8 tips for becoming a market visits ninja
As a Product Manager you should be doing market visits and user interviews as often as possible: this is how we get to understand how our customers use our product, how we know if our features fall short, or how we discover new feature ideas based on customer problems.
I’ve been lucky enough to do market visits around the world for the last couple years, and after been asked for some tips to share with new PMs, I decided to write some of them in this blog post.
So let’s get started with my top 8 tips for becoming a market visits ninja:
Tip #1: Explain the purpose of the meeting to all attendees
It is often a great source of Confusion the fact that not all attendees know why you’re there. It is important to make clear you are NOT there to sell them anything (this helps them get relaxed), that you are not a consultant, that you are not there to fix bugs…you’re there to listen to them, to understand their challenges and needs to make Sure your product evolves in the right direction.
Tip #2: Start with broad questions. What’s your vision?
You are a strategist, and It’s good they realize so. Also, this is a good trick to help them get used to talking for some minutes, instead of being in listening mode.
Tip #3: Get to know what’s keeping them up at night
This will help you in the discovery process. It’s not about small iterations to improve your product, but whole new areas where you can provide value and you weren’t aware of. You need to understand customer’s nightmares if you want to keep providing value to him.
Tip #4: Get closer, how does your product fit into the bigger picture?
Once you know their challenges, speak their language, it’s time to start understanding their relationship with your product. Note that this is the first time we talk about our product. What do they use it for, what did they plan to use it for, their idea of your product, what drove the purchase decision.
Tip #5: No excuses!
Now that it’s time to talk about all the specifics, the nitty gritty details, complaints, feature requests, etc, etc. it is really easy to be defensive about your product (at the end it’s your baby!) and start saying things like “you’re not using it right”, or “didn’t you know we have a feature for that?”, or the classic “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”…but it is extremely important to remember you are there to listen and take notes, not to defend the honor of your product, and back at the office be critical and look for solutions to those issues (why haven’t they see that feature? Is it too hidden? Why are they using the product this way? Should we add some help texts to guide them? If they feel this feature is broken, shouldn’t we do a better work at communicating?).
Tip #6: You’re not a hard disk
You might be lucky enough to remember every single sentence of a conversation, but if you are anything close to me, you will surely forget many important comments after the actual meeting. My recommendation is to. Use everything you have, as you’ll forget an important percentage of the meetings a couple hours after, so try to record, take notes, video-tape it, have someone help you with this if needed…
Tip #7: Action points are action points
I’m pretty sure you promised to send some documentation, maybe some slides of a presentation, maybe an invitation to a webinar you’re planning to do soon… These follow-up actions are what will give you credibility and will allow you to maintain your relationship with them in the long run, so you better take care of this and truly follow up with them.
Tip #8: Share your experience
With all the info that you have after a market visit, be quick in writing a report for your record (you’ll use it in the future) but also to share internally. It is market data that will help solve conflicts, And will help your company build a knowledge base of customers and their needs.
Do you have more tips based your experiences? I’d love to hear about them and learn from you.
Best,
Juan
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