rude. After a meeting, you must sit to process the notes and move them to the main storage.

Rule of thumb: Notes are useless if you don’t look at them.

The Process

Talking to customers is a tool, not an obligation. If you don’t care to do it properly, don’t do it at all.

Signs you’re just going through the motions:

• You’re talking more than they are
• They are complimenting 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 it didn’t change your idea
• You weren’t scared of any of the questions you asked
• You aren’t sure which big question you’re trying to answer by doing this

You must wrap the customer conversations in a process to maximise efficiency & not waste your time.

Before a set of conversations

• Choose a focused findable segment
• With your team, decide the big 3 learning goals
• If relevant, decide next steps and commitments
• If conversations are needed, find out who to talk to
• Guess what the person wants or cares about
• Research any questions that can be answered on the internet

During The Conversation

• Frame the conversation
• Keep it casual
• Ask questions that pass The Mom Test
• Deflect compliments. Anchor fluff. Dig beneath signals.
• Take good notes
• If relevant, press for commitment and next steps

After a Batch Of Conversations

• Review notes and quotes with the team
• Process notes & transfer to permanent storage if necessary
• Update your beliefs and plans
• Decide on the next 3 big questions

This process has two goals:

• Maximise use of time and thinking power by asking the right questions
• Spreading the knowledge across all team members

Move Fast

Don’t spend a week prepping for meetings; spend an hour and then go talk to people. Anything more is stalling. 

Don’t spend months doing full-time customer conversations before beginning to move on a product. Spend a week, maybe two. Speed is the moat.

Rule of Thumb: Go build your company already.