Discover the “Mom Test” For Your Product
Clients often lie or tell what they think we want to hear. How to communicate with them?
Productfocus.com suggests trying the “Mom Test” that helps ensure you improve your customer conversations.
Moms know everything and it should not be a surprise that they know exactly how product managers should talk to customers.
Discover the Mom Test
The article posted on Productfocus is about the book called “The Mom Test”.
The book was written by Rob Fitzpatrick and born from hard lessons learned from talking to customers.
Reading it you’ll face the very simple premise: if you ask your mother if your idea is good she will say “yes” because she loves you, is nice and wants you to feel good about yourself.
Your clients will probably give you a more positive answer if you tell them about your idea because your ego is on the line and they are fundamentally nice people.
So when you start selling the product no one buys it and you wonder why. The Mom Test aims to overcome this and includes 3 key aspects:
- Talk about their world instead of your idea
- Ask about specifics in the past instead of opinions about the future
- Talk less – listen more
It may be simplified for the product people as “ask for stories, don’t pitch your product”.
Stories help to understand what problems people have had and how they tried to solve them. If someone has already made efforts to solve a problem, then that is a pretty good indication that there is value in solving it.
You’ll also find a wide range of interesting techniques and methods in the book that is really quick to read.
