(Scroll down to the hack)
‘Lying’ by Sam Harris explores why we lie to one another. Is someone with makeup lying to us about their appearance? We’ve all been Seinfeld & Aziz at the restaurant. And we do it because lying is easier.
The social scientist will point out ☝️the effort vs benefit of ethical responsibility is too high☝️
And so, we shouldn’t be surprised that our users lie to us. It’s what makes listening to users an underrated skill.
Most times, we don’t even intend to lie. We just forget to think about the truth. We fall prey to biases and tricks that the mind plays on us. Like the availability bias. Someone asks us “What’s keeping you up at night?” and we blurt out the first thing our minds make available to us. Not a great question to ask.
By the way, congratulations if you’re already talking to users. Having spent hundreds of hours doing it at multiple ventures, I can tell you’re already. Most people don’t even do it.
People don’t talk to users for a variety of reasons. It’s uncomfortable. You’re troubling someone. You need to say please and thank you. It’s scary. You may mess it up. You’re thinking about what to ask next. And not listening to what they’re saying.
As such, many organizations and individuals hide behind surveys, or just read support tickets and data. Others justify different priorities, or.. just look busy.
Hack Question (HQ)
Get started on a call today by simply asking the user this again and again
“And what did you do next?”
Some theory and nuance follow, but if you want to skip it and hop on a call, just go on try it!
It’s a Hack question for a reason
- It helps recall vs reimagine: We’re terrible at reimagining others’ worlds. “If I cooked up some tapioca balls and put them in tea would you drink it?” Err… sure!
- It’s open vs close-ended: Asking close-ended questions isn’t useful. It allows the easy way out. “How is everything?” Great!
- It’s non-leading vs leading: Leading questions make it easy for someone to lie. “This recipe is from my grandmother, isn’t it amazing” Yes!
- It forces detail: Building products is a high detail activity. Simply knowing “world hunger is a problem” doesn’t help you decide what to cook next.
- It uncovers jobs to be done: Every successful product solves some job. This question forces the user to recall jobs they need to do to accomplish a goal.
Meeting bookends
You naturally don’t want to start and finish the call with a Hack question. So, what do bookends look like?
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Intro: Smile, thank, and welcome your guest. Let them know it isn’t an inquisition. You’re just trying to understand better. Ok to record?
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Kickoff: Ask exactly what your product intends to solve. Remember we’re going for detail.
“Tell me about the last time you bought steak at a food truck”. Depending on their response, adjust, but settle into HQ asap. They may be further up the buyer journey. That’s ok, you’ll get different information from this audience. Like how to acquire them.
- Finish: Speak from the heart. Big thank you, it was a valuable conversation and meant a lot.
BANTer as you get better at it
You’ve overcome the initial fear. Now learn to BANTer between HQs as they describe pain points.
- Budget: Have you spent money on solving that?
- Authority: Did you need to get an ok from someone else first?
- Need: Do you really need to solve it, how many hrs/week do you get back?
- Timing: When was the last time you faced this, how often do you face it?
It’s a sales discovery technique but applies to feature discovery too. Not every pain point is worth solving. Uncover the one to focus on.
Don’t panic, and good luck! 😅