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4 Comments

Is it ok to convert people in a problem discovery interview?

Hey, I've been working on my project for a few months now, but decided to dive deeper into understanding the problem. Now I want to interview 25 (100) people to ask about how they reach big goals. My aim is to understand what are the main pain points people face when going after epic milestones.

The questions I ask are:

  1. How often do you set goals? 2) What are these goals about? 3) How do you track them? 4) Why do you set them? 5) Resources you've used 6) Biggest pain when going after epic goals

After I go through these questions, I have trouble realizing if I should introduce my product and make them closer to trying it out. I understand that my aim is to discover pains, but having more users is always cool. Until now I haven't met anyone saying "oh yeah it's such a huge pain I couldn't stay focused with my big goals" - then it would be easy to say "look I've built a solution". In my interviews people calmly say "so yes I faced this and this, didn't like how it went" -> then I make a weird expression and give a pitch they're unenthusiastic about. I thank them, meeting ends. Books suggest to have 2 meetups "problem discovery meetup" + "solution pitch meetup", but I'm hesitant to initiate secondary meeting.

My fellow Indie hackers, tell me

  1. Have I missed any important things to ask?
  2. How I pitch to people who don't seem to have much of a problem? (and should I?)
  3. Does it make sense not to mention anything but to follow up in a week and initiate another call with "I have created a solution for what you've described"?

(p.s. text me if you set big goals and can chat for 30 min)

  1. 1

    Honestly, I wouldn't pitch the product right now.
    The first reason is you are conducting the problem interviews, not the solution ones, so you should be focused more on finding the real pain.
    Secondly, people don't like pitches when they are not expecting them. If you tell them "I just want to talk about your pain" and then start pitching it may be considered as unsolicited sales (vtjuhat'). I highly recommend to read the book by Vanja Zamesin - especially this part dedicated to the problem interview https://zamesin.me/books/custdev/problem-interview

    1. 2

      I agree. Currently reading Mom Test and saw that it's better to keep interviews very informal, so the person treats them as conversations. Now I only share info about the product if the person asks. I've realized my call target is learning, not pitching.

  2. 1

    I checked your site a bit. Now, the first that come to mind is that your offer is a bit general. So, you might be wasting time by interviewing customers.
    You want your message to be clear and direct, since "goals/problems" are such broad terms and everyone has different ones. You can develop and scale something that it requires you to check each person's specific problem.
    What you can do is create something that will help them through the process of figuring it out.
    Usually people want something that is borderline effortless. So, what you could do is change the approach.
    Create a layout/map method, and sell that as the product first, and then add an option to join a subscription to the community, etc.

    Those are just the thoughts that came to mind. I could also be wrong and missunderstood the message, so, let me know if I did.

  3. 1

    Did you set 1 or 2 meetings with each person in your customer development stage?

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