This is the most labor-intensive part of customer development in general. Here you need to understand the target audience, form a focus group, schedule meetings for everyone and conduct interviews. And you also need to choose the right questions so that the person does not fall asleep and is interested in talking to you. If everything is done correctly and conscientiously, then you will get the most interesting results. They are briefly called feedback, but in reality, this is a real treasure trove of valuable suggestions, amendments, opinions on key points of your project and even new related ideas.
Correctly chosen and timely asked questions to the right people can prevent investing efforts, resources, and time in a product that no one will need. Especially if you yourself think differently.
Testing the hypothesis
What questions should be self employed database asked? It would be absolutely wrong to turn the questionnaire into some kind of testing with monosyllabic answer options (these are the so-called closed questions). However, people like them, and therefore it is unreasonable to completely ignore them. Combine them with open questions, where everyone will be given the opportunity to give an extended answer, the opportunity to speak out and express their opinion/attitude. It should also be remembered that their number should not be more than half; ideally - less than 40%.
Answers to open questions are the greatest value that an author can acquire when working on his project. Timely results allow you to understand the expectations of potential buyers, as well as identify those obstacles that will counteract the process of implementing the idea.
In short, it is unacceptable to ignore communication with the future audience of the project at the planning stage.
And here's how Steve Blank proposed to organize this process:
Collect about 50 people from your contacts. These could be casual acquaintances, friends, colleagues, including former ones, etc.
Tell them about your project (either all together or individually – it doesn’t matter). It’s best to do this through a presentation.
Use a non-selling version of the presentation. Then, realizing that you are not trying to sell them anything, people will start telling you their true opinion, and you will receive a lot of comments and useful remarks.
Conduct an interview (this is individual with each person). During it, ask open questions and ask for more detailed answers. Don't forget to alternate such points with closed ones (so that the respondent doesn't get tired).
Case: VT-metall
Find out how we reduced the cost of attracting an application by 13 times for a metalworking company in Moscow
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Eventually, you'll be able to formulate a framework for yourself: what pain points do consumers have, and combine them with the problems your product will solve when it becomes widely available. Don't forget to analyze market trends and competitive developments.
Now that the information from consumers (i.e. from objective sources) has been collected, try to compare it with the assumptions you started from. You'll find it interesting!