Customer discovery in the remote working world

As a product leader, do you ever get the feeling that you are building things blindly?

More based on gut and feel versus based on strong yet quick validation. Based on the loudest voice in the room versus the voice of the (future) customer.?

Post-COVID, product folks don’t visit customer offices anymore to ‘observe and report back’. There are tons of requests from sales piling up and virtual sales calls with customers only tell you the tip of the iceberg.?

As the world changed multiple times in the past 3 years, we at Hubilo experienced this feeling. And it’s uncomfortable. So we decided to take action.

Here is how we did it and here’s how you can too in 10 steps.?

1. Identify a few target ICPs. Do this based on historical data, an eye on the company’s vision (working with your CEO is a crucial step here), inputs from your sales, marketing, finance, customer success teams, revenue potential, competitors, potential needs, impact on sales and marketing motions, existing strengths and product fit. Time taken: 1 week
2. Offer 2-3 different paths you could take with pros and cons for each. Work with department heads closely to gather all inputs and critique this list. Take inputs from a couple of trusted advisors who have been in these shoes before. Time taken: 1 week?
3. Make decisions and choose ONE ICP. Identify 10-12 people from this ICP - LinkedIn, your team’s connections etc. Find an agency (like HBG) who can expand this search and find ‘similar’ people from ICP-matching companies. Time taken: 2 weeks
4. In parallel, create a list of open-ended questions to understand current pains (buyers and end users), factors driving choice of tools, frequency of activities using products similar to yours, shortcomings of current tools etc. Couple this with a set of potential value propositions you would like to test using a framework like the Importance-Satisfaction matrix as mentioned in Dan Olsen 's Lean Product Playbook. Create a Google Form to input all the answers.?
5. Have conversations with these folks using the above structure so that the answers are gathered in a consistent format and analysis becomes easy. Distribute the work across 2-3 key members who have experience in such discovery. Time taken: 2 weeks?
6. Spend time synthesising the takeaways and share it across all departments. Congratulations! You have now identified 4-5 very specific areas where you can innovate or need to be at parity with your competitors. Time taken: 1 week?
7. While doing step 5, build an aspirational Customer Advisory Board from that segment - offer them stock options in exchange for time and inputs. This is going to be immensely helpful to have a continuous conversation. Having a group of folks who can give quick candid feedback and have a stake in your success will help you move fast.?
8. Walk through 3-5 problem areas identified and potential solutions with these folks. Walk through your product offering discussing gaps, future differentiators and swappers (a term we made up that indicates something that would help you displace incumbent tools). Send them short surveys to avoid scheduled calls and get faster turnaround. Time taken: 3 weeks?
9. Feed all of this intel to your PMs, designers, and other departments. Use quotes verbatim. These become inputs for your product managers to understand the key problems and solve the right problems. These become inputs for your marketing teams to hone in on the value propositions and positioning. These become inputs for your sales pitches. Drive cross functional clarity.?
10. Create a roadmap that can create impact in the next 3 months and execute as hard and fast as you can. Rinse and repeat a subset of these steps whenever needed.?

The above steps can be completed in 10-12 weeks; that's less than a quarter. But it has an outsized impact that will help over the next 12-18 months as you now have a continuous discovery process in place that helps you make quicker decisions. As my dear mentor Rich Mironov says, “We cannot schedule innovation, but we can schedule discovery”.?

Don’t fly blind. Race ahead with clarity.