Hi there -
Here is this week’s “1 principle, 2 strategies, and 3 actionable tactics” for running lean…
1 Universal Principle
“Keystone Habit: Build a continuous customer feedback loop.”
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This week’s theme covered the one habit that, hands down, has had the biggest impact on my business and product growth: Talking to customers.
(YouTube video linked below).
But it wasn’t always this way.
Me before the trigger:
- Talking to customers is a waste of time
- Inventing more ways to avoid having to talk to a customer
- Customers don't know what they want
Me after the trigger:
- You have to know how to talk to customers
- Building an automated continuous feedback loop where I talk to customers regularly
- It is my job to figure out what customers want
In this issue, I want to focus on item #2: Building an automated customer feedback loop. I will start by sharing why I even bother to talk to customers regularly.
2 Underlying Strategies at Play
I. Talking to customers serves like a canary in the coal mine.
The origin of this expression is literal. Canaries were historically used to test for carbon monoxide and other toxic gases in underground mines, serving as an early warning signal for miners.
No-agenda customer conversations have the same effect.
Over the years, I’ve watched my customers evolve from high-tech technical founders practicing lean startup to aspiring founders who may not be technical or know anything about lean startups.
I still remember this conversation from a few years ago with a fisherman in Chile who was struggling to create his first Lean Canvas.
How does a fisherman end up on LeanCanvas.com?
He had been grumbling about having to create a business plan for a bank loan at a networking event the night before, when someone recommended that he create a Lean Canvas instead. The problem is that all our content was geared toward high-tech technical founders, not him.
After I hung up the call, I invited the next 10 sign-ups to a conversation and learned that our audience had changed without us realizing it. This also explained the drop in lean canvas activations that we had spent months trying to fix.
Unlike metrics that only told us what was happening, conversations like these got to why.
II. Talking to customers is the fastest way to learn, even at scale.
Even at scale, it can be much faster to contact customers before a major feature release, price change, or other major change, talk to a few customers first, and get their reactions.
Emperors and kings (and Apple) leaked rumors before any big policy change for the same purpose.
Validate qualitatively; Verify quantitatively.
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Next, I’ll cover some ways to get started:
3 Actionable Tactics
I. Lead with Value.
Building a continuous feedback loop with customers starts at hello with a give-before-get mindset.
For me, that begins with a welcome email and a few lifecycle value-driven messages with a prompt/invitation to reply -- before I ask for any feedback or conversation.
Next, you have to frame the conversation around something they want, not about you getting feedback.
“Can I pick your brain?” is one of the worst ways to reach out to someone. It will be instantly deleted from my inbox, and it even sounds painful. Instead, lead by helping them achieve an outcome they care about.
Some examples:
- When writing my first book (Running Lean), I offered weekly open office hours where I helped people apply the techniques in the book. In return, I learned who my readers were, their struggles, and what to cover in my book.
- After launching Lean Canvas, I offered (and still do) business model diagnostics to the same effect.
II. Automate the process.
Talking to customers is like eating healthy, exercising, or saving money. We know these things are good for us, but other (seemingly more important) things tend to get in the way.
My solution to that is automation.
I’ve automated invitations to customer conversations at various stages in my product’s lifecycle so that I no longer need to reach out to people manually. I’ve set aside time on my calendar for these no-agenda customer conversations, which fill up weekly.
III. The reward loop takes care of the rest.
For any habit to stick, the right reward loop is key. If you focus on talking to customers (versus users), I do not doubt that you’ll learn at least one actionable insight you didn’t know within your first three conversations.
When you put this insight to the test and reap a measurable traction reward, there's no going back.
It is this faster learning reward loop that got me hooked. I encourage you to give it a try, too.
That’s all for today. See you next week.
Ash
Author of Running Lean and creator of Lean Canvas
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P.S.
Here are some tips for talking to customers from this week’s YouTube video: