You should be terrified of a least one question you’re asking in every conversation.
Rob fitzpatrick, the mom test
Buy It on Amazon – Paperback | E-book
The One Thing from My Summary of The Mom Test
Dear Lord, why didn’t I read this book before launching my last company?
The one thing from this book is you are 100% asking the wrong questions and getting bad data from customers and prospects leading to very expensive product or company launch decisions.
If you are thinking about launching a new company…
If your job is Product Manager or Product Marketing…
If you are in Customer Success or Service…
Put down whatever you are doing right now, and schedule 4 hrs on your calendar.
Go buy this book and read it cover-to-cover 2X.
Here are the links on Amazon again Paperback | E-book.
Why you ask?
Read on.
The Mom Test Full Review
The Mom Test is a 10/10 if you are a founder, product marketer, product manager, or customer success person.
The book is a very fast read (took me 2.5hrs taking detailed notes to write this review).
The concept of the book is very simple. Your mom will always tell you she loves what you’re working on and so will pretty much everyone else.
By asking the wrong types of questions and not understanding why you are asking the wrong questions, every customer/prospect conversation is leading you astray.
In other words, we ask questions that confirm our own biases and this is a rope to hang yourself with.
Like Ted Lasso says, “Be curious, not judgemental.”
“People stop lying when you ask them for money.”
Rob Fitzpartrick, The Mom Test
The book is super approachable and gives example after example of questions we have all asked and explains why you got bad data from asking them.
The author provides excellent examples of good questions, how to structure a discovery call, how to prepare for meetings, how to get more meetings, and more.
Let me give you one example that I am putting into place right now from Chapter 7 of the book.
Customer Slicing
Adjust your mental categories for customers and serve the smallest possible niche of insane buyers, first.
Be careful of generalizations like “students” or “sales organizations”, there is infinite variety in these groups.
Customer slicing shows you exactly where to go and have conversations with Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) at the lowest possible cost to you.
You need to get super granular here with your ICP.
You want to arrive at a Who/Where/When for your ICP.
Here’s an example borrowed from the book:
Bad ICP – Financial Professionals
Good ICP – London gyms in the financial district at lunchtime.
This tells you who (London Gyms), where (in the Financial District), and when (lunchtime).
I don’t think I’ve seen one company or product marketer ever do this with an ICP. Everyone wants to sell to a bigger TAM and gets bad data.
So many more gems in this book! Go read it.
The Mom Test Summary Raw Book Notes
The Mom Test
Summary ideas – What do we want to learn from these guys? This concept drives everything in the Mom Test. Not what can I sell them. Just focus on what can I learn, including negative data points.
Most people ask leading questions when they talk to potential customers to confirm their suspicions – this is a rope to hang yourself because people will always be nice to you. AND creating a great list of questions and keeping a “be curious, not judgemental” attitude will guide you to the best decisions. Ted Lasso!
A USEFUL CONVERSATION The measure of usefulness of an early customer conversation is whether it gives us concrete facts about our customers’ lives and world views. These facts, in turn, help us improve our business.
You talk about them and their lives.
The Mom Test:
- Talk about their life instead of your idea
- Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
- Talk less and listen more
Only the market can tell you if your idea is good or bad
Opinions are worthless
Anything involving the future is an over-optimistic lie
People know what their problems are, but they don’t know how to fix them
You are shooting blind until you understand their goals
What are the implications of that? – helps you distinguish between i-will-pay-to-solve problems and nice to have
Talk me through the last time that happened? –
Watching someone do a task will show you where the problems and inefficiencies really are, not where the customer thinks they are.
What else have you tried?
It’s easy to get someone emotional about a problem if you lead them there. If they haven’t looked for ways to solve the problem they’re not going to buy yours
People stop lying when you ask them for money
You aren’t allowed to tell them what the problem is, they aren’t allowed to tell you what to build.
Bad data gives us false negatives and false positives
3 types of bad data – compliments, fluff (hypotheticals and future), Ideas
Be suspicious of complements, they are usually lies
We crave compliments and trick ourselves into registering them as reliable data. – Feynman
Avoiding Fluff – the world’s most deadly fluff is I would definitely buy that.
When using “generics”, people describe themselves as who they want to be not who they actually are.
Have your radar up for “cobbled together solutions” these cost people money.
Chapter 2 is a gold mine for CS questions when customers bring up features.
You’ve got to dig when you hear problems, don’t assume they are the ones that need fixing.
The Pathos Problem – you expose your ego leading people to feel they ought to protect you by saying nice things
Chapter 3 – Every time you talk to someone, you should be asking at least one question which has the potential to destroy your currently imagined business.
Be careful not to Zoom in too quickly.
Prepare your Big 3 questions in advance. Know these stone-cold in case you bump into someone that matters.
Chap 4- Keeping it casual
Start with Friendly first contacts if possible, BUT if you don’t have them You can use Naval Ravikant’s method of building credibility through the internet.
Strip all the formality from the process, shoot for fast lightweight conversations
Think I’m having a chat, not, I have a meeting.
Chap 5 – Commitment and Advancement
Symptoms: A pipeline of zombie leads Product meetings that end with a compliment Product meetings that end with no clear next steps Meetings which “went well” They haven’t given up anything of value
It took me years to learn that there’s no such thing as a meeting that just “went well”.
Having strong negative data points is a GOOD THING
If you don’t know what happens next after a product or sales meeting, the meeting was pointless.
Commitment to a paid trial puts 3 currencies at-risk – time, money, and reputation with their whole team
Think like Kickstarter, this is a cool concept. AND you could use it to train salespeople. The idea being that people are willing to pull out their ccs and buy things on Kickstarter before launch. Good mindset for a sales call.
Can I buy the prototype? is the best question to get in a product launch meeting.
Hard pitching gives you binary feedback, avoid binary!
Steve Blank calls them earlyvangelists (early evangelists). In the enterprise software world, they are the people who: Have the problem Know they have the problem Have the budget to solve the problem Have already cobbled together their own makeshift solution.
Use your blog, youtube, etc. to find early adopters they’re the people reading/watching and searching for workarounds. AND you should be writing about workarounds. E.g., my Sharepoint article for BTH. This is data salespeople don’t have.
Chap 6 – Finding conversations
PhD on your funding team. “Hello I’m doing my PhD research on the problems around X, it would be huge if I could ask you a few questions for my research.”
Immerse yourself in where they are – e.g., meetings!
Joel Gascoigne – Buffer, landing page – emailed every single person that signed up personally and said hello.
Cheat Code for rapid customer learning – Organize meetings – HH for X professionals, in a new geographic location or new industry.
Framing a meeting – Or, in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask
The Vision Part is ok but needs the idea introduction pattern. It’s too sales-y.
Stop cold emailing and spend your time finding ways to get warm intros (being creative vs blunt force).
Atomic Habits – Im the type of person who sets up meetings to look for great advisors.
If you’ve had 10 or more conversations and get results all over the map it means your ICP is too vague so they are mashing up answers from multiple types of potential customers. AND you need to be meticulous in defining your ICP first, then seeking to chat with ICPs, with your big 3 questions and meeting next step ready to go.
Chap 7 – Choosing your customers – interesting ordering, I would have put this one first.
Adjusting your mental categories for customers, serve the smallest possible niche of insane buyers, first. Be careful of generalizations like “students” or “sales organizations”, there is infinite variety in these groups.
Customer slicing shows you exactly where to go and have conversations with ICPs at the lowest possible cost to you. E.g., London gyms in the financial district at lunchtime. No business does this. You want to arrive at a Who/Where Pair. This is useful stuff, every new sales guy should be doing this.
3 big criteria – profitable/big, easy to reach, personally rewarding.
Always have 2 people on every call, one to talk and one to take notes even if you are using a note-taking app. Facial cues are still important communication for humans.
Founder needs to do the calls not a hired gun. I can help them develop the questions and ICP but not do the interviews. This is interesting as many agencies offer to create personas etc for companies.
Use a note-taking app or put exact quotes in your notes, this will later be used in your Marketing language, funding decks, and to resolve arguments with skeptical teammates.