Q: What should I be doing in the early stages of customer discovery? What does it mean to “talk” to customers?

Getting out of the building to talk to customers doesn’t mean getting out of the building and telling people about your idea. You’re not out to say the following: “I have a great idea X to solve Y problem with Z solution. What do you think of that?” What you’re really doing when you talk to customers is listening and learning. Serial entrepreneur and educator Steve Blank says it best in the following Founder Genius clip, “in a lot of the first conversations you’re having out there, you shouldn’t be talking much at all.”

In the early stages of customer discovery you shouldn’t be telling people about your idea (especially if you have intellectual property to protect). Talking to people or potential customers about an idea doesn’t mean unveiling code, cool features, or sharing IP you should be protecting. It simply means finding out from the person on the other end of the conversation whether or not they would even be interested in something that solved this certain problem. Do they consider it a problem at all? Ask them:  Do you have Y problem?  How do you solve it?  How do you think you could solve it better?  Back in your office you can ask yourself whether it sounds, based on what they say, like there’s a fit between the solution you might have and the problems they articulate. What did you learn about their problems?  How can you help to solve them?

Furthermore, Steve sends out a reminder: no original idea is the end all, be all of ideas. There will be iterations and 2.0s still to come with any life-changing idea. So you have to leave room for your idea to evolve. You might discover that your technology or idea is best positioned to solve a problem you hadn’t even thought about!  The success of your company comes from combining your idea or technology with a real problem in the marketplace, and as Steve says, learning and discovery becomes a very important asset for your company.