By Deepak Deolalikar at Business of Products

Use this template for conducting your customer discovery.

Audience: Prospects who you think can benefit from your solution. At this stage don’t worry if they are not your ideal prospect. We will determine that later, after finding patterns.

While you can sniff test your idea with a few friendlies, customer discovery should be with someone you have not met before.

Length : 30-45 minutes

Introductions

First introduce yourself. Don’t lead with your product.

”My name is XYZ. I was introduced to you by xxx or we met at a tradeshow ….remind the connection. I work for startup xxx. We are trying to solve the problem of xxx for people who have this challenge. We want to learn from you and discuss the challenges of billing etc….”

Then ask for their introduction -

Name, Role in company, how long they have been in the company.

What is the scope of their responsibility? Which department do they work in?

Meeting Questionnaire

1. How do you handle the process of xxx today?
2. What are the top challenges you face? What is the impact of these challenges to your business?
3. How do you solve these today? What tools do you use today? How much time or money is spent in solving these problems?
4. What solutions have you tried before? What was wrong with these alternatives?
5. Concluding question: We are testing the hypothesis that xyz is a major challenge for users like you. If we can solve this challenge, we believe that users like you will get the following value

• Value 1 e.g. save at least 4 hours each week
• Value 2 e.g. reduction in errors

What is your opinion on our hypothesis? How big of a challenge is this? Is there a workaround for this?