Comments on: Seller Beware: Customers Have Their Own Agenda

By: Treat Your Customers Like Children (or your Children like Customers) | Market By Numbers | Marketing Help

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:59:51 +0000

[...] comes from learning when to ignore your customers and when to take heed. Custdevguy reminds us that customers have their own agenda, which might not coincide with your own. Steve Blank reminds us that Customer Development is not [...]

By: Lincoln Nguyen

Lincoln Nguyen — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:41:12 +0000

Right. For us, it was much more helpful to approach customer development with a hypothesis to test product/market fit. The role of the customers becomes validating or invalidating that hypothesis. If the hypothesis that we tested didn’t create a product market fit, we then went back and came up with another hypothesis using the feedback that we got. The whole point for us, was to come up with ideas ourselves that could be tested in the market not relying completely on the customer.

By: The State of Customer Development | Market By Numbers | San Diego | Encinitas | California | Marketing Help

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:12:05 +0000

[...] CustDevGuy and I decided to try and find out. Will you help us by completing the appropriate survey below? Also, we will raffle off 2 (1 from each group) $25 Amazon Gift Cards if you include your email address. Thanks! ==> I have read Steve Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany. [...]

By: CustDevGuy

CustDevGuy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:35:55 +0000

I should also add — we contacted this customer’s biggest competitor and let them know we were working with them. Their competitor quickly signed an LOI (sans XYZ!) with us.

By: CustDevGuy

CustDevGuy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:31:50 +0000

@Michael and Edwin

Thanks for your comments. I apologize for being so irritatingly oblique about what ABC and XYZ were, but the Silicon Valley is a small community and I am still iterating on this project.

However, perhaps I can add a little color. XYZ is a mission-critical function that has to be 100% right. It is largely binary. It works or it doesn’t. And if you have ABC and XYZ together, and XYZ doesn’t work. Then ABC won’t work either. ABC and XYZ aren’t different features, they are different functions.

ABC is rather new, and complementary to XYZ and the larger picture/industry.

–

So, for the next customers we flat out refused to offer them XYZ and our LOIs reflected. Interestingly enough, we approached a customer who told us that they were solicited by an huge XYZ vendor, who offered to give them ABC as well, but only if they purchased XYZ. They had their own XYZ solution and that XYZ vendor got nowhere with them, while we were able to do ABC for them.

Like I said, I am still iterating on this idea, and I imagine ABC will look quite a bit different in the future.

Last thing: I don’t hold a grudge and I am not so naive as to not know that customers don’t have their own interests, but I was surprised as to the lengths this customer went to feign interest in ABC, in order to get XYZ. But again, I blame only myself.

By: Edwin Oh

Edwin Oh — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:51:52 +0000

Thanks for a thought provoking post and the warning! Question: I assume you were you talking with other target customers simultaneously? Did this play a role in your being able to detect a discrepancy between the customers who wanted just ABC vs. the one who wanted XYZ only but said they wanted both?

Because of the problem you outlined, there is a technique in consumer marketing called conjoint analysis where various features sets are mixed and matched in such a way that customers are forced to indicate tradeoffs but not in an obvious manner. Now you’ve got me wondering if that technique could be applied in a customer development situation….

By: Michael Zipursky

Michael Zipursky — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:37:56 +0000

CustDevGuy, great post and thanks for sharing.

So what happened (or is happening)? If many or all of your potential customers (as you originally believed they were) are not interested in your ABC, but want the completely different XYZ…and you moved ahead with ABC, what was the result?

How did you push forward with ABC and make it a success (or are in the process of doing so)?

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:31:11 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by brantcooper: fake screenshot/LOI case study continued; “Sellers Beware: Customers Have Their Own Agenda” http://bit.ly/7oQc1U #custdev #leanstartup…

By: Tweets that mention Seller Beware: Customers Have Their Own Agenda | Market By Numbers | San Diego | Encinitas | California | Marketing Help -- Topsy.com

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:01:48 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by brantcooper, ralxz's Blogs. ralxz's Blogs said: Seller Beware: Customers Have Their Own Agenda http://bit.ly/7Su9Gn [...]

By: The Sky is Blue and Customers Have Their Own Agenda – EventSession

The Sky is Blue and Customers Have Their Own Agenda – EventSession — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:34:52 +0000

[...] Cooper was kind enough to post on his blog. See my guest post there. December 15, 2009 – 1:34 pm | By admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0) ← [...]