The Mom Test

Recommended by my PM as a book to read, see here: https://www.momtestbook.com/. It can be useful for talking to customers and communicating simply.

A great short book that shows how to ask questions in a way that gets results; otherwise people will tell you what you want to hear, like a mom who always says you did a great job. Useful, worth rereading if I ever work on a new product. There are lots of sample dialogues to review and situations to avoid.

Notes

• The responsibility to learn the truth is ours. People will always try to please us. How do we find it? By asking good questions
• The Mom Test:
  • Talk about their life instead of your idea
  • Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future
  • Talk less and listen more
• 🔑 The rule is: you cannot talk about your solution and you cannot tell them what their problem is. Let them vent
• 3 types of bad responses: Compliments, Fluff (generics, hypotheticals), Ideas
• 🔑 Compliments are the fool’s gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and entirely worthless.
• Like feature requests, strong emotions are always interesting to explore. Anger? Explore. Embarrassment? Explore.
• The Pathos Problem: if you expose your ego, people protect you by saying nice things. If you share an idea you like, they do not want to be unpleasant and shoot it down. Everyone will say your idea is great if you pester them enough
• Start vaguely and zoom in on the problem only if you sniff something interesting
• Always prepare the 3 uncomfortable questions you want to ask. The ones you do not really want answered
• Do not give information about your idea; steer the conversation in a useful direction
• Keep talking to people until you stop learning new information
• Even the big ones, like Google, started from very specific problems (searching papers for PhDs)
• Think about who would use your idea. Target someone concrete
• Avoid bottlenecks with 3 points: Prepping (the questions), Reviewing, and Taking good notes (use symbols to highlight important points)
• I make many mistakes. At least now I see them and can fix them. You will never do something perfect, but it helps to get better

Cheatsheet (translated)

Key skills

• Ask good questions (Ch. 1 & 3)
• Avoid false or useless data (Ch. 2)
• Keep an informal tone (Ch. 4)
• Push for commitment and advancement (Ch. 5)
• Frame the meeting (Ch. 6)
• Customer segmentation (Ch. 7)
• Preparation & review (Ch. 8)
• Note-taking (Ch. 8)

The Mom Test

• Talk about their life, not your idea
• Ask about specific past situations, not opinions or future hypotheticals
• Talk less, listen more

Getting back on track (avoiding bad data)

• You must deflect compliments
• Anchor vague talk
• Go deep beneath opinions, requests, emotions

Common mistakes

• Fishing for compliments
  • “I have an idea for an app, do you like it?”
• Exposing your ego
  • “I quit my job for this secret project… what do you think?”
• Pitching instead of listening
  • “No no, you did not get it, it also does this!”
• Being too formal
  • “On a scale from 1 to 5, how would you rate…”
• Being the learning bottleneck
  • “I do not have time to talk to customers; I just need to code.”
• Collecting compliments instead of facts
  • “Everyone I talked to loves the idea.”

Process before, during, and after a meeting

1. Define a clear, reachable segment
2. Set the 3 main learning goals
3. If needed, decide the ideal next steps
4. Identify who to interview
5. Form hypotheses about what the person cares about
6. Do desk research if possible
7. Frame the conversation
8. Keep an informal tone
9. Ask questions that follow the Mom Test
10. Deflect compliments and dig beneath signals
11. Take good notes
12. If appropriate, ask for concrete commitments
13. Review notes and key quotes with the team
14. Archive notes if needed
15. Update beliefs and plans
16. Decide the next 3 big questions

Outcomes of a good meeting

• Concrete facts (what they do and why)
• Commitment (time, reputational risk, money)
• Advancement (a step toward a sale)

Signs you are just acting

• You talk more than you listen
• You get compliments about your idea
• You do not know the next steps
• You did not take notes
• You did not review notes with the team
• Nothing unexpected changed your idea
• You did not feel uncomfortable with the questions
• You do not know which big question you are trying to answer

Symbols for notes

• 🙂 Enthusiastic
• 🙁 Angry
• 😐 Embarrassed
• ☇ Problem/pain
• ⨅ Goal / job-to-be-done
• ☐ Obstacle
• ⤴ Workaround
• ^ Context / background
• ☑ Feature request / buying criterion
• ＄ Money / budget / buying process
• ♀ Person or company mentioned
• ☆ Follow-up task

Signs you are not pushing for commitment/advancement

• A pipeline of zombie contacts
• Meetings that end with a compliment
• No clear next step
• Meetings that “went well” but delivered no real value
• No value given up by them

Asking for and framing the meeting

• Vision → half a sentence about how you improve the world
• Framing → where you are and what you are looking for
• Weakness → show how they can help
• Pedestal → explain why they in particular can help
• The ask → explicitly ask for help

The big preparation question

• “What do we want to learn from these people?”