Listen to Your Customer, But Ignore What They Tell You
How Lean Discovery will help you lower your initial investment and win the game of business
I want to continue shining the spotlight on the people that have helped me learn and grow. Today’s Tidbit highlights a good friend of mine that moved across the country to take a huge risk and chase a dream after teaching me to do the same. Good luck Isaac Castillo! I’m praying you have all the success you can handle!
There are dozens of books on the topic of Discovery and I am in no way an expert. I do, however, want to share with you guys one way in which I have been able to translate my love for Agile principles into a useable Discovery process. And by Discovery, I just mean the process by which I find out what my customers want.
I’ve mentioned that I find and resell items as a way to earn extra cash, which actually makes me a small business owner. I’ve done some research on this topic and I have found that the biggest goal of a business owner is to maximize the return on their initial investment. In other words, buy low, sell high. It’s economics 101, right? There’s a flip side.
As a customer, I am always looking to get way more value than what I spend on something. To use the old fireworks quote, “I want more bang for my buck.”
These two ideas seem to always be in tension because how could I possibly sell something for a ton of money when the buyers want to only spend as little money as possible. Impossible, right? What if I told you an Agile mindset was the secret sauce. Well, in today’s Tidbit I am going to give you one very easy way to bridge the gap between business owner and customer. Let’s dive in.
I’ll tell ya what I want, what I really, really, want…
People have no clue what they want until they want it. I know, I know, I literally just contradicted my own subheading, but it’s so catchy, right? Who doesn’t love a great Dixie Spice Ladies quote?
When it comes to finding out what customers want there are two rules to follow:
Listen to your customers to find out what they want.
Ignore your customers. They have no idea what they want.
So how can we possibly make sense of these obviously contradictory ideas? Henry Ford is credited with saying:
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
Bionic horses aside, there is a way to listen to your customer while also dispensing with what they think they want. Listen to what they say with their cash. People speak by how they spend their money.
Lean Discovery
I recently went to a store and noticed they had an item on sale that I thought was very interesting. It was something I would love to have and use for sure. I could spend time asking someone if that was something they would want, but people don’t normally answer that question well at all. They either tell you what they think you want to hear, or they lie. I’m not passing judgement, I’m just stating a fact. What I did instead was quickly research how well the item was selling and for what prices people were actually paying. THAT’S how you listen to customers. People speak volumes with how they spend their money. That’s the real test.
I bought one of the items. I didn’t buy five, ten, or twenty. I just bought one and then listed it as an experiment. The item sold an hour later for the full asking price. That’s when I went and purchased a few more. And that’s one of the central principals of being lean and agile. Think about it. The main reason business owners struggle so much is they pour too much money into the initial investment and then getting the proper return becomes an exercise in frustration and futility. By doing a small experiment, my initial investment was around $20 and I ended up doubling that. Most entrepreneurs would take doubling their investment any day of the week (and twice on Sunday, haha). But if my experiment failed, and I’ve had a few fail, I would only lose a small amount. That’s how you bridge the gap between business owner and customer. You lean out your process enough that you don’t have to alienate your customer by passing your “stupid investment tax” down to them.
Small, fast experiments that deliver quick value to a small number of customers is better than trying to hit a home run every single time. That’s the essence of an Agile Discovery process.
An Epilogue
Everything that I just discussed it not for the faint of heart and it’s not a secret. The people that succeed at this are the ones that win more times than not while always listening to customers pocket books over their own emotions. Embrace small experiments, with one caveat: the younger you are the more you can recover from a larger risk. I learned this from my good friend Isaac Castillo, who taught me to take the risks that ultimately led me to starting my reselling side hustle. I’m not officially at a 4 Hour Work Week, but I am getting there. I appreciate you Isaac!
That’s all for today’s Tidbit.
Until next time,
Keep on learning. Keep on growing.