Reflections on my first customer demo
On Friday I had a customer demo for my app Comics Helper. My app is in the very early stages, so it's most important that I get feedback and validation from customers. This was the first real demo of the app. I got a bunch of things right and a handful wrong. So here's a recap of the successes and opportunities.
Show up
As soon as I walked in my demo customer was excited. I showed up on time, with a very clean demo application that is an attempt to solve his problems. I exceeded his expectations, not with functionality, but with presence. Many markets are underserved by tech. They're patching things together. If you show up excited to help and deliver, they'll be happy to talk.
Use the labels and naming conventions that your customers use
Honestly, I know this. I've worked in the industry long enough. If you label something "Hold" that someone expects to be labeled "Order" you'll absolutely hear about it. Remember to use your customer's language. Language is frequently a Chesterton Fence, proceed accordingly.
Constantly validate what your customer tells you
People don't mean to mislead you. Much like the wonderful book The Mom Test, talking to your customers is a test. Customers have so much internal context that they assume you understand. When I was interviewing this customer for feature development he wanted something to be a freeform input. Now it must be a dropdown. What he "actually" wanted was an autocomplete. I had to ask and repeat back a lot.
Final thoughts
My big win was showing up with a professional-looking potential solution to my customer's problem. It is not a feature-rich application, it's very MVP that way. It does however present cleanly. I'm not wasting my customer's time.
The big loss was that I didn't really understand the autocomplete problem and why solving it would be helpful for his business. Now that I do I can move forward. I should have listened more carefully.
I'm excited about the next steps and if you have lessons learned from your recent demos, I'd love to hear them.
Congrats! What was your biggest worry prior to the meeting? Thanks
My MVP is not feature rich at all. I'm essentially showing him little features one at a time. This is awesome for validation, but it would be entirely reasonable for him to decide he doesn't want to waste his time on this.
I'd say, my biggest worry was that he'd decide this wasn't worth his time.
Congrats. Biggest lesson for me is "If you are excited about your product and what it can do, customers will pick up on that during the demo".
I've done demos where I felt I have completely flubbed it, but I tend to talk about my product with such enthusiasm that I have actually had many customers thank me for the demo and mention how much they enjoyed it. That kind of energy is just subliminal and infectious - more than I ever thought it was.
Conversely, I have had demos with multi million dollar corporations, and their sales rep just sounded bored and monotonous and just going through the app in rote fashion that I struggled to stay awake throughout! Honestly, if they aren't excited about the system and what it can do for me, then I won't buy it, no matter how good it is.
Thanks for your thoughts Devan. I agree. Enthusiasm is an underated super power.
Honestly getting out and speaking to customers is such an achievement! you are much closer to building something people want than anyone who has a slick looking feature rich offering that hasn't left their room. Well done!
Thanks! I'm hoping that's the case. The plan is talk to the customer and build what they need. Then, when I have something useful, make it slick!
Hey!
That is your first step and you can be proud of yourself. Many people don't even present anything to their potential customers.
I hope you'll be able to reach more people and get more and more feedback.
Cheers!
Indeed! Thanks. It's always a good reminder to take it in stride, the feedback loop isn't ever faster then when you're early on a project. This is a lucky time, even though it doesn't always feel that way.