How to ask "Does this solve your pain?" at scale (WIP)

Alt Titles:

Scaling customer feedback with survey's

Using the Product Market Fit survey to get actionable feedback

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This essay is a work in progress and ~~probably~~ may be in disarray. I'm trying an experiment where I share early versions of my writings before they're ready for prime-time. If you have feedback hit me up on Twitter.

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Last Updated: 2021-02-15 (Just capturing my rough thoughts)

You've done the hard part, you've defined the customers Job to be Done, you've built your product, and you landed your first few customers.

But...

Churn is nearly as fast or faster than new customers

Signups are lower than anticipated and keep getting lower

You have core customers who LOVE you but a large crowd who is indifferent and you don't know why

Or maybe it's brighter than that but...

You have a core audience who loves you and no one else

The Entrepreneurs job is never over. Often our assumptions on what to build are directionally correct but not spot on. It's time to go back to the drawing board and listen to your customers.

But this time you're not starting from scratch, you've got customers, you have proof your vision has something right in it. You've built a car not a horse, your guts not wrong, but why won't they buy?

How can you gather the evidence you need to improve your product and do it at scale? Why scale? Because you know you're onto the right job, but you need to tweak it so it appeals to a larger group of people.

If you ask the right way your customers can tell you:

What they love about your software

Who they think your software is for

and just as importantly what's frustrating them today

Yes, I'm talking about a survey. But not any old survey, not an NPS survey, not a random one crowd sourced by all the founders, sales people, professional services, and product either. One that is purpose built to help you find product market fit. One that is hyper focused to help you identify what to double down on and what to fix. And one that you can align to your product strategy.

I'm talking about Superhuman's Product Market Fit Survey. This post is not a guide on how to implement it, it's a post on why I think you should use it and where it fits in a product managers toolkit.

Essay Notes

The Net Promotor Score is a great SaaS metric to say if you're working well for custoemrs

It also can help identify troubled ones

But it falls short by not asking for valuable feedback

That's why Superhumans's Product Market Fit survey is genius

What's great about their survey

Combines NPM
With key questions built to find out what customers love and don't love
Still light weight

Reference Rand Fishkin outcome

Who else?

Make it so easy they can't say no when you ask for feedback

Ask for a brief call
Build in a brief high-value survey

https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/

Useless Stats:

2021-01-30: 97 words

2021-02-14: 504 words