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Customer Development is not Just a Buzzword
She learned this lesson the hard way. The she I’m talking about is a new friend I’ve made recently (on Clarity.fm. who knew you could make friends there?) who heard about my 5 step customer development process and wanted more info.
I was very curious to see why she cared so much about this topic. Turns out that her first business died because it was just a work of fiction and had nothing to do with the reality of her customers. She is now continuing the same “crusade” under a different business. The best part is: this one is now starting to be profitable!
Also, in my opinion she did exactly what Henry Ford did: build a completely new product that solved more problems than what the customer was aware of.
There’s this famous saying which has been attributed to Ford:
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“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Ford. We all know that what he ended up building was a car.
When I’ve asked her what caused the dramatic shift, we ended up talking about a lot of great customer development interview strategies, that help build customer stories. Most of them you’ll be able to find in this video.
You’ll get to see how different ways of asking questions to your potential customers can turn your idea into Success or Failure. I think these two guys managed to really show the essence of how customer development interviews should be made to gain all the insight needed.
Of course, what Carla (she is not the one from the picture, btw) asked me regarding the 5 Customer Development stages is not present in this video. But the ideas from this video are exactly what helped her change her whole mindset when developing new products.
I’ll write a piece on this blog in the future, regarding my 5-step Customer Development process.
